Dr. Phil Is Ending Dr. Phil

A staple of daytime television is coming to an end: Dr. Phil McGraw announced Tuesday that the current season of Dr. Phil will be the last. McGraw got his television start on Oprah Winfrey's show in the 1990s, and the talk and advice show he then started hosting has aired for 21 seasons, NBC News reports. Reruns will continue to air. And McGraw, 72, will stay in the CBS family; he'll soon announce a "prime-time partnership" launching next year. "I am compelled to engage with a broader audience because I have grave concerns for the American family, and I am determined to help restore a clarity of purpose as well as our core values," McGraw explains in a statement.

McGraw was a licensed psychologist in Texas before meeting Winfrey, who hired him as counsel while she was involved in a defamation case with the beef industry in 1996. After first acting as "America's life coach" on Winfrey's show, McGraw's eventual show paved the way for another doctor introduced to the world by Oprah to get his own show: Dr. Mehmet Oz. When Winfrey's daytime talk show left the air in 2011, McGraw's show went from the No. 2 to the No. 1 most-watched daytime syndicated talk show, a title it held on to for a decade, Deadline reports. (More Dr. Phil McGraw stories.)