Getting Along and Taking Calls at the Same Time

Phil Donahue and Vladimir Pozner have cinched their joint identity as the global Rover Boys of TV talk.

After several years appearing together on various occasions and in various formats, they now kick it around on “Pozner-Donahue” twice a week on the CNBC cable network.

During each half-hour, the pair discuss current events with each other, and with viewers who phone in.

“I’m glad ya called,” Donahue says cordially.

Nothing fancy.

But maybe this was the perfect time to launch a no-frills quest for the plain truth. On TV, plain talk is definitely in.

What else can you conclude when a jug-eared billionaire can draw viewers for an economics lecture, and when a fat man at a desk wows his audience by railing about “feminazis,” “commie libs” and “environmentalist wackos” in his nightly one-man show?

Which brings us to CNBC, by turns a testing ground, a last refuge for scoundrels and, with Donahue, a dandy place to launch a sideline to his “Donahue” day job.

But why bother?

“I’m still, as you can see, a very young and vibrant man,” Donahue said with silver tongue in cheek as he sat with Pozner for an interview. “I have a lot of energy and I enjoy this. Why wouldn’t I want the chance to speak to really important issues, and to listen to what the callers have to say about those issues?”

And what of Pozner, hardly a household name in this country but who, for the sake of euphony, landed top billing?

“The American audience will be getting a viewpoint from someone who is not an American per se,” he explained--”a viewpoint that might interest them a little bit more in what’s going on elsewhere in the world.”

The audience also gets a harsh realist counterpointing Donahue’s sometimes warm-and-fuzzy idealism.

“Are you really surprised that politicians sidestep questions?” Pozner asked Donahue on a program last week. “I will tell you the same thing about Russian politicians. It’s part of politicians’ makeup.”

Donahue: “Cynical, cynical.”

It was over the airwaves that Phil and Vlad first came together in 1985, co-hosting a televised U.S.-Soviet “Citizens Summit” seen in both their homelands.

“I met this unusually skilled English speaker on the satellite presiding in Leningrad, as I was in Seattle,” Donahue recalls.

“We started out on different sides of the wall,” says Pozner. “We were basically enemies. We may not have felt that way, but we were.”

Much has changed in the world since then, and between two men whom Donahue now describes as “pals.”

“In Russia, the word ‘friend’ has a very special meaning,” says Pozner, who still calls Moscow home. “In fact, there is a saying that before you can call someone a friend, you have to have shared 32 pounds of salt. You figure how long would it take when you put salt on your food, how many years before that adds up to 32 pounds. Before you can call someone a friend you really have to know them very well, and I have no problem saying Phil is my friend.”

A show whose co-hosts have shared 32 pounds of salt, and now share with viewers their two-cents’ worth.

Fancy that.

“Pozner-Donahue” airs Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m. on CNBC. (Also seen in Russia on tape-delay.)