On November 6, 1967, Donahue left WHIO, moving his talk program to television with The Phil Donahue Show on WLW-D (indicating the Dayton branch of Cincinnati's WLWT now known as WDTN), also in Dayton.
After a 29-year run-26 years in syndication-and nearly 7,000 one-hour daily shows, the final original episode of Donahue aired on September 13, 1996, culminating what as of 2015 remains the longest continuous run of any syndicated talk show in U.S. television history.