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Why did ‘The Phil Donahue Show’ go off the air? TV talk show duration and awards
The American talk show, hosted by Phil Donahue, who died on Sunday, August 18 ran for 29 years.
The Phil Donahue Show, whose host Phil Donahue died on Sunday, August 18, was first broadcast on November 6, 1967. It ran for an impressive 29 years, finally ending when Phil Donahue, in the face of falling ratings, decided to retire rather than be taken off air. The final episode aired on September 13, 1996.
The show, which was called simply ‘Donahue’ from 1976, when media company Multimedia Inc bought the assets of Avco Company, was hugely successful. Donohue decided to focus mainly on just one guest or topic for each entire show and, crucially, asked the audience to participate, asking questions, along with allowing people to phone in.
The show was initially a local production on WLWD in Dayton, Ohio, broadcast on just the stations owned by WLWD’s parent company, but it was syndicated worldwide from 1970, bringing in eight million viewers in the U.S. per episode.
Why did ‘The Phil Donahue Show’ go off air
In the 1990s, the talk show market became increasingly saturated, with many taking an increasingly tabloid-style approach, which Donahue refused to countenance. At the same time, many considered that Oprah Winfrey and Sally Jessy Raphael had surpassed Donahue, bringing a new freshness and vigor to the format he had pioneered.
By the mid-90s a number of stations, including KGO-TV in San Francisco and New York’s WNBC-TV, had dropped the show. With its ratings fallings, Donahue decided to retire.
What awards did ‘The Phil Donahue Show’ win?
‘The Phil Donahue Show’ was richly rewarded at the Daytime Emmys, both individual episodes and entire seasons.
In total it was nominated for 43 awards, winning 21. Notably though as the show went on, there were more nominations than wins. In the 1990s it was nominated for 24 awards, but only won one, in 1995, for Outstanding Directing in a Talk Show, picked up by Bryan Russo.
Phil Donahue won Outstanding Host or Hostess in a Talk, Service or Variety Series in 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982 and was nominated in 1981.
That category changed to Outstanding Host or Hostess in a Talk or Service Show in 1983, when Donahue won it again. He was then nominated in 1984, before winning it again in 1985, 1986, 1988 and being nominated in 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996.
The Show won multiple other Daytime Emmys including Outstanding Talk, Service or Variety Series (1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1986), along with a number of awards for individual episodes, including Outstanding Individual Direction for a Variety Program in 1979 for Nazis and the Klan.
Donahue was also admitted to the OFTA TV Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2002, TV Guide’s list of the 50 greatest television shows of all-time rated Donahue at 28th.