Phil Donahue gave America’s housewives a platform to shock the nation with their most intimate secrets. The resulting confessions not only shattered the “motherhood and apple pie” vision of Midwestern suburban respectability, but created a format for a daytime audience debate show that would later inspire Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer, not to mention Robert Kilroy-Silk and Trisha Goddard on British television.
Little was expected when Donahue launched a talk show on a local TV network in Dayton, Ohio, in 1967. Yet when a variety show in a neighbouring studio in front of a live audience was cancelled, he had an idea. What if he invited them in to watch his interview with the “celebrity atheist” Madalyn Murray O’Hair and then gave the audience the