For adults of a certain generation, daytime talk shows of the 1980s and 1990s represented all that was right with the world during a sick day home from school.
In an ideal scenario, your parents or caregivers would leave you to your own devices so you could veg out in front of the boob tube all day, munching on your favorite crap snacks and soaking in all the histrionic sensationalism this television genre had to offer. Spontaneous fist fights! Grotty-to-hottie makeovers! Baby daddy paternity tests! (Fun fact: I once attended a taping of Maury “You are not the father” Povich’s Maury in college, and the staff stuffed us with free pizza to entice us to stay through some reality star’s book promotion. Who said bread and circuses are ancient history?)
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Like network TV soap operas and the “trashy novel” classics of the mid-20th century, tabloid talk shows served a vital cultural purpose during their pre-millennium heyday: While serving up controversial subjects and subject matters to audiences hungry for shock value, these programs simultaneously gave voice and public exposure to people with marginalized identities and troubled histories. (Think survivors of abuse, LGBTQ+ folks, people with a variety of disabilities, and more.) In turn, via this specific means of exploitation, these shows primed audiences both to ridicule and also better understand (and perhaps even empathize with) those who did not conform to so-called acceptable social standards of the era.
Two steps forward, one step back is still progress at the end of the day.
Before the genre eventually devolved into pseudo-therapy at best (Dr. Phil) and dystopian sludge at worst (The Jerry Springer Show), there were a few issue-driven broadcasters in the 1980s, including radio personality Sally Jessy Raphael and investigative journalist Geraldo Rivera, who conceived of using a traditional talk show approach to explore societal problems rarely addressed in public. But decades prior to these early pioneers of the field was Phil Donahue, whose risk-taking spirit and intrepid belief in the intelligence of his audiences (mostly women), both at home in the studio, led to the invention this format altogether.
Donahue, who passed away August 18 at age 88, was the godfather of audience participation-based talk shows. The Phil Donahue Show, later known as Donahue, ran for 29 seasons from 1967 to 1996. He began his career in broadcasting in the 1950s, working his way from lowly production assistant-type roles at local radio and TV stations in Cleveland to eventual morning newscast anchor in Dayton, Ohio, in the 1960s. By the time Donahue debuted, the media personality had already interviewed key political figures of the era, including John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Jimmy Hoffa.
In an age when entertainment variety hours were the standard for this type of hosted program, Donahue flipped the script to focus on a singular guest or topic each episode, soliciting questions and in-the-moment feedback from his studio audience throughout the taping. Instead of remaining behind a desk protected by pre-written jokes and goofy sidekicks, Donahue roamed his soundstage with an eager microphone and a true-hearted intellectual curiosity about the subject at hand. This groundbreaking approach — providing both new information for viewers and regular people’s immediate thoughts on this information — predated Internet article comment sections by almost five decades.
With fiercely progressive values for the time period, Donahue courted both the high- and low-brow, focusing on human rights as much as he did lurid topics and often touching on things like abortion, prison life and the spectrum of sexuality. His first guest was Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a prominent and disliked public atheist. In 1982, he was the first talk show host to feature an AIDS patient (a full three years before President Ronald Reagan even acknowledged the illness’ existence).
Whereas most of Donahue’s successors, including Jenny Jones, Ricki Lake and Montel Williams, eventually leaned heavily into antic chaos (with Jones’ show even contributing to the horrific murder of one former guest by another), Donahue remained balanced in his pursuit of human truth. As a close friend of mine bluntly put it, “Donahue was just classier, more journalistic, than the others who came later.”
The Internet and social media have given rise to endless subcultures as users with hyper-specific interests are now easily able to find each other, develop their communities and meme themselves into wider existence. But at a time when Instagram, Reddit and TikTok hadn’t been invented yet, talk shows like Donahue’s opened up viewers’ worlds to hobbies and people they likely hadn’t encountered before but perhaps felt an innate kinship with.
As a microcosmic example, talk shows were formative for me because they’d occasionally feature goth teens as seemingly grotesque examples of how the 1990s had degenerated… except, oops, I thought they were pretty cool and now I’m an adult with seventeen piercings in my face.
As I rewatched a 1991 episode of Donahue on anti-trans violence, I was struck less by Donahue’s outdated terminology and understanding of gender-nonconforming practices than by his unashamed directness as an interviewer. Speaking with a person who shared they were beaten by actor Danny Bonaduce after a failed sex work transaction, Donahue does not demure from the discomfort of his own questions: “And you got in [to the car] because you knew he wants sex, so?” Donahue isn’t exactly warm and supportive in this moment, but he’s not judgmental either. He’s just stating facts. And his openness in the moment allows his guest, consequently, to be candid and unrehearsed about their experience.
Still, there’s a third party in this interaction — me, the witness, assessing the anecdote and feeling genuine sadness for someone discussing, in detail, the physical violation they suffered due to their vulnerable social status. Donahue was never above parading the scandalous minutiae of his guests’ lives to lure in viewers. But he was also bold in his efforts to normalize many of the cultural entities that viewers defined as “scandalous” in the first place.
