Former talk show host Mike Douglas passed away early this morning in Palm Beach, Florida. Today was his 81st birthday.

In the years before I started school, it was a rare weekday that I didn't sit down to watch "The Mike Douglas Show." I was too young to stay up and watch Johnny Carson, and shows like "Solid Gold" and "Friday Night Videos" were still a few years away, so my introduction to popular culture came largely by way of Douglas and his daily guests.

From his Associated Press obituary...

Douglas' afternoon show aired from 1961 to 1982. It featured his ballad and big-band singing style, other musicians, comedians, sports figures and political personalities, including seven former, sitting or future presidents.

"People still believe `The Mike Douglas Show' was a talk show, and I never correct them, but I don't think so," Douglas said in his 1999 memoir, "I'll Be Right Back: Memories of TV's Greatest Talk Show."

"It was really a music show, with a whole lot of talk and laughter in between numbers."

Douglas did about 6,000 shows, most 90 minutes long, and estimated that at its peak the syndicated show was seen in about 230 cities.

Tom Kelly, who co-authored Douglas' memoir, said he had about 30,000 guests appear on his show over the years.

"One big key to his great success was he had his ego in check," Kelly said. "He always let the guest have the limelight. He was a fine performer. He could sing, he could do comedy, he did it all, but he always gave the guest the spotlight."

Douglas was among the "early settlers" in daytime talk shows, said Robert Thompson, a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

"Mike Douglas was an old-fashioned traditionalist, holding down the fort while the culture was changing," Thompson said. "He was always the very friendly talk show host, nice to everybody. He would lean toward his guest as if he really cared. He owned that territory."

This. Is. Awesome.

Star Jones Reynolds has been told to hitch up her hefty wagonload of freebies and waddle off into the sunset, sources say.

ABC will announce this week that the big-boned talking head is out at "The View," a source close to the inner workings of the late-morning gabfest tells Page Six. What network brass won't say is that she's being unceremoniously ousted at the direct behest of the show's grand dame Barbara Walters and the incoming Rosie O'Donnell.

"It was always Rosie's condition of joining the show, and Barbara agreed to those conditions from the outset," our source said. The network and Jones are now concocting a face-saving scenario in which Jones will be touted as moving on to pursue important new projects.

Apart from the the whole Tom Selleck yelling match, I've always liked Rosie. This just seals it for me. Now if only the publication reporting this story was more reputable...

[New York Post: Page Six] Jones getting 'View' vamoose

Something about Oprah Winfrey has always rubbed me the wrong way. Mostly it's the manipulative manner in which she serves as America's official self-appointed self-help guru despite having no credentials with which to qualify her for the post. (Prior to getting her own talk show she'd been a local news anchor and had acted in one movie.) Her reaction after being refused entry to a closed Hermes boutique in Paris last year is but one example of the abusive manner with which she wields her power. And that power has become so massive that even the once unflappable David Letterman was reduced to meek ass-kissing when Winfrey finally agreed to appear on his show last fall.

But in the aftermath of her cruel, self-serving public humiliation of discredited memoirist James Frey, more people are beginning to openly question Winfrey's role in American culture. One example of this is a lengthy story from yesterday's Boston Phoenix by writer Mark Jurkowitz:

The 52-year-old Oprah, who Forbes estimates has a net worth of $1.4 billion, has amassed almost unfathomable power and influence through a feel-good empire of confession, redemption, and self-help magnified through the multimedia megaphone that includes everything from her talk show and magazine to her film company. By touting anything, from books to bras, she can inspire mega-mass consumption and move markets.

One of her few public doubters, author and cultural critic Chris Lehmann, recalls the 2004 show when Oprah bought 276 Pontiacs for her studio audience (without telling them that they would owe up to $7000 in taxes). "At that moment," he says, "she could have given them an AK47 and told them to kill anyone." He attributes her incredible success to the idea that "she's cleared out this kind of therapist-priest space in the culture" and combined it with "a cult of personality."

And that's what's ultimately so scary about Oprah. She puts the "cult" in pop culture.

Jurkowitz also notes that Winfrey's double standards are sometimes glaring:

After winning a legal battle against Texas cattlemen who sued her after a 1996 show in which she observed that mad-cow disease deterred her from eating another burger, Oprah, according to news reports, rejoiced that "Free speech not only lives, it rocks." (In another example of her commercial power, Oprah's hamburger denunciation helped depress cattle prices.) But Oprah was on the other side of the free-speech issue when she waged a successful legal battle against a former employee who was trying to overturn a confidentiality agreement that bars her employees from writing about Oprah's business or personal affairs for the rest of their lives.

Even celebrities have begun offering critiques of Winfrey's behavior. In his February 10th column in Entertainment Weekly, novelist Stephen King offered the following observation about the Frey fracas:

Did Oprah come out of her bout with Frey unmarked? Each viewer will judge for himself, but I was made uncomfortable by how many times I heard her say he "embarrassed" her. In the book world, Ms. Winfrey is a person of great power. The unstated warning of her cool and methodical dismantling of James Frey seems to have been Embarrass the Book Queen and the Book Queen will get you back double, in front of millions... and your editor, too.

Surely there are more important lessons to be learned here.

What has begun to trouble me most about Winfrey is the recent franchising of her brand name. First, she gave Dr. Phil McGraw his own TV show in 2002, and now she's preparing one hosted by Food Network star Rachael Ray. Notably, the one thing Winfrey shares with her two proteges is a lack of any discernible expertise. While Dr. Phil does (remarkably) have a Ph.D. in psychology, he seems to spend a lot of time (and book chapters) telling people how to lose weight. Not only is he not a medical doctor or a dietitian, he's overweight himself. As for Ray, the so-called celebrity "chef" has never been to culinary school.

Fittingly, James Frey's own "expert" status was attained only after Winfrey promoted him as such on her show last year. In the end, one has to wonder: was she upset that he lied, or just that he got caught? After all, if one fraud can be exposed, so can the rest.

[thePhoenix.com] Attack of the 50-foot Oprah (via TV Squad)
[EW.com] The Pop of King: Frey's Lies

Dave Chappelle's heavily hyped interview from last Friday's "Oprah Winfrey Show" is now available online over at You Tube.

If you're hoping for straight answers about why he left his Comedy Central series or whether he intends to return, prepare to be disappointed. He talked about pressure from the show's producers and network executives, but didn't give many specifics. He also badmouthed some friends over the way they reacted to his abrupt departure from the show. Their typical reaction? Asking him to talk with a psychiatrist.

When asked about the show's future, Chappelle claimed that more of the show's proceeds would have to go to charity before he'd consider returning -- a demand you'd think Comedy Central executives would meet in a heartbeat if it meant getting back their cash cow.

[You Tube] Dave Chappelle On Oprah Winfrey Show - 2.3.06 (via TV Squad)

Former sketch comedy host Dave Chappelle is scheduled to appear on this Friday's episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Here's the capsule from Oprah's website:

He was the hottest comedian in the country. Then he mysteriously disappeared. Why did Dave Chappelle walk away from $50 million? He addresses the widely reported rumors in his first television interview. And the big question...will he go back to his show?

I'm betting the answer to that last question is "no."

(via TV Squad)