From Wikipedia we learn:
The Phil Donahue Show, also known as Donahue, is an American television talk show hosted by Phil Donahue that ran for 26 years on national television. Its run was preceded by three years of local broadcast in Dayton, Ohio, and it was broadcast nationwide between 1970 and 1996.I was fascinated by this first of three segments of the interview because I was curious how such an "all-American" boy could have attained so much success in mainstream media. Also, I could identify with him and his experience growing up in roughly the same time period as myself.
I was not at all surprised when his popular show was cancelled. Although I watched his program only very occasionally, I was always surprised by its content and guests, and that it was permitted to exist at all. It's clear that the directors of the Empire learned from this, and have tightened their control over media considerably since his firing. So, I think that this is evidence to support an argument that media up until this time had slightly more opportunities to present alternative views on controversial issues than they do today where they exclusively broadcast pure, well-designed propaganda in support of ruling class interests.