History in Philadelphia
When the program moved to Philadelphia in August 1965, the show was broadcast from a small 140-seat basement studio located in the KYW-TV building at 1619 Walnut Street (see photos on right). It continued to be aired live until later that year when Zsa Zsa Gabor called Morey Amsterdam a "son of a bitch" for interrupting her joke. After that, the program aired on a one-day tape delay basis, allowing for the editing out of any objectionable material. Live broadcasts (with a seven-second delay) were attempted only on a few special occasions thereafter, such as when the Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup.
In July 1972, the show moved to a new studio in the newly constructed KYW-TV studios at 5th and Market Streets in Philadelphia. That studio ("Studio A") was the first and only studio especially constructed for the program. While the overall new studio was larger, it accommodated only 120 seats. Ellie Frankel continued as musical director until 1967, when Joe Harnell, an accomplished musician, composer, and band leader took over the position until 1973. Harnell was followed by Frank Hunter, and the show ended with Joe Massimino in that role.
During much of its time on the air, the show remained strong in ratings, consistently finishing among the most popular daytime television shows nearly every season. Douglas took the success lightly. He made a surprise visit in 1976 to the set of Match Game, 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.
The show's run spanned 21 years and more than 6,000 episodes. In 1978, production of the show moved to Los Angeles, where it remained until the end of the show's run in 1982.
In the fall of 1980, Westinghouse dropped Douglas in favor of John Davidson, although his show continued, with Syndicast taking over the program's distribution. However, in an effort to boost falling ratings during the show's final season, a third of the staff was fired and the program was revamped with a traveling roadshow format, retitled The Mike Douglas Entertainment Hour. The format change did not help, and Douglas' show was cancelled at the end of the 1981-82 season.
Read more about this topic: The Mike Douglas Show
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—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“It used to be said that, socially speaking, Philadelphia asked who a person is, New York how much is he worth, and Boston what does he know. Nationally it has now become generally recognized that Boston Society has long cared even more than Philadelphia about the first point and has refined the asking of who a person is to the point of demanding to know who he was. Philadelphia asks about a man’s parents; Boston wants to know about his grandparents.”
—Cleveland Amory (b. 1917)