A Dialogue with Donahue

By Bruce Kluger, Time Out New York. Posted January 6, 2006.

Phil Donahue got bounced off the air for his anti-war opinions, and he's not ready to make peace just yet.

It's never easy to be in the middle of a war, but in early 2003, Phil Donahue found himself embroiled in two. Seven months earlier, Donahue had been lured back to television after a six-year hiatus to host an issues-and-answers program for perennial ratings underdog MSNBC. His new bosses were hoping the white-maned veteran of talk TV would give the struggling network the jolt it needed in the battle for cable-news supremacy.

On the other side of the world, however, a real war was gearing up -- in Iraq -- and it was Donahue's unabashed, on-air opposition to that conflagration that spelled the program's ultimate demise. "[He presents a] difficult public face for NBC in a time of war," read a leaked NBC memo, "…at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag."