Phil McGraw announced Tuesday that he is wrapping up the 21-year run of daytime television show “Dr. Phil” in the spring.
The talk and advice show will stop airing after the end of the current season, according to CBS Media Ventures, the creator of Paramount Global Group’s CBS affiliate.
CBS Media Ventures said in a statement that McGraw, 72, plans to announce a “prime-time partnership” that will begin in 2024.
In the statement, McGraw said, “This has been an amazing chapter in my life and career, but as I move on from the day, there is so much I hope to do.”
The transition keeps it in the CBS family.
“While his show may end after 21 years, I’m happy to say our relationship is not,” Steve Locaccio, president of CBS Media Ventures, said in the statement.
The company plans to continue offering reruns, which may include new introductions, for the season after its last broadcast.
“We plan to be in the ‘Dr. Phil’ business with the library for years to come and welcome opportunities to work together in the future,” said Lucascio.
It was McGraw Once a licensed psychologist in Texas before moving to California to launch “Dr. Phil”.
He began his entertainment career as a life coach in America on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the 1990s.
Before his television debut, McGraw met Winfrey in 1996 when she hired him to help and advise her on a defamation case with the beef industry. According to Oprah’s website, “It was there that I learned about his straightforward approach to life coaching.”
In 2004, two years after Winfrey Productions launched the show, McGraw came under fire for appearing to provide assistance to Americans while providing the disclaimer that the show was for entertainment purposes, not professional counseling or therapy.
At the time, it included a Disclaimer That the material mentioned in the program “was not necessarily created or approved by a certified mental health professional.”
Sociologist Julie Albright, a family therapist at the University of Southern California, says: he said in 2008It is difficult to do a treatment or intervention in half an hour or an hour.
Despite the criticism of the advice shows, McGraw’s advice helped create an industry that later welcomed another TV doctor, Mehmet Oz, to the airwaves.
The question of whether the show was for entertainment or folk therapy made headlines in 2008 when McGraw went to Britney Spears’ room in a Los Angeles hospitalShe was assessed after she got into a confrontation with the authorities after a dispute over custody of her two young children.
At that time, Spears was also subjected to alarming behavior, including shaving her head and attacking a car with an umbrella.
In response to criticism that he was trying to insert himself into the story for entertainment value, McGraw canceled a planned show about pop star status. He said in a The statement was issued At the time the show was set to revolve around Spears’ pre-hospital situation and that he went to the hospital at her parents’ request.
While “Dr. Phil” sought to shy away from the idea that it would ever offer medical advice or psychological treatment, McGraw on Tuesday embraced the idea that his legacy includes helping casual viewers recover and thrive.
“With this show, we’ve helped thousands of guests and millions of viewers through everything from addiction and marriage to mental health and parenting,” he said in a CBS Media Ventures statement.
Josh Craddock Contributed.