Okay, Okay, Fine, We’ll Talk About Oprah
If you insist.
Oprah Winfrey is stepping down from “The Oprah Winfrey Show” at the end of the 25th season, in 2011.
She will appear on her cable network, OWN, which is set to launch in January 2011, but “The Oprah Winfrey Show” will no longer exist as the world knows it.
For CBS, the owner of syndication rights to her show, it means the loss of its signature program and millions of dollars every year in revenue.
For ABC stations, where her show was largely seen, it means the loss of daytime’s most popular program, a generator of giant audiences leading into evening news programs…More widely, her departure will surely be interpreted as an endorsement of the cable TV business, and a blow to the fortunes of broadcast television. (NYT)
The loss of Ms. Winfrey’s show will be missed in particular by the book publishing industry.
…“If it is the end of her daily talk show, we probably won’t see something else to match its overall potential impact on book sales in the broadcast arena any time soon,” said Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Bertelsmann AG’s Random House publishing arm. “She has an integrity and connectivity to her viewership that is unmatched by any other television broadcast personality. Happily she enjoys reading books and wants to persuade her viewership to enjoy them as much as she does. It’s not a characteristic shared by any other TV personalities with her persuasiveness.” (WSJ)
The media personality and mogul—whose show has served as the main pedestal from which she has engaged newsmakers high and low, transformed obscure products and personalities into runaway successes, and preached a gospel of self-empowerment to her devoted, largely female audience—is betting that, in a world of ever-fragmenting audiences, the future lies with creating her own branded network. (LAT)
ABC News has the full text of the statement she sent to the 200+ stations that carry Winfrey’s show.
And what does this all have to do with jobs? Not much, at least not directly. But according to Broadcasting & Cable, stations have been paying more than $200,000 per week to syndicate the show. “If ABC replaced the show with news, it could easily produce newscasts for much less than what it’s paying for Oprah. Even if the ABC stations’ ratings dropped in the Oprah time slots, the cost savings would likely make up for those declines.” More local newscasts means more hiring. On the other hand, “Too much news in a market can mean too much advertising inventory in news, reducing the value of that news inventory for all players.” So in conclusion? No conclusions have yet been drawn, but we’ll have to watch and see.
Finally: Anyone want some TomKat?
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