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Planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family. For additional

information visit dignity memorial.com. This is Fresh Air. I'm TV Critic

David Bean Cooley. Today we're starting off by remembering Phil Donahue, the pioneering TV talk show

host who died Sunday at age 88. We'll listen back to a conversation between him and Terry

Gross from 1985, and we will begin with this appreciation.

The Phil Donahue show began in 1967 as a local series in Dayton, Ohio.

It was syndicated nationally in 1969

and relocated to Chicago in 1974,

with the show's title shortened to just Donahue. That was because by then the talk show host

and his unusual format were equally familiar to and embraced by national TV

audiences. Ten years later another Chicago by National TV Audiences.

Ten years later, another Chicago talk show

began outperforming him in the ratings.

A show hosted by a young woman named Oprah Winfrey,

whose approach to television owed much to her Chicago predecessor.

Donahue moved his program to New York, where he continued his passionate brand of talk show

TV until 1996.

Before Phil Donahue, most talk shows were forums for celebrities to plug their latest projects.

Donahue did some of that too, and he wasn't above pandering for ratings.

In an effort to appeal to his largely female daytime audience, he did several shows featuring

...