Phil McGraw, the host of the popular talk show Dr. Phil on CBS, has just announced that the show will end after 21 seasons and over two decades on the air. McGraw, a former clinical psychologist, began hosting the show with its premiere in 2002 but has now announced that he will no longer be producing Dr. Phil and has plans for a “strategic primetime partnership.”
Dr. Phil first premiered on daytime television on September 16th, 2002. The show features Phil McGraw, 72, a former clinical psychologist, that invites guests onstage to discuss matters like weight loss, addiction, grief, financial planning, family therapy, marriage counseling, and rebellious teenagers, among a myriad of other issues, including mental health. According to Variety, McGraw, honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2020, first made his television appearance as a regular guest on Oprah with Oprah Winfrey in the late 90s. Dr. Phil became its own show in the early 2000s, and the official description for the show applauds Phil McGraw for featuring “real, compelling stories stripping away the stigma too often associated with mental illness and the quest for help.”
Talking to Deadline about his decision to end Dr. Phil, Phil McGraw shared the following:
“I have been blessed with over 25 wonderful years in daytime television. With this show, we have helped thousands of guests and millions of viewers through everything from addiction and marriage to mental wellness and raising children. This has been an incredible chapter of my life and career, but while I’m moving on from daytime, there is so much more I wish to do.”
Dr. Phil Hints at Mysterious New TV Project in 2024
McGraw’s decision to end Dr. Phil comes with the end of the show’s latest five-year contract with CBS, which was signed in 2018. The end of Dr. Phil also comes at a somewhat inconvenient time for daytime TV networks, as The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Wendy Williams Show, Maury, and Dr. Oz have also all ended in the last year. Whether or not this is because of coincidence or a downturn in talk show popularity is unclear, but the network executives probably aren’t happy either way.
Dr. Phil is easily one of the most popular talk show on TV today, pulling in around two million viewers per episode according to the Daily Mail, and what CBS plans to do to fill this void is currently unclear. Still, Dr. Phil himself is reportedly stirring up plans for something new to “increase his impact on television and viewers.” McGraw has entered what he’s calling a “strategic primetime partnership” for a new TV project that he’ll take on after the close of Dr. Phil, but besides an expected 2024 release, per Variety, there isn’t much more to be known about his mysterious new project.
What do you think of the decision to end Dr. Phil? Are you excited to see what he does next? Let us know in the comments!