When Phil Donahue called a halt to his show the other week after nearly 29 years, he was almost universally lauded as the elder statesman of television talk. The man who pioneered the confessional talk-show almost three decades ago — where guests willingly exhibited every imaginable emotion and behavior, except a sense of shame, and the only sin was being judgmental — could not keep up with the indignities his younger competitors had imposed on the form. Donahue had, according to the Associated Press, “struggled” to take the “high road” even as other talk shows grew increasingly sleazy. Thus did a man who once did a show in drag find himself strangely recast as a force for good, a wholesome influence on a corrupt medium.
The idea is, in truth, absurd. Donahue is the program that inaugurated television’s daytime parade of the tawdry, freakish, and bizarre. The idea that television viewers found his recent shows about “open season on husbands” private parts” and “a couple looking for a third mate” too bland and therefore defected to racier programs like Ricki Lake or Charles Perez is comical. What happened, in brief, is that he lost his New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles outlets at the very same time that the confessional talk-show form began to die. A massive shakeout in the daytime talk-show game may mean that by the end of 1996, only Oprah Winfrey, Ricki Lake, Montel Williams, and Jenny Jones will be left. This may seem like an inordinate number of programs, but in the past few years there have been almost two dozen others: Gabrielle, Charles, Mark, Carnie, Bertice, Leeza, Rolonda, Les, Dennis, Tempestt, Maury, Lauren, Jane, Jane (yes, two Janes), and other first names too tiresome to recall.
