Remembering Phil Donahue: See photos from talk show legend’s shows in Sacramento

Groundbreaking daytime TV talk show host Phil Donahue, who died Sunday at age 88, hosted a week of outdoor TV shows on Sacramento’s K Street Mall in the 1970s.

Donahue’s show achieved national syndication in 1974, when it was moved to Chicago. In 1977, he brought his popular discussion style to Sacramento for a week of live programming. Donahue was known for charging into his audience with a microphone attached to “the longest mike cord in show business” according to The Sacramento Bee.

A temporary 1,000-seat area was set up in May at the end of K Street Mall near the convention center. His first guest of the week was pop songwriter-singer Paul Anka.

On the second day, he interviewed then-Gov. Jerry Brown, followed by National Organization for Women President Ellie Smeal, singer Wayne Newton (broadcast from University of Pacific in Stockton) and comedian Sam Levenson.

The shows were broadcast live on Channel 3, but delayed in other markets.

Some of the questions he posed to Brown, and the governor’s answers, as written by The Bee in 1977:

▪ The host began with a provocative query about why Brown went to Tokyo to pursue auto industry moguls instead of to Detroit.

“If I was a Detroiter, I’d be very unhappy with you,” Donahue chided Brown.

The governor drew applause when he replied that since California is such a good market for Japanese vehicles, tax-paying Californians ought to have the jobs to assemble them.

▪ Death Penalty. By a 3 -or 4-to-1 margin the audience of about 1,500 favored death penalty legislation which Brown opposes.

“It seems random, it seems arbitrary, it seems irrational,” Brown declared in reference to capital punishment.

▪ Personal energy saving. “I have a very low utility bill; I have not cooked anything since I moved in,” said the governor in discussing his N Street apartment

▪ Dating. “Do you date (country singer) Linda Ronstadt?” asked Donahue.

“Why do you ask?” dodged Brown. “I think I should be able to date who I want without explaining on a television show.”

Donahue changed daytime talk from celebrities yakking with sycophantic hosts to programming for “housewives who think,” as he described it.

In the 1970s and ’80s, he discussed feminism and the need for men to not be intimated by strong women — a precursor of today’s culture wars over so-called trad wives and toxic masculinity. The show took on controversial topics by allowing call-in viewers and audience members to ask their own questions.

“How’d you get to be so liberal?” he once asked a female audience member. “I watch your show!” she replied.

The show, and Donahue, were uniquely Midwestern.

He spent 17 years doing the show in Dayton, Ohio, then in Chicago, before moving to New York.

He won nine Daytime Emmy Awards, six of them consecutively, for outstanding host of a talk or service series. Donahue also won a Daytime Emmy for Lifetime Achievement in 1996.

“The talk show is a unique opportunity to share some information,” he said in 1987. “We don’t tell the whole story, but we make a contribution toward the understanding of the issues. And in the age of diminishing newspapers and celebrity journalism, it’s possible the talk show fills the void …. It’s not a substitute, but it helps close the breach.”

The cultural shift toward tabloid television and sensational topics cut into Donahue’s ratings — despite the show’s penchant for racy topics such as swingers, male strippers and anatomically correct children’s dolls.

He met his second wife, actress Marlo Thomas, when she was a guest on his show in 1977. The pair married in 1980.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer contributed to this story.