Too Smart For TV Donahue Invented Intelligent Talk On Daytime Television, But Lost Out To Dumbed-Down Competition

Say this about Phil Donahue: He had a good run. No, make that a great run.

This will be the final season of “Donahue,” it was announced last week, but remember that in television, the 29 years the show aired is an eternity. He began talking to daytime TV viewers a year before the debut of “60 Minutes,” a decade before the creation of “Dallas,” long before Oprah was Oprah.

“If there had never been a Phil, there never would have been a me,” Oprah Winfrey once said, correctly, and the same goes for Sally and Rikki and Montel. Phil Donahue, as much as anyone, was responsible for the explosion of daytime talk television. And while that’s obviously a mixed legacy, he can’t be blamed for the imitators and excesses and, yes, even the freak shows that his program has spawned.

Indeed, the great irony of Phil Donahue’s career is that he invented intelligent talk on daytime television and then suffered when others came along and dumbed down the medium. He proved too smart, too serious, too dull and finally, too old to compete with “Hookers Who Married Their Johns.”

Not that he didn’t try. Donahue’s story is a story of good intentions gone awry, a mirror held up to our times. His program grew out of the idealism and political tumult of the 1960s, particularly the feminist movement, and then grew more personal as Americans turned inward. In recent years, Donahue fell victim - in every way - to the tabloidization of our culture. He went tabloid, but not tabloid enough to survive.

It was 1967 when Phil Donahue invented issue-oriented daytime talk. A former radio and TV newsman, he thought the millions of women who stayed home during the day deserved more than game shows, soap operas and celebrity chatter hosted by the likes of Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore.

From Dayton, Ohio, his home base for seven years, he brought on guests who debated feminism and civil rights and Vietnam. Necessity, as well as his own instincts, forced him to do issues: He couldn’t get Hollywood stars to come to Dayton.

Pacifists and Vietnam veterans came on the show. Feminist Susan Brownmiller debated confessed rapist Eldridge Cleaver. Consumer activist Ralph Nader squared off against Edward Cole, the retired president of General Motors.

“Donahue” did shows on fashions and cooking, and hosted celebrities like Paul Lynde, an early favorite. But what set the program apart was its topicality - as well as the host’s energy and intelligence. Every American president from Nixon to Clinton has appeared on the show, which the writer David Halberstam once described as “the most important graduate school in America.”

“Donahue” thrived, expanded across the country and moved to Chicago. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the program became TV’s lifestyle section, the place to find out what was happening with marriage, divorce, sexuality, child-rearing, birth and death and, especially, the changing role of women. Donahue carved out a niche as a sensitive male, one who treated women respectfully and seriously.

Then came Oprah. Not just Oprah, but, by the late 1980s, Geraldo and Sally and Maury. And the competition became intense. So intense that, all of a sudden, it didn’t make sense to bring a member of Congress on the show when “Spouses Caught in the Act” was airing on another channel.

Daytime television became a game of “Can you top this?” or often, “How low can you go?” Donahue was a half-hearted player - yes, he once donned a skirt during a show about transvestites - but he desperately wanted to be taken seriously.

His was an all-but-impossible balancing act to sustain. He still did shows on current events ranging from the Gulf War to the Oklahoma City bombing to presidential politics, but he also did “Buns and Bellies” and “Father and Son Womanizers” and “How to Trap a Man.” Viewers were understandably confused.

Even during the course of a single program, he could be torn. During the 1992 presidential campaign, just before the pivotal New York primary, Bill Clinton came on the show, much to Donahue’s delight. It was a chance for him to get serious, but instead he kept asking about Gennifer Flowers, so much so that Clinton won applause from the crowd by insisting that they talk about issues that matter.

In the last few years, Donahue has been a minor player in daytime. He couldn’t compete with Jenny Jones or Jerry Springer, who abandoned all pretense of good taste. And, to his credit, he didn’t try. Nor could he win the affection of the young women who preferred Rikki Lake or Oprah - he was old enough to be their father, after all. The “Donahue” audience was growing as gray as the host.

Two weeks ago, there was no suspense as Donahue reportedly prepared to decide whether there would be a 30th season of “Donahue.” In truth, the decision had been made for him. The show was no longer seen in New York and was about to be dropped in Los Angeles. The game was over.

Phil Donahue played it hard and he played it well, most of the time. He’s been a good guy in a tough business for a long time, and for that he’s earned our respect.