Phil Donahue, the presenter, writer, producer and and host of The Phil Donahue Show, is dead at 88. The longtime TV presence was famed for many achievements off and on-screen.
Donahue became a household name in the daytime talk show space in November 1967 when The Phil Donahue Show premiered on a local news network in Dayton, Ohio. Initially, the show was only broadcast on stations owned by CBS. However, it eventually achieved nationwide syndication in1974 and moved to Chicago. Following a decade of success, The Phil Donahue Show moved to New York City in 1984 where it was filmed at the now-iconic 30 Rockefeller Plaza studio. The show came to an end in September 1996 following a 29 year run and over 7,000 episodes.
Obits are glossing over it, but there is no question that MSNBC cancelled his show—effectively ending his career—because he criticized the invasion of Iraq. As one internal memo put it, they didn't want him to literalize the channel's appeal to anti-war liberals.
"What happened to me, the biggest lesson, I think, is the—how corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage. This was a decision—my decision—the decision to release me came from far above. This was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me from MSNBC. They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an overstatement. Antiwar voices were not popular. And if you're General Electric, you certainly don't want an antiwar voice on a cable channel that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer. So, by the way, I had to have two conservatives on for every liberal. I could have Richard Perle on alone, but I couldn't have Dennis Kucinich on alone. I was considered two liberals. It really is funny almost, when you look back on how—how the management was just frozen by the antiwar voice. We were scolds. We weren't patriotic. American people disagreed with us. And we weren't good for business.
Donahue was quickly proven right. The Iraq war eventually claimed up to 650,000 lives, saw the U.S.'s military victory slowly and inexorably rot into political defeat, and ultimately empowered Islamic extremists, a new generation of dictators and the cult controlling Iran, which asserted itself as a key regional power.
Previously:
• Watch the 2 Live Crew perform in front of a befuddled and disgruntled audience at the Phil Donahue Show in 1990
• In this Open Letter to Crayola, the Color Nerd proposes a new 24-pack that will better teach students about hue and complementary colors
