Talk show host Phil Donahue dies at 88

Television host Phil Donahue died this Sunday at the age of 88. Known as "the king of daytime talk," Donahue died at his New York home after suffering a long illness and surrounded by his family and ex-wife, actress Marlo Thomas, according to those close to him.

The news was announced by the NBC program "Today." This network was the first to give Phil Donahue a spot on the air. It was in 1967, when he began to host a talk-show called "The Phil Donahue Show" which premiered on Nov. 6 of that year in Dayton, Ohio.

In 1974, the show moved to Chicago. In 1985, the program again changed locations to New York, the city where the last episode of "The Phil Donahue Show" aired in September 1996.

With a total of 6,000 episodes, the show allowed Phil Donahue to interview personalities such as Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Sammy Davis Jr., Sir Elton John, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Dolly Parton and Michael J. Fox, among many others.

In addition, the program included pioneering elements and sections still used on talk shows today, such as audience participation in debates.

With the death of a pioneer of daytime television, many other TV personalities took to social media to bid farewell to the Cleveland-born talk show host. One of them was Oprah Winfrey, who assured that her show would not exist "without Phil Donahue being the first to prove that daytime talk and women watching should be taken seriously."

President Joe Biden also posted a message remembering Phil Donahue. The Democrat recalled that the host had been awarded last May with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

It is not the only award he achieved during his extensive career. The BBC recalls that Donahue won a total of 20 Emmy Awards, 10 of them for Best Host and the other 10 for Best Talk Show.