Mike Still Makes Your Day, Page 3

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Mike Makes Your Day III
Mike in the '70s *The Philly years were the vintage years for Mike, as the co-host roster listed Milton Berle, Jim Nabors, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Betty White, Liberace and John and Yoko Ono Lennon.

In 1966-67, a "Best of Mike Douglas" package of reruns were offered to stations for either prime time or weekend late-night.

Group W distributed both Mike's show and The Merv Griffin Show but prior to the '70s, rare was the market in which the two competed head-to-head. In the major markets, Merv aired on large independents from 8:30-10 p.m. while Mike was predominantly a 4:30-6 or 5-6 p.m. staple (though some stations continued to air him in the morning). Merv left daytime in 1968 for his rocky three-year late-night stint on CBS to battle Johnny Carson. Group W imported British talk show host David Frost to replace Merv and Mike was surprised with a This Is Your Life-style retrospective by Frost on his 10th anniversary in 1971.

By 1970, another fondly-remembered highlight for Mike's legions was the close of his Friday shows. In the days before electronic freeze-frames, Mike had a still photographer taking candid shots of the entire week's shows. In a somewhat unorthodox prelude to the music video, Mike would show a montage of the pix to an original song he would dedicate to his co-host for the week:

"I'd like to thank you so much, (NAME OF CO-HOST), for being my co-host....we've had a lot of fun, you're really the most. And I am looking forward (NAME OF CO-HOST) until the moment when....we'll have another chance.... TO DO IT AGAIN!"

In 1972, the face of afternoon television changed. Mike was the unquestioned king of daytime. But when Merv left CBS to return to daytime, he was no longer a Group W property. Metromedia, whose stations had successfully aired Merv in prime time in the '60s, distributed the revived Merv Griffin Show and while some stations (WJXT in Jacksonville, for example) added Merv for a back-to-back airing with Mike in the afternoon, others slotted the two against each other. Frost would be the odd player out, dropped by Group W later in the year. The Dayton, Ohio-based Phil Donahue had been embarking on a different style of daytime talk, issues-oriented and audience-driven. In 1972, Donahue's hour began its first serious national expansion. But Phil, who was doing well in Atlanta and Cleveland, would not turn the corner in the big cities until 1977.

In the early '70s, Mike would make his only foray into films. Burt Reynolds was filming Gator in and around Savannah, Ga. So, Mike took the entire production to Savannah (on ABC affiliate WJCL at the time) for a week with Burt as co-host while his scenes in the movie were filmed. Mike played a Southern governor and Savannah rolled out the red carpet for the show in one of the last vestiges of the Old South.

A popular promo campaign of the mid-1970s, "Mike Makes Your Day," caught on across the U.S. with its catchy jingle. That promotional blitz would be necessary more than ever. In 1974, after four years of anchoring mornings on NBC, Dinah Shore was canceled and the CBS owned-and-operated stations immediately picked her up for a 90-minute afternoon talkfest. The Mike-Merv-Dinah battleground would play out over the next seven years. Two years into the war, a battle would be played out on WCBS in New York. The network's flagship station would test Mike and Dinah for a two-week period from 4 to 5 p.m. as a lead-in to its afternoon news. The loser would have to find a new home in New York. Mike won.

A favorite December 1974 week with Mike was his spotlight on game shows with a different game show host co-hosting each day. Bob Eubanks brought on Barbara Mandrell, whom he was managing at the time. Art Fleming discussed his faith and his love for scuba diving. However, the highlight was on Friday when Dennis James, whose NBC daytime Name That Tune was canceled shortly after the taping, led Mike and his guests through a full game of Tune, including The Golden Medley.

In 1978, The Mike Douglas Show would make a move which would forever change its future and, perhaps, lead to its eventual demise. With Merv and Dinah based in Hollywood, Donahue beginning to make inroads in the mornings in Chicago and Jim Nabors entering the race with an entertaining, though short-lived, L.A.-based hour, top-level guests were becoming harder to come by in Philadelphia. A few markets were showing ever-so-small declines in demographics. So, Mike pulled up stakes in a move Philly audiences never forgave him for and moved the show to Burbank. Within three months, Mike had dropped to a distant third behind Merv and Dinah in Philadelphia.