Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Donahue reaches silver anniversary Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 14:51:51 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \SS (WS) \HD Donahue reaches silver anniversary \SH Says poor shows reflect the culture \BY Molly Woulfe \CR COPLEY NEWS SERVICE \DT CHICAGO CHICAGO - Phil Donahue admits he'd rather grapple with politicos than female wrestlers, but ratings sweeps have him in a headlock. "I'm a political junkie. I'm jealous of Ted Koppel," the silver-haired father-confessor to the nation laments. "That's why it's so encouraging to see the big presidential process come down from the mountains to us, the talk show hosts. Hurray! "I can't tell you how happy I was to see Bill Clinton playing his saxophone on 'Arsenio.' " The '92 season is bittersweet for the patriarch of the talk-show genre, host of TV's first - and oldest - audience-participation chat show. On the sweet side, "Donahue" is still going strong after 6,000 episodes and syndicated to 221 U.S. markets and 10 foreign countries. For 10 million viewers, the sight of their hero urging callers to "Help me out with this one" is as reassuring as a pair of old slippers. The show's longevity also is cause for celebration. The boyish broadcaster, 56, will observe a quarter-century on TV with a two-hour retrospective Sunday. "Donahue: The 25th Anniversary" features film clips from show archives plus appearances by top-rated rivals Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Walters, Larry King and more than a dozen other of "my illegitimate children." The NBC special begins at 9 p.m. Star-studded milestones aside, however, many fans and critics have gone sour on Mr. Donahue, deploring a trend toward silly and sleazy topics. "What's happened to Phil Donahue?" Redbook demanded last year, noting that guests included a transsexual biker, a man married 21 times, husband-swapping sisters, homosexual teen-agers, sex addicts and a transsexual lesbian during one sweeps. "It's harder now. You have to tap dance faster," snorts Mr. Donahue, a 19-time Emmy winner, in a call from his office at New York City's Rockefeller Plaza. "Everybody with a hammer and nails is building a talk-show set." Critics, he adds testily, can pin the blame on public taste, TV stations, and the '90s to boot. "We're making our living in a very depressed economic time, when our culture is in decay, when people care more about Madonna than Managua, when our kids are graduating from college and don't know what eight times seven is, when fewer and fewer people read. When other stations are featuring a soap opera, . . . I can't televise the Wall Street Journal." Longtime staffers and friends are quick to back Mr. Donahue. "He loves the news. He was a newsman before he started," senior producer Lorri Antosz Benson says. "He's also a businessman. He knows the bottom line is we have to please our stations. If it means doing certain shows, you do them." Mr. Donahue is no stranger tocontroversy: His first show debuted with a bang on Nov. 6, 1967, in Dayton, Ohio, when Madalyn Murray O'Hair announced God didn't exist. More stations picked up the show, and Mr. Donahue shifted his headquarters to Chicago by 1977. He relocated his staff to New York in 1985, five years after his marriage to actress Marlo Thomas. To his credit, Mr. Donahue says, he tries to host a balanced selection of shows - and 1992 saw more political guests, including Bill Clinton, than any previous year. Every program has merit, he adds, from his infamous 1988 show on cross-dressing, when he donned a flowered skirt, to the one about lesbian nuns. " Lesbian nuns was a fabulous show. We had middle-aged women who joined the convent when they were 16 and discovered when they were 38 who they were sexually. What should they do? "It's certainly been an odyssey," he sums up. "I would wish it on anybody." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM