The Kyle Phoenix Blog: Kyle Phoenix Answers: I admired Mary Tyler Moore as actress, but admit I don't understand how Oprah found her a role model as a news woman?

I think people miss her MTM point, only seeing tv shows as their correlation. MTM was one of the first women beyond Mary Pickford, Lucille Ball and to some degree Marlo Thomas and Carol Burnett to own their own shows and production facilities. MTM eventually sold her company but the direction of her show was influenced by her autonomy. MTM produced dozens of shows and movies, jointly owned by Moore and her husband, Grant Tinker. It was eventually sold for $320 million in the early 1990s with content sold to an evangelical organization that leased shows to Viacom. An interesting question is why Oprah didn't make a bid for the $65 million content library.

When Jeffrey Jacobs was explaining at Bill Cosby's behest why Oprah should push ownership over a $250k paycheck, I'm sure he was able to use MTM to illustrate his business point. Cosby had routinely taken ownership stakes in his TV fare so in her catbird seat to create TOWS it made sense to acquire 25% ownership per year for the initial 4 year contract, leverage debt with a venture capitalist and build a studio, the evolution of MTM.

The newsroom connection and sunny disposition probably also helped her emotionally identify and pursue that form of thinking and ownership.

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