Talk show host Phil Donahue, who championed various leftist perspectives on his eponymous TV show and changed the industry by interacting with his studio audience, has died at the age of 88.
Donahue’s second wife, former actress Marlo Thomas, to whom he was married for 44 years, was with him and Donahue’s children and grandchildren when he died at his home on Sunday night.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Donahue graduated from Notre Dame before starting his broadcasting career, first at KYW-AM TV, then WABJ in Michigan as program/news director, then at WHIO-AM-TV in Dayton as a reporter. In the late 1960s, he hosted a morning interview program on WLWD TV in Dayton, where his first guest was famed atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
“Soon Donahue was tackling controversial subjects like premarital sex and homosexuality as well as other social, political and lifestyle issues,” Variety…
