The Mike Douglas Show

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The Mike Douglas Show was a popular and long-running American daytime television talk show starring singer Mike Douglas.

The program featured light banter with guests and musical performances. Each week would have a different co-host who would appear every day with Douglas. A former big band singer, Douglas moved to television in the 1950s. The Mike Douglas Show started in 1961 in Cleveland as a local show on Westinghouse's WKYC-TV, it proved popular and, in 1963, was syndicated to five stations. By 1967 the show was available in 171 markets and seen by an audience of six million viewers a day. The program was broadcast live until 1965 when off-color on air remarks by Zsa Zsa Gabor (she called Morey Amsterdam a "son of a bitch") prompted producers to decide to tape the show ahead of broadcast from then on.

The show moved from Cleveland to Philadelphia where it remained from 1965 until 1978, when it moved to Los Angeles until the end of its run in 1981. During the time it was on the air, it remained strong in ratings, consistently finishing off in the prestigous top three-rated daytime television shows nearly every season. Douglas took the success lightly. In fact, he made a surprise visit to the set of Match Game in 1976, a competing show which managed to score higher ratings than Douglas' program during the mid-1970s, in order to congratulate host Gene Rayburn on making the game show the #1 daytime TV show.

Among the musical performers featured on the show were KISS, Jefferson Airplane, Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits and The Turtles. Notable among guest hosts were John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Anne Baxter, and Billy Crystal.

The show also featured the first television appearance of Tiger Woods who showed off his swing for Bob Hope at the age of 2. Others who appeared on the show include Malcolm X, Jerry Rubin, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Totie Fields, John Travolta, Louis Armstrong, Joan Crawford, Angela Davis, Muhammad Ali and Frank Sinatra.

Douglas earned five Emmys for the show. His book, I'll be Right Back — Memories of TV's Greatest Talk Show was published in 2000.

Full list of guests

External links

[The Mike Douglas Show] TV Tome entry

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