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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: What Makes Oprah Run On May 25, 2011, the final broadcast of the Oprah Winfrey Show will air on CBS. There will be reruns through September, but this will be the final original broadcast. I confess that I have never viewed an entire show. I have seen snippets in motel rooms, but not in many years have I tuned in. Yet I cannot deny my fascination with her and her show. Hers is the most successful TV talk show in history. It has run for 25 years. It is broadcast in over 140 countries. It has set the standard for success in broadcasting. Johnny Carson dominated late-night television for three decades, 1962-1992. But he was an America-only phenomenon. He was unknown in Europe. Oprah is known just about everywhere. She has created her own cable network, the perfectly denominated OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. She owns the talk show format. Now she is branching out. Why? She is the richest self-made woman in history. Her fortune is estimated at $2.7 billion. That is after taxes. Her salary is over $300 million a year. http://bit.ly/OprahNetWorth What is she trying to prove? What can we learn from this? HOW SUCCESS COMES In every field, there is a dominant figure. Rarely can the person explain this success. Buyers decide that this person is THE person, and no one can figure out why. There is no way to predict this. Malcolm Gladwell says that a person needs to invest 10,000 hours in order to attain virtuosity. His book, "Outliers," surveys several virtuosos. But 10,000 hours invested are not sufficient to gain virtuosity. They are only necessary. Oprah was a success from the day she took over a last- place local talk show in Chicago and made it number one in one year. Who could have guessed this? Her national show was also successful very fast. She was wise enough in the mid-1990s to switch the show's focus from guests' deviant behavior to self-help. That separated her from the "trash TV" or tabloid TV imitators of Phil Donahue. She became a unique phenomenon. As an entrepreneur, she was alert to an opportunity. She sensed what a different set of viewers would want, and she self-consciously decided to provide it. She retained a lot of the original viewers. It is always very risky to change what you sell. You may lose too many of your core clients. She took the risk and prospered. Now she is doing it again. She is leaving a huge core audience of daytime network TV viewers. She is moving to a new venue: her own network. To gain access to the cable version of her show, viewers must find out which channel her network is on locally. They must remember to tune in. In other words, they must change their behavior. No seller knows in advance where his core clients will be willing to change their behavior. People resist change. This is pure entrepreneurship in action. She is walking away from $300 million a year. She is walking away from access into the homes of tens of millions of people. She is not doing this to retire into obscurity, the way that Carson did. She is launching a new phase of her career. WHAT'S IN IT FOR HER? It is highly unlikely that money is her motivation. When you have $2.7 billion and $300 million a year -- maybe $200 million after taxes -- what is another monthly paycheck? She does not appear to be addicted to anything. Why do I think this? Because, sooner or later, she reveals on camera some intimate secret of her past. She keeps quiet for years, but then some guest says something that grabs her, and she blabs. I don't think she could keep an addiction to money secret for 25 years. Is it addiction to fame? How much more fame could she expect? She is the most famous woman in the world. Only Queen Elizabeth gives her a run for the Nielsen ratings. But QE2 does not appear five days a week. Is it legacy? Maybe. She can be described as controlling an empire. But this empire is uniquely tied to her personality. The basis of this empire is her image on a television screen. Take that away, and it begins to falter. Her magazine would probably survive in some form, but for how long? Selling what name identification? It's called "O." There is no other O. If she were to drop dead, lots of the money would remain, but doing what? It would be a source of capital. Bean counters and entrepreneurs at the helm would compete for access to the money. But rates of return would rule the roost, not the memory of Oprah. TV talk shows are here today, gone tomorrow. Afternoon TV talk shows are gone this evening. There are too many broadcasts to remember. Most are not worth remembering. They are too tied to the issues of the day. Re-runs of talk shows are limited to "The Best of" DVD offers on late-night TV. If her cable network works, then some legacy in name identification will remain. For a time, the content of the shows will reflect Oprah's interests. But, ultimately, customer demand will dominate. If viewers change, the shows will change. This is the power of customer demand in a free market. She is trying to move millions of viewers of her network talk show to a new venue: her very OWN network. If she pulls this off, she will become a media legend. But she is already a media legend. If she fails, she will be known as the woman who overplayed her hand. So, there is risk here, if her goal is legacy. SHE ALMOST QUIT IN 1997 According to the Wikipedia entry on "Oprah Winfrey Show," she almost quit in 1997. Early in Oprah's 12th season of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah confessed she was "exhausted" and considered quitting. While making the movie Beloved (1997), Oprah then admitted that it brought her back to her responsibility as an admired black woman with a great deal of power and influence. She realized that being in such a position within the media industry, she could make a positive difference in people's lives. Oprah was once again inspired to continue to help people take better control of their destinies, hence her current slogan, "Live Your Best Life". "I made the decision in the midst of doing Beloved. I was doing some scenes -- Beloved is about an ex-slave, and during that process of doing that I connected to really what slavery had meant, and my own personal ancestry and history connected it to a way I have never before from reading all about Black history and, you know, talking to relatives. And I realized that I had no right to quit coming from a history of people who had no voice, who had no power, and that I have been given this -- this blessed opportunity to speak to people, to influence them in ways that can make a difference in their lives, and to just use that." This makes sense. She had proved her point with respect to money and fame. She had proved it with respect to influence. But she had not yet proved it to herself. When she finally grasped the fact that her influence was the key factor in what she was doing with her life, she reconsidered retirement. Oprah Winfrey attained by 1997 what few people ever do. She got very rich through her calling: the most important thing she could do in which she was most difficult to replace. Her job was her calling. The size of her paycheck reflected her influence, and it was an influence for much greater good than her tabloid talk show rivals, who got rich but not super-rich. The money rolled in. The capital base increased. This led to a new problem: what to do with the capital? She can invest it. That is, she can hire experts to invest it. That is a crucial free market function. Capital decides what projects get launched and which don't. She can give it away. She has done that. This also takes delegated authority. Someone has to set the criteria. Others must execute the various plans of action. This is a huge responsibility. I have written about this before: "The Horror of Being Oprah" (2003). It takes great skill to give away money without causing harm. It is at least as challenging a task as earning it, hand over fist. Not many people possess this skill. Surely, not many people who have the ability to amass a huge fortune possess it. Every day, Oprah helps people through her TV show. Every day, her snowball of responsibility gets larger. She gets richer and richer as her money compounds. She is facing what John D. Rockefeller faced a century ago. [his advisor] Rev. Gates challenged him with these words: "Your fortune is rolling up, rolling up like an avalanche! You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you, and your children, and your children's children." She has no children. Who will inherit? She needs a corps of people to give it away, but where will she recruit them? How will she see to it that they do not betray her by subverting her long- term goals for her money? If she wants to give it away to extend her influence, she is running out of time. She has decided to create another stream of income: a cable network. If it works, the avalanche of money will snowball. Her responsibility for administering that mountain of money will increase. This is the problem with every legacy that is large enough to carry on after the death of the accumulator. Who will inherit? On what terms? With what results? I concluded in 2003: Poor people want to get rich. Middle-class people, setting their sights higher, want to become super-rich. They know not what they do. Oprah Winfrey and her 475 billionaire peers face the same avalanche of responsibility that Rockefeller faced in 1900. There is no escape. They do good by serving consumers as profit-seeking entrepreneurs. But they can do great harm when their money is transferred to people who have not earned it except by feigning agreement or by selling the donors on short-sighted and even damage-producing projects. It takes a lot of skill to give away a billion dollars. Trust me, you don't want this job. Be content with what you've got until you learn how to give it away. That takes a lot of practice. http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north174.html Now she has $2.7 billion. The avalanche of money has rolled down capital mountain, getting larger every day. She has decided to make it roll even faster, gathering more capital along the way. To what purpose? CONSUMPTION OR PRODUCTION I do not think she is motivated to consume. It takes money to consume. She has lots of money. It takes time to consume. She is running out of time. In a segment on her show, she got to meet Ralph Lauren. She got invited with her camera crew to get inside his Colorado property: 17,000 acres. She was impressed by the scenery. But she was most impressed by the thing that most impressed me: a teakwood fence that is 30 miles long. http://bit.ly/OprahRalphVideo Here is the former poor Jewish kid meeting with the former poor black kid. They are both impressed with the ranch. I look at it and say, "That's a lot of real estate to manage. No thanks." I do not consume scenery. I don't even rent it. One article on them stressed that both of them are in consumption mode. They want to own stuff. http://bit.ly/OprahRalphStuff Maybe they do. But Lauren uses the land to herd cattle on his vacations. What? He plays "City Slickers"? Couldn't he have just gone to a dude ranch? Of course. So, owning the place is what matters. As she said, "That's a lot of polo shirts." Indeed, it is. "I own this." To which I respond: "For how long?" "How much did he leave behind?" "All of it!" Note: they both enjoy their vacations. How many weeks a year is that? Not many, I would guess. I think the stuff makes a statement: "I was productive enough to own all this." It is a statement about their past productivity, not their lust to consume. They are running out of time to consume.
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#1. To: christine (#0)
$#it! If she is really, really desperate to give it to a worthy cause all she has to do is write one check to the HJO Fund and I will see to it that it is distributed wisely. As for watching her show I would rather watch Steve Wilkos and find out who baby daddy is (if possible, lol!) than to watch one minute of her show. I could probably force myself to watch it though if she would help out my charity.
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