Phil’s Back

July 26, 2002

by Robert Yoho

Just when you thought it was safe to turn on your television, Phil Donahue returns to the airwaves.

Phil Donahue’s second coming to your television dial was greeted with one of the largest media blitzes that America has ever seen. Unfortunately, the regal ratings that MSNBC expected have thus far failed to materialize.

Due to thousands of curiosity seekers, the premiere of Donahue’s show was a ratings bonanza. Since then, the numbers have been predictably dismal.

In short, Donahue’s new show is failing for the very same reason that he left television in the first place. Donahue became a victim of his own excess. By wearing a dress and other bizarre behavior on his show, Donahue created a medium where the outrageous and repulsive have become commonplace.

The skirt wearing Donahue became the mother of Trash TV, and thereby gave birth to all of his successors: Sally Jessy Raphael, Rikki Lake, Geraldo Rivera, Jenny Jones, and the ever-consistent but utterly despicable Jerry Springer

Now the producers are taking the show to Houston, where Donahue will conduct a town-hall meeting. This is not only a change in format; this is a desperate attempt to find something that will work. The executives at MSNBC are trying to bail water on the Titanic. Donahue’s show will flounder without sensationalism. No one will watch it unless they bring on guests who are cross-dressing members of the Ku Klux Klan who have been abducted by aliens.

Donahue is completely outside his element when he cannot run around the studio and place a microphone in front of audience members. One-on-one with a guest, he cannot make it. The reason is simple: he has very little to say that the public wants to hear. He holds no opinions that are in the mainstream of public thought.

For proof of this, you must remember that this is a guy who proudly supported the presidential candidacy of Ralph Nader, a man who makes Ross Perot look intellectually stable. Like a dinosaur, mired in the tar pits of Cold War-era socialism, Donahue’s political beliefs have condemned him to extinction.

Instead of giving their viewers a new face, the producers are trying to save face. Phil Donahue was the MSNBC version of a last second, Hail Mary pass. The producers are struggling to find a format that can save this turkey. Only in his first week, Donahue’s ratings are comparable to those received by Alan Keyes’ “Making Sense” when MSNBC consigned it to daytime purgatory.

"We are not looking at this day to day. We are behind this show for the long term," said someone associated with the show. "We have to let Phil be Phil."

Let me give you one of Robert’s Rules of Order: In politics or in television, whenever someone says he is “behind” you, then you had better remember to watch your back. That person is thinking about pushing you overboard.

The producers are going to pump up the ratings by putting Phil out among the audience and making Ralph Nader a guest on the show. Ralph Nader? Now that will be a ratings coup! The only people who voted for Nader were Phil Donahue and about 200 other misguided people. And half of those were in Palm Beach County and had no idea what they were doing.

The simple truth is that letting “Phil be Phil” is the problem with Donahue’s show.

Donahue’s version of the “sensitive male” might have been in vogue on September 10th. However, it all went out the window when brave men went running into burning buildings to save the lives of others and trying to overpower plane hijackers. Phil’s non-judgmental tactics somehow ring hollow when terrorists have dedicated themselves to destroying your fellow countrymen and our way of life.

MSNBC is losing to Fox News because they continue returning to the failed playbook. Whatever failed on another network is bound to work here.

Like Bryant Gumbel and Connie Chung before him, Phil Donahue continues to prove that old liberals never die. They are just recycled.