Where Was Oprah?

Oprah was a no show for a multipart tribute to Oprah!

Helaine is watching the Daytime Emmys (while recording Miss USA). I’m trying to avoid getting caught up in it but obviously not doing a good job. Gladys Knight was brought on stage to lead a long segment honoring Oprah and 25 years of her talk show.

Let’s face it, Oprah has had more daytime success than anyone. Nothing is more appropriate than her getting an award. But where the hell was she?

Oprah was a no show for a multipart tribute to Oprah!

I hope it wasn’t meant this way, but this certainly came off as a diss to the Academy.

Here’s What Oprah Should Have Announced

Only Oprah could make this choice and produced an immediate impact. Only Oprah could immediately make the Internet a viable platform for modern day broadcasting.

oprah.jpgLater today Oprah Winfrey plans to make public the announcement she made to her staff Thursday: “Oprah” will end its broadcast TV run in 2011 and she will concentrate her efforts on OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network), a new cable network. Oprah is making a mistake! She should have gone direct-to-net.

First, a few givens. The local stations that currently run her show will be the biggest losers. Oprah has delivered killer lead-ins to local news for years. Oprah’s influence has been so strong it’s rumored many stations run the show as a loss leader knowing they’ll make it up during the news.

Second, Oprah will move to a new cable channel with no track record and currently no clearances. She will be on a channel t-b-a, but certainly not with the dial position and complementary programming (and promotion) she currently has.

As much as is possible when you’re the world’s best known TV host, Oprah will start from zero.

Establishing a new cable channel, even for someone of Oprah’s stature and means will not be easy. If anyone can make this a success she can, but there’s much more room for success if Oprah had blazed the path to direct Internet distribution.

To more and more people the Internet is a perfectly acceptable substitute for TV. With the ubiquity of high speed Internet picture quality is no longer a real concern. Hulu and Netflix have shown that. Even Youtube is getting ready to deliver HD quality videos.

Bandwidth costs, the deciding factor on video quality, continue to drop.

Going on the Internet gives Oprah a boatload of options.

  • The show could be served both live and on-demand to multiple platforms at multiple bandwidths.
  • Live events could be covered live without any worry about interfering with other scheduled programming. Imagine Oprah at the Oscars or at any compatible event.
  • Recorded shows could be served full and as smaller mini-episodes.
  • No need to share revenue with a cable channel or cable operators (by way of local spot breaks).
  • The total control that the Internet affords would allow more creative viewer interaction and sponsor opportunities. Spots don’t have to be the end all be all anymore.
  • The audience could be expanded to reach more working women via office computers and smartphone apps

My friend Brian Lapis points out Howard Stern’s diminution of reach and power since leaving terrestrial radio for Sirius. Stern went to a technology with a small installed base and then hid behind a paywall. Oprah doesn’t need to do that. I believe she can reach more people over the long run via the Internet than she could on TV simply by making herself available at more times and on more platforms.

Only Oprah could make this choice and produced an immediate impact. Only Oprah could immediately make the Internet a viable platform for modern day broadcasting.

Opportunity lost.

Which Commerical Was Best?

Here’s something I never thought I’d say: “It was a bad year for commercials.” It was. There were few to like in the Super Bowl (though the game itself was unusually entertaining).

I have two favorites – and one isn’t really a commercial. It was a very short CBS promo featuring David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey. If you blinked, it was gone.

It was totally nuance. You had to concentrate. Did you recognize Oprah? Did you think about their back story? Did you realize he was from Indianapolis, she lives in Chicago?

Unless you connected all these on a visceral level, it was gone before you could think about it.

My other favorite was more in your face… and animated. It was the Blockbuster commercial featuring a mouse portraying a mouse. It was clever and really well animated.

Unfortunately, when I went to type this blog entry, I wasn’t able to remember who paid for it!

Among my other favorites were the Budweiser faux dalmatian (including animated blink) and the T-Mobile spot with Dwayne Wade and Charles Barkley.

So, to summarize. It was a good year for the game and a bad year for what came in between the plays.

Here’s how aol.com visitors rated the first quarter (where the Blockbuster ad first ran).


Blockbuster: Mouse.............46%

Bud Light: Faceoff...............15%

Snickers: Mechanic.............11%

Doritos: Crash.....................9%

Bud Light: Wedding..............7%

Chevrolet: Singers...............5%

Sierra Mist: Combover.........3%

FedEx: Moon Office..............2%

Toyota: Tundra...................1%

Sierra Mist: Karate..............1%

Schick: Quattro...................0%

Salesgenie.com...................0%

Total Votes: 67,823

How would you like being the creative head for an ad agency that produced anything lower than Chevy? Must have been tough to come in to work this morning. Ouch!

Just Shoot Me Now

News ratings are dependent on a variety of factors. One of the most important, maybe the most important, is your lead-in. It doesn’t seem like it should be this way, considering how we all use the remote control, but it is.

Having a good lead-in means having a more prominent place to promote your show and the added spillover of those who were already on your channel when you come on.

It’s because of this that I am disheartened to see:

CHICAGO (AP) – Talk show host Oprah Winfrey celebrated the premiere of her 19th season Monday by surprising each of her 276 audience members with a new car.

Great. Unless Judge Judy solves the war in Iraq this afternoon, we head into 5:00 O’clock a little behind.