Several men cued her on, some women pitched in and some unique, strong arm, money generating tactics and wild strategies were applied that had never been done before in quite the same ways.
The King Brothers Discover A Potential Star
Oprah is doing her People are Talking talk show in Baltimore, she’s doing okay. Making over $100,000 a year in the early to mid-1980s. She’s starting to get better and better ratings. King World, the King brothers, come to her and say we can make you a star, we’ll take your show national and you’ll go head to head with Donahue. And we’ll pay you $250,000 a year.
Roger King and Michael King owners of King World in partnership with Oprah Winfrey and with her, launched Harpo Productions' successful The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986, which eventually led to the creation of the spin-off series Dr. Phil, 2002 as well as the latest Harpo Productions contribution, Rachael Ray.
Bill Cosby Hips Her To Fish, Pointedly Piranha
Oprah is ecstatic. She goes to friends, the Cosby's, Camille and Bill. He tells her that she has a problem.
“What’s my problem?”
“You’ve been offered $250,000 because of your agent.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“Sister (he calls her sister), it’s not a good thing. They like your agent at King World, that will distribute the show, at ABC Cap Cities, that will broadcast the show they like your agent. They like him so much that’s your problem.
“When they see my agent coming down hallways at TV studios, networks, anywhere, people get scared. Because when they see him it means one of two things: I want more money or I’m unhappy and my agent is a piranha. You’re being offered chump change, sister, because they don’t fear your agent.
“You need a piranha. I know a guy, he’s just starting out but he’s smart as a whip. Jeffrey Jacobs. Also, he’ll talk to you about why I’m wealthy. They might be offering to make you only rich, for just a little while, and how to change that.”
“Ok, Bill. I’ll go see Jeffrey Jacobs.”
Enter Jeffrey Jacobs, Oprah’s net worth is less than $1 million
Jeffrey Jacobs for years would not allow his pic to be published….but in retirement, he now teaches in California, he has allowed so. I keep a picture of him on my desktop. You’ll see why.
Oprah in a t-shirt and flip-flops makes her way to Jeffrey’s office, King World and Cap Cities contracts in hand.
Jeffrey reads her contract and says with deep sincerity. “You can sign this contract. You can sign it if you’re willing to be nothing more than a slave.”
“Excuse me?”
“This is a slave contract. Slaves work for a fixed dollar. They’re willing to bank on a national show. This contract is for 4 years, totaling $1 million dollars, an effort to make you a highly paid slave. Now there’s a thing called syndication that they’re going to market this through.”
“Yeah, my friend Robert Ebert, the movie critic, was explaining it to me one night. He took me out to dinner and he was explaining how him and Gene Siskel held out for a piece of the show’s syndication revenue but had to take on production costs but it’s where the money is. I think that’s the kind of deals Mr. Cosby brokers for Fat Albert, The Cosby Show, his specials. But I don’t have that kind of clout.”
“Roger Ebert was right.”
Roger Ebert, engaging his interest in things both chocolate and vanilla, took Oprah out on several dates but she didn’t realize he meant it as dates because he was talking so much about TV, business and syndication. He could’ve been Stedman……if he’d been like a foot taller.
“He was?!!”
“Yes, you want a part of the pie and there’s only two ways to get it. This way is just crumbs. The other way is to own your show, lock, stock and barrel. Produce it yourself in a production studio and sell it to King World who will then lease it to ABC Cap Cities who will then sell it to the 220+ local TV stations around the country and they will pay back up the line. Cap Cities gets a piece, King World gets a piece and you get a piece and eventually the TV Stations get back a piece of the total revenue.”
“What would my piece be?”
“About 25% of the overall take a year.”
“How much is that?”
“I’d say $30 million a year for each year of this 4-year contract. Yes, calculating revenues, ads, etc. and the number of markets this would go nationwide in the overall take would be about $125 million at least, even in second place. You see why $250,000 is slave wages now?”
“Holy shit! Yes, I see it now! I see it!”
“Yup.”
“I’m not sure they’ll go for it.”
“They will. They’re offering you a full 4-year contract to come in second behind Donahue. They’re not looking for you to win, just compete and offer an alternative. But I think you might be able to win over time because you’re new, different and very likable. And now you understand the difference between an employee, a slave, and an owner, freedom. I can help you.”
“You’ll negotiate this back and forth with them? But then, how will we pay for the show? How much will the show cost? We don’t even have anything to sell, a place to produce the show, a crew, a team, anything.”
“We’ll rent that all out year one and slowly build with the yearly profits a fully operable studio. We’ll float this as a loan, a venture capital investment. You’re holding a promissory note on your work for 4 years, worth to you as an owner, about $120 million. The contract with some tweaking, namely you becoming a company they do business with rather than an employee, will be your collateral. These huge companies no matter what will make at least the initial 4 years happen. We’ll just barter against those 4 years.”
“This is amazing, Jeffrey. Is this what Bill is doing?”
“Yes, which is why he’ll soon be one of America’s invisible billionaires. Every project he works on, he operates not as a paid performer but as a business, a partner, so he gets a piece of the pie, not crumbs as payment.”
“Ok, if we can leverage all of this it might go beyond the 4 years, right? I mean I’ll have a studio, employees, I’ll have to produce more TV, somehow, somewhere, lease out space for TV shows, films, commercials. I’ll have to operate my studio as a business. I can’t do that and host/produce a national TV show. I understand this from a macro view but I’m going to need a partner in the micro details. A president of my company, maybe even of all of my interests, if we’re now treating me as a full business entity. There are lots of other things I dream of doing, acting, producing, lots of things. I think that’s you. What if when we draw up this company, I give you 10% of the shares, of the company as a whole? You can’t sell it but I can buy you out and you’ll help me put this all together and manage my future. You’ll be my President, agent, manager, an attorney so that it's just one stop shopping for anyone who wants to deal with me and then you and I talk it through about what works best for a plan of freedom, of ownership?”
“Sounds like a deal.”
“Uh, Jeffrey, I’m a Black woman. Grew up in poverty. I’ve done some things. Had some things done to me, I’m worried about fame. I want it but I’m worried. Already my family is weird about me and money.”
“Let me think about it.”
Popularity, Really Popular, Famous and Stardom
Net Worth: Fluctuating, Living in a friend’s condo in Chicago to work
Spotted on TV one day by Quincy Jones while visiting Chicago, he cheers “That’s Sophia!” They contact her, she changes all kinds of schedules to get the part and gets nominated for an Academy Award.
Through the sharp eye for talent from Quincy Jones, he knows that giving her this small role in the film with her national exposure will blow up the movie for all involved, it will create a blockbuster.
Quincy becomes a close friend and tells her that “Your future is so bright, it burns my eyes!”
Venture capitalists are found to fund the studio, ABC Cap Cities and King World have no choice, and no downside, so they go for the deal. Harpo is in fact cutting costs for them because it can promise them a stable production cost, which means they can more readily predict and control the overall profits.
By being the production arm at the table, Harpo is able to negotiate how the show is presented and formatted and make strategic requests that are unique to the show itself. She wants the show broadcast everywhere at 4 pm. The idea that it’s geared towards both housewives and women coming in from work, getting dinner ready, taping the show on VCRs but everywhere at 4 pm.
She wants none of the “find me” TV show hunt, what she sees with Siskel and Ebert—-which plays a variety of times based upon the TV station’s scheduling designs. Everyone must lock in at 4 pm.
Oprah suggests that if they do this then Ryan’s Hope, Loving, All My Children, One Life to Live and General Hospital will act as natural lead-ins, bringing their audience, her core demographic into her show at 4 pm and then the local news will come on at 5 & 6 pm and as King World is distributing Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, the hours of 12 pm to 8 pm will be a natural progressive lock.
This is revolutionary but it’s how Phil Donahue is defeated. It’s harder to change a channel that progressively moves through your mentality modality and demographics. He’s appointment TV on his channel, she’s part of the family on hers.
Fame & Barbra Streisand
“These tabloids are killing me, girl My family is a mess! A mess. I can’t deal with this shit anymore. How do you handle it, Barbra? You’ve been famous since you were a little thing. The lies the betrayal, the demands for money, the tabloids, the drama.”
“Don’t you have NDAs?”
“What’s that?”
“Non-Disclosure Agreements. Everyone who comes within a certain amount of feet to me has to sign one. barring any divulging of my work, business, comments, etc.. Family signs it and you sue the hell out of anyone who tries to breach it to the point where just signing it puts the fear of God and the Devil into them.”
“Ha,ha, girl, you so crazy!”
“I’m serious.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Everyone?”
“Even the UPS man. Employees. Family. Friends. Restaurants. Doctors. People who can spell my name. People who come into contact with me. Everyone. You. You signed one to come over here.”
“Really? That’s what that was?”
“Really. That’s what that was.”
“NDAs?”
“NDAs.”
“JEFFREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYY!”
The NDA becomes a staple around Oprah. It allows her to control her stardom as if and with a legal form of anonymity. Every employee at Harpo and future companies must sign it, business relations, family, friends. It gives her privacy about the past and privacy into the future. She can have a safe space with the people around her and not have to be so guarded as celebrities can get with mega-fame. This comfort allows her to remain “the same” which translates on to TV because she’s protected.
1986 to 1990 net worth $100+ million
Harpo/Oprah is a resounding success. The building/studio is purchased and the money starts rolling in and the investors are paid back. Donahue is beat and it is now contract renegotiation time.
Jeffrey is in his element, Oprah is now a national, worldwide star and every time he calls ABC Cap Cities or King World, or God forbid, goes there, or calls for a meeting, they’re half terrified, half pissed off. He’s a piranha.
It means Oprah/they want more.
And more.
And more.
Of the pie itself.
Second place was valued at $120+ million….but now she’s been #1 for 4 years solid. The pie going forward will be bigger than that. Much bigger, and here comes Jeffrey with his calculator.
Oprah starts mentioning on air, a Queen comfortable on her throne, that yes, she’s suddenly wealthy and she loves acting, even doing a few small projects after The Color Purple. The talk show thing is great but maybe…?...it’s not forever. She has every shoe and luxury she could want, she’s okay for the rest of her life. She is edging towards 40 years old, maybe she needs to consider doing other things after all the world is her oyster? Maybe she should walk away from the show while it’s a success and focus on other areas?
Maybe………
King World and ABC/Cap Cities begin to panic. They ask Jeffrey is she serious? The revenue expectations are astronomical if they keep riding this wave. Walk away? Now? Really? Really?
Jeffrey shrugs innocently: “Oprah, completely owning her work and self, under production contract, but not personal control, goes like the wind and her mind takes her.
“And yes, the wind is many other offers being fielded from other networks, movie studios, lots of things. She could do a drama, a TV sitcom, movies, sit back and make Harpo the mid-west production facility for the middle of the country.”
Shrug.
What would make her stay? What does she want?
Jeffrey says he’ll get back to them.
Days later he says that as a production partner, they too look at their numbers and mayhap if they could adjust them? They initially funded the building of Harpo through Venture Capitalists but that cost them in the short run. Now, more secure they want to be wholly independent, produce more than just Oprah related projects, operate as a true production company.
How so?
“Well, the 4-year contract called for 220 episodes per year. That divides out to each show being worth about $136,000 an episode. Which though we average it out, sort of limits Harpo’s/Oprah’s availability because it demands that they spend $30 million, borrow some—-everyone on their end has to get paid—-plus she has only a relatively short period of time to rest, to do other projects. Her exclusive contract needs to have some breathing room.”
Breathing room?
“Logically and mathematically and to give them some break time, some breathing room, what if Harpo were to deliver 200 episodes per year for a renewed contract? That would make each episode worth about $150,000 which would give them an additional 10% profit. The valuation is then $50 million or more a contract year, and I think it’s definitely more. Consider the international markets. There are at least 44 other world markets, a total of 120 countries this can now be broadcast into. Harpo will need to see the overall revenue books to adjust the value of the 1/4 cut as the production company. It will be worth more than $50 million a year, right?”
They agree to open up to this, to alter the structure. Cash? Do you want more cash?
“Well, as a second point then, looking at how this show has blown up to a mega success the old metric of $125 million split the 4 ways, evening out to Harpo getting $30 million a year feels disingenuous to the actual revenue stream. Harpo wants to still be maintained as 25% of the revenue stream from advertisers, TV stations, affiliates, international rights because that 25% is no longer worth 1986 dollars of $30 million, it’s now worth by Jeffrey’s calculations $50–75 (?) million to start, potentially $100 million (?) or even more, maybe $200 million a year, if he’s understanding these revenue metrics correctly. It’s all so complicated. Which means that Harpo will proceed cautiously. It won’t do any contracts longer than 4 years but wants the optional right to have shorter contracts, never less than 2.”
They agree….. in principle.
“Well, as a third point, it would make it easier for Oprah to pursue her other TV interests and ideas if she had two things—-the money upfront, it was stressful finding investors and having to pay them back. She wants to operate solely in the black. The way she can do this is if she has more capital on hand, more cash, or more fixed collateral in terms of contracts for a future period AND most importantly, a cushion.”
They agree warily in….principle again. What kind of cushion?
“Well, she wants to strengthen this relationship, to truly bond us all like family so everyone knows she’s committed….and she also profits from the Oprah Effect which is what your companies are profiting for, beyond just the incoming revenue…”
and by that Jeffrey means the pre-glow and afterglow of her show onto the entire line up of shows around her and the network itself. This is exciting! Yes, but she’s not getting a piece of the Oprah Effect.
“This is two-fold but profitable to everyone. Harpo doesn’t just want cash. Harpo wants more cash upfront AND stock in King World so that Harpo reaps the benefits of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune enriching the KW coffers AND Harpo wants an exclusive deal with ABC/Cap Cities to produce a TV series and some TV movies—-let’s say 7—- to give the studio more street cred. as time goes on then ABC Cap Cities, which eventually will be absorbed by Disney, with King World eventually absorbed by Paramount/Viacom, will also pass on stock options, instead of simply straight cash to Harpo. The value of monies “paid” to Harpo will now increase in value over time.” Jeffrey smiles.
Anything else?
“Well, we might also need you to act as a collateral backer if we need to take out floating loans in-between payments for capital improvements to the studio. We don’t want to bet our house on our future, we want to bet yours. You have cash stores, banks charge higher interests rates or you can vouch for us. But we need cash reserves so that we’re not dependent on just one customer buying our products, the way you as much larger companies are not dependent on one customer/studio/network.”
“You’re a piranha,” they grumble to Jeffrey over the phone.
“Isn’t he though?” Oprah giggles. “Whoopsie, I should’ve said I was listening in on the line.”
Harpo gets bigger until it’s a 3 1/2 acre production campus. Oprah isn’t a business it’s now an industry.
1986 to 1996-How the Oprah Show Became a Hit via The Hit Woman
If you put Oprah with anybody it just works because she’s simply herself. The key is that you have to get the rest of the show to be as interesting as Oprah is. And to get someone to make the show around Oprah came the superb Executive Producer for 10 years, Debra DiMaio.
Debra knew the business. Knew the demographic. Knew Oprah’s strengths and knew how to build a show around a star that would ease into people’s hearts.
What Debra did not know was that other people, besides Oprah, were….human. They had feelings. Human feelings. Human’s have feelings. Debbie did not always recognize this in her zeal to make, keep and forever broadcast a #1 show.
By all accounts, Debra worked like the world rested on her shoulders and she couldn’t face disappointing Oprah. So she kept all the production drama away from Oprah. Oprah was the overseeing Supervising Producer, yes, who designed the ultimate frame of the show, it’s feel, it’s intent, but Debra worked on the nitty-gritty, the colors, the screws, the nuts, the bolts.
Debra designed the bullet of the show to be #1 a decade in a row.
Debra just wasn’t….a people person.
Debra was a taskmaster.
Debra was sometimes emotionally detached.
Debra was often demanding.
Debra was a bit much.
Debra was way too much.
Debra caused some folk to have nightmares…..breakdowns…..hives….panic attacks….night terrors…..day terrors…. to rue the day they took the job.
Debra was the antithesis to Oprah, the ball breaker, the fixer, the hawk to Jeffrey’s piranha, who flew above the waters of the business and kept the show, the ship safe, protected, in line. Debra was the all eyes, everywhere, able to discern an issue before it got to Oprah and eliminate it. Until she became the issue because in spite of her hawk-like focus:
- Debra scared people.
- Debra was not nice.
- Debra made Santa Claus nervous.
- Debra made God apologize. Twice.
Showdown, Getting Down to Business, Becoming a Businesswoman
Oprah walked into her office one day and her first appointment was the entirety of the production staff, a few dozen people. She thought it was a surprise party of——no, those weren’t surprise party faces——they politely explained that it was Debra or they were all quitting.
Effective immediately. “Debra terminated, this morning, or we walk.”
They had signed resignation letters.
“Oprah, boss up, you’re the only Glinda, the good one, the only one who can kill that bitch.”
“Is she really that bad? Come on, guys,” Oprah asked innocently. Dozens of people looked back at her silently. Oprah realized she’d been sacrificing them so that she could be the only free one, in truth, in the experience.
“Yes, that incarnation, known as the human Debra, is that bad.”
Due to several physical laws, some laws of physics and an odd internet buzzing, this is one of the only confirmed pictures of Debra DiMaio. Just think loving thoughts at her.
Oprah called Debra into her office.
After four hours of talking, singing her praises, talking about staff problems, the color of the carpet, her dogs, her favorite psalms, how great Debra was, the best potato chips and how much she liked her outfit, Debra, supposedly having ice picks and x-rays for thoughts, asked: “Are you firing me? Is that what you’re trying to get at?”
Oprah sighed in relief. “Yes, girl, it’s you or I think they might fire me.”
“They can’t fire you, Oprah.”
“I know right! That means it’s definitely you.”
“You’re really not good at this.”
“I know, girl. I thought about asking you to fire yourself.”
“Yeah, you’re really bad at this. You need to boss up. The building has your name on it. Without me, even if you promote someone here, the problems will repeat unless you become the hawk.”
“Yeah, I do. You delivered though. You crafted my energy to its optimal laser focus. I overlooked the fact that you know—people were killing themselves, no, really, girl, they were ready to suicide—-because you kept me safe on TV.”
“Yes, well, that’s what I’m best at.”
“Speaking of which…..I talked to Jeffrey before this conversation.”
“Can a piranha eat a hawk?”
“Hahaha, you funny. Anywho… Girl, I think that man has a contingency Kill File on everyone in this building. Here’s yours. The deal is as long as I am on TV, plus several years, you can never produce anything for television, movies, films, anywhere, ever. We will cut you a check of $10 million dollars a year. For your official retirement from anything media related right now. Just sign and let’s go out to dinner, I’m pooped for the day.”
Debra signed….and has vanished into perpetual wealth, 20+ years of payments………
You can’t kill your assassins, you must negotiate with them.
1990 to 2000-Net Worth $1 Billion
Business, Oprah, the reluctantly titled Businesswoman & What Business is Harpo In? Really in? Going to ultimately be in?
Business
Harpo produces more and more TV and feature films, learning to spread its wings. Oprah gets bigger and bigger and bigger. She starts doing things with her money—-like actually buying television and radio stations so she controls her own outlets around the companies that distribute her, making ways to be her own distributor in some cases. But there are limits how much a production studio can do. Then the Federal government, the FCC gets nervous (because of her, Cosby, Seinfeld, Roseanne, Tim Allen, Johnny Carson—-by they get nervous, networks are getting nervous, big stars no longer want big checks—-they want Oprah production deals) and institutes a ban on talent/performers owning the studio.
The new thought is that 25% of the residual take is all that a performer should be able to press for in ownership not 100% ownership of a show because then they could fall ill or have a snit fit or not live up to such a mega responsibility. Hence why Roseanne, Seinfeld, and Tim Allen and Jay Leno are mega rich Seinfeld $800+ million, Roseanne $100+, Tim and Jay $200–$500 million but capped unlike Johnny Carson, Oprah, Cosby, who had deals in place before the regulation changes.
“This mofo, again…………” (*heard at King World and ABC/Cap Cities meeting as Jeffrey Jacobs calls into the conference call.)
Jeffrey is like: “This regulation doesn’t change our standing because we created Harpo before this but we’re thinking maybe this means Harpo needs to change its future strategies. No longer do we negotiate in 4 year contracts, we now only do 2–3 years because there are other networks out there now and we don’t need to work with just one network and distributor, in fact we don’t need to limit ourselves to TV, we’re considering getting into film, cable, the internet. It’s no longer about family, it’s about the best relationships. The best relationship partners know that as the main engine, Oprah needs to recharge, she needs time off, but she needs to know her employees, hundreds now, are secured to pay off their mortgages, their car notes, school loans.
“Did I mention she’s set up a scholarship for 500 Black men to attend Historically Black Colleges? Full ride. All 4 years. She has obligations. She can know this, feel secure enough, safe enough to go back onto TV, if, and only if say we go from 200 shows to lets say 175 every contract year 1, 165 contract year 2, and we get all cash upfront in structured lump payments and we get more healthy helpings of stock in both the network and distributor. Oprah needs to feel safe. It’s not about the money, it’s about safety.
“The show is generating $1 billion dollars across the revenue board, we’ll continue as a partner to take our 25% in cash and stock. Thank you. My calculations are starting to put that at the north of $150 million a contract year, maybe $200 million, correct? I think I can convince her to continue her mission, her Purpose, her Calling. her destiny. Her destiny, which I’m sure we can all agree has been lucrative for everyone at the table? I think I can do this. Maybe. if you help me help you help her help her to more helpings.”
King World and ABC/Cap Cities Executives Renegotiation
“Fine, Jeffrey, fine. In fact Jeffrey, why don’t you just type up whatever it is you want in the contracts, sign them and have them forwarded over here? Why wait for us to——who’s that at the door?”
“It’s the messenger from Harpo,” Jeffrey smiles, “I took the liberty of having the contracts drafted….”
Reluctantly Titled Businesswoman
“Strategic & Synergistic Marketing and Branding Partnerships and Platforms.” Jeffrey Jacobs to Fortune magazine, a full business article on the business of Oprah, not just the celebrity, in 2000 (where he insists that no image of him be shown).
He envisions Harpo as a multimedia synergistic branding—-he’s on the lookout for how to develop the “next Oprah”; Oprah is confused because she’s still learning the complexity of her own company’s potential. She hates meetings; distill into to an email for her please and she’ll be in on the final decision after all the nuts and bolts are laid out; she is also trepidatious about Harpo and her, intertwined in her personal vision and such intensive business terminology. Being called a businesswoman makes her nervous because she’s focused on being authentically herself, so much of her work is from instinct, her gut, not to belay her own intellect but she doesn’t want to come across as a predatory, calculated businessperson because she’s far from it.
She recalls a capital allotment and distribution meeting being called and had no idea what that meant——a few weeks ago. She does understand it though in round ways; the show’s budget is $50 million a year—-for 160+ episodes—-she calls the Harpo President and the Executive Producer, she thinks that’s a good budget ceiling going forward. Her most intense and consistent business advice—-from Bill Cosby—-”Sign every check, sister.”
She does.
Until her hand cramps because she’s personally signing everything from paychecks to inventory bills to invoices to Fed Ex invoices. Finally, she gets an electronic pen. But she still sees and signs everything, to this day, 32 years from 1986.
What Business is Harpo in? Really In? Going to be in, ultimately?
Jeffrey turns to the rest of the world, it’s a damn world media podium now, and says : “You all know Oprah, having sat next to everyone who is anyone on the planet, and in 15 years she has become America’s trusted heart and truth teller, she is a Platinum Brand, which means that what she is connected to will increase exponentially. Like, say a Martha Stewart….who has a magazine? Doesn’t Martha Stewart have a magazine?
“Hmmmmm. World, Oprah is open for strategic branding business partnerships.”
The Black-White Woman and Semi Trucks (With Blessed (Exiled and Redeemed) Acolytes in the Mix)
“With the show, it comes on 4 pm everywhere. I want a magazine delivered the same day, everywhere in the country. I like the idea of an Oprah Effect where say for example Show# 150 and then related topic magazine Issue 150 hit at the same time so that everyone knows the schedule and at the same time and can’t tell someone not to get it this month. Everyone makes up their own mind because it’s within a couple of hours so it’s a small investment to judge for yourself.”
Cathie Black, a gentle flower and anvil of corporate power, smiles and gently explains to Oprah, a combination of a business owner, a mogul and a celebrity. “That’s not how publication distribution works. It’s a series of flatbed trucks delivering across the country to hubs on a rolling schedule.”
Oprah, oblivious to anything but….well, Oprah, says, “I know! Change! Change is what makes it so exciting. A whole new way of doing this! In fact, we won’t make the first few pages ads, we’ll make page 2 a double spread table of contents. I hate wading through ads to find the table of contents on page 10 or 15. That’s what will work. Change.
“ Oh, and in order to make sure that this magazine is done in a way authentic to me, it can’t just be Oprah stamped. It has to be me on the cover, every month. We need more Black women on covers of magazines every month, I’ll trail blaze that.
“And I’m thinking I need to have full editorial control, just the way I do with my shows. I’m the yes and the no on everything in the magazine and it’s production and distribution system. Yes, like an artist with a palette, a print palette. I love it! I love books.
“We’ll need a book section too. I’ll write a column, in fact, all the people I’m developing on my show to spin off, they’ll contribute too. Even Gayle! In fact, Gayle will be my Editor At Large there in the office since she lives in NY. She knows what I like and doesn’t like. She doesn’t have to be the Editor In Chief, she has a broadcasting job, but more of an avatar of and for me, someone I trust completely is there.
“Oooh, you know maybe one day we can combine the issues into like a leather-bound volume and sell it in bookstores? Yes, change and it will be a collector’s item because it will have good, useful information to help people. Change, change, change. It’s the future! If you can make all that happen, you got me, I’m in!”
Oprah leaves the room already brainstorming on what this will look like over the phone with Gayle King (bff and magazine Editor At Large) and how to incorporate not only the show to the page but the sponsorship, the ads, she can bring to an Oprah entity without having to pose with shoes or cans of soup or a car. She’ll deliver sponsors to her fan base in a much more direct way than a celebrity doing ads. There was a reason to hold out. She’s a platinum brand and can control the hybrid way that she’ll synergize sponsorships now.
Jeffrey smiles from the corner of the room. “If you can make that happen, you've got her. Make it happen.”
Cathie Black gets that look on her face where she sees Oprah, smart, revolutionary and pulling ideas out of a whole different schema….but then realizes Jeffrey is the piranha, the designer, and enforcer, who makes the monkeys dance as the Glinda wants on the Yellow Brick Road. And the bricks are gold.
“You’re a pira—-.”
“Yes, yes, I am. But I’m hers,” he smiles. “The beauty of this is we have been working out a long term strategy for Harpo Productions. Get stable, get money, replicate the Oprah Winfrey template. She doesn’t think we can find another Oprah but I think we can get close. I call them Iyanla—-whoops, that one is off the table for a while, Nate Berkus, Dr. Phil, Suze Orman, Rachael Ray, Dr. Oz across every network. NBC, CBS, Fox, we’re already on ABC….unless ABC misunderstands the leveraged partnerships elsewhere mean the show could go elsewhere, with ease.
Everything's Coming Up Roses, Rosie O’Donnell, Rosie’s Mimicry and Rosie's Mistake
It’s working! The magazine is a HUGGGGGGGGGGGGE success right out the gate. Crushing records, skyrocketing ad rates, delivered on time on the same day everywhere. The magazine is hovering at 4–5 million issues a month at a cover price of $4.50–4.99, plus subscribers at about 1/4 the cover rate in the 1+ millions.
The magazine takes a slight Recession 200802009 dip in circulation but continues to be the #1 magazine for women in the country.
Oprah, on a trip to South Africa, notices thousands of Black women reading Hello! magazine. Her intent, having seen this over the years in America is to be on the cover of every magazine (And so far 12 issues x 12 months for 18 years, she’s been on every cover) because there’s a lack of Black women on magazine covers. (Yes, Essence and Ebony monthly and then smaller magazines, Oprah’s been on American Vogue and UK Vogue.)
And of course there are supermodels and actresses but not consistently so she turns to Jeffrey and whispers an idea and he turns to Cathie who presents to Hearst——O Magazine in South Africa!
Oprah wants little BLack girls and African girls like her and girls who attend her leadership academy to see representations of themselves everywhere. Pointedly in beauty and self help magazines.
Cathie Black is hailed as a hero from landing Oprah. Cathie just nods politely and eventually does a favor for Mayor of NYC Michael Bloomberg. She retires and becomes School’s Chancellor for a year. She’s a Potemkin. She comes in with a hatchet, upsetting unions and teachers and parents alike so that after her a milder Chancellor can be installed by Bloomberg but her acumen, business skills, ability to get things done and strengths are on display. Plus she has a permanent badge of professional honor on her CV, she landed Oprah to the best selling magazine of all time.
Everyone came to that launch party though in 2000 though!
Everybody!!!!!
And that’s when a chubby lesbian (okay, who was shocked by her coming out? Who?) comedian makes a run at being The New-ish Oprah—-but lighter. Sorta!
Here’s Rosie.
She hosts her morning talk show from 1996 to 2002. It’s a mega hit! She’s a morning darling! She’s the Queen of Nice!
Dan Brewster, CEO of Gruner+Jahr. (He’s not really relevant to the next snaffle jungle but faces help context.)
Heard Around Gruner+Jahr USA Offices: “Hey, if Rosie’s such a darling and she’s a media success and she’s not as expensive as Oprah, maybe we can do some Oprah like stuff with her———like a magazine!!!!??????”
The Rosie magazine
In 2000, O'Donnell partnered with the publishers of McCall’s to revamp the magazine as Rosie's McCall's (or, more commonly, Rosie). What had happened behind the scenes was that McCall’s was knocked out of the running for Oprah because Oprah wasn’t happy with some of their past coverage of her. Oprah’s concern was that no partnership be with anyone who had ever written tabloid like material about her (or in general), the 50/50 revenue split with Harpo putting up nothing, per usual and Editorial Control and Veto power. When Oprah went Hearst, McCall's rushed to go Rosie in 2000.
The Rosie magazine was clearly launched as a competitor to fellow talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey's monthly magazine but maybe just maybe there could be room for… two?
Rosie, light fare in the daytime, gave Rosie a chance to go hard in print because she had Creative Control—— covered issues including breast cancer, foster care and other matters of concern to O'Donnell. In the September 2000 issue, she shared that "she has struggled with depression her entire life" and decided to start medications when she realized her fears were affecting her family. Rosie was going deep in the competition. She wasn’t winning exactly but Rosie is Gold Brand. Not Platinum but damn close.
With a strong start and a circulation close to 3.5 million, things looked promising but the magazine stumbled as conflicts emerged between O'Donnell and the editors. Rosie’s downfall is two-pronged:
- She hasn’t been at the game long enough to have not only constructed her own company (she has a production company) but to then have matured and grown it as Oprah and Jeffrey have. Harpo has 10 years growth experience over Rosie.)
- Jeffrey/Oprah lobby in all their deals very specifically for absolute control. In writing. So Oprah has Editorial Control and Veto Power on everything about the magazine. Essentially Hearst produces the magazine, pays for everything, distributes the magazine and sits back lets Harpo/Oprah run the magazine. That distinction is why there isn’t a competitor to Oprah in many venues in production capability or profitability.
Rosie's contract gave O'Donnell control over the creative process but Veto Power remained with publisher Gruner+Jahr USA. A year later O'Donnell quit the magazine in September 2002, following a dispute over editorial control.
"If I'm going to have my name and my brand on the corner of a magazine, it has to be my vision," Rosie told People.
(Oprah, having tea and a scone somewhere, reading this thought: “Duh. Don’t you negotiate total (editorial) control and veto power before the project even starts? I respect other people, other visions. And if we’re working together then our visions are aligned. But Yes and No? Them bad boys always stay with momma.”
- Which is why Harpo often isn’t involved in the legal entanglements that follow fuzzy Yeses and No’s and I Love You’s, No, We Love You More’s.
- Harpo: Clarity on Control and Yes and No Power. Oh, and how the pie gets split plus ancillary fees and their expected due dates. Thank you.)
Rosie summarily folds in 2003, a gasping, bloody death. In late 2003, O'Donnell and the publishers each sued the other for breach of contract. The publishers claimed that, by Rosie removing herself from the magazine's publication, she was in breach of contract. The trial received considerable press coverage because not only had Rosie followed the Oprah playbook to try and win but she’d stumbled a year in. Rosie was often thought to be the natural successor to Oprah, (even in ABC Cap Cities eyes…..)
O'Donnell, in her much-publicized off the cuff, Aries style, would often give brief press interviews outside of the courtroom responding to various allegations. Rosie is good for a verbal tennis match. Of note was a former magazine colleague and breast cancer survivor who testified that O'Donnell said to her on the phone that people who lie "get sick and they get cancer. If they keep lying, they get it again".
(Rosie almost 10 years younger than Oprah and not Black has less experience with being thoughtful about her words, her reach, her power, her intentions. One could argue that they are an excellent comparison culturally, racially of women, media, success in America and the balances and imbalances and expectations.)
O'Donnell apologized the next day and stated: "I'm sorry I hurt her the way I did, that was not my intention."
The judge dismissed the case, ruling that neither side should receive damages. Essentially both sides were working so hard to replicate Oprah that they didn’t clarify what their relationship would be so they created what is politely known is vaulted hallways and legal circles as a clusterfuck. The judge suggested everyone just admits they didn’t have the foresight of others (Harpo & Hearst), pack up their toys and go home.
2011-2012: The Rosie Show and Oprah Winfrey Network
If they can’t beat you, hire them!
In 2011, O'Donnell began producing material for the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). In May 2011, The Doc Club with Rosie O'Donnell premiered, a show where O'Donnell moderated live panel discussions following premieres of OWN Documentaries. She has hosted specials for Becoming Chaz in May 2011 and Miss Representation in October 2011. OWN is slowly warming Rosie up for bigger things. The world—-the media world had been tapping Rosie after her, not one, but two, ventures onto The View, to come back to talk show world. Oprah is officially off the air, the spoils are laid out for someone to take them!
Rosie thinks she’ll just be sort of lesbian bookend to Ellen but she can’t get the freedom, the kind of deal she wants. So she goes all in with Harpo/Oprah/OWN. In fall 2011, O'Donnell began full-time work on her new show, The Rosie Show, for OWN. The beauty is that Oprah can not only hand over her affiliates to Dr. Oz but now she can hand over her entire studio set up to Rosie, that again Harpo is off the hook for costs as it steps into this nebulous new world of cable. The show taped at the Chicago studio formerly home to The Oprah Winfrey Show. The show debuted on October 10, 2011, to generally positive reviews. September 2011, TOWS had stopped taping.
OWN canceled The Rosie Show on March 16, 2012, with the last show taped March 20, on the eve of O'Donnell's 50th birthday. The final show aired on OWN on March 29, 2012. In a statement, Oprah Winfrey said:
“I thank Rosie from the bottom of my heart for joining me on this journey. She has been an incredible partner, working to deliver the best possible show every single day. As I have learned in the last 15 months, a new network launch is always a challenge and ratings grow over time as you continue to gather an audience. I'm grateful to Rosie and the dedicated Rosie Show team for giving it their all.”
O'Donnell responded to the cancellation by thanking her viewers and the host city of Chicago:
“I loved working with Oprah in the amazing city of Chicago. I was welcomed with open arms and will never forget the kindness of all I encountered. It was a great year for me—I wish the show was able to attract more viewers—but it did not. So I am headed back to my home in New York—with gratitude. On we go!”
What went wrong?
A hit on network TV and a hit on cable TV are two different animals. Rosie was bringing in 500,000- 2 million viewers, ending as she scaled down her show to one on one interviews (perhaps where it should’ve begun at).
It would be simplistic to say that Rosie can’t be Oprah. She’s proven that she’s a draw because even though she can be brash and sharp, Rosie is genuine, loving, helpful, thoughtful, empathetic and funny. She has a lot of the same qualities as Oprah does. She even is a good actress!
What she doesn’t have, arguably……… is Jeffrey/Harpo.
Jeffrey has a had an extra decade for he and Oprah to sit down and codify exactly how to deliver her throughout media, to be thoughtful and specific about what they want and do not want and most importantly to practice control in small measures and then larger measures. Rosie (much like Martha Stewart) lacks a fundamental leverage piece—-she/they do not wholly own their work/the companies they work for. Oprah owns Harpo, a multi-billion dollar company. That’s a whole different beast to negotiate from than owning a production studio (offices, space, time, a budget) given to you by a parent company. Harpo/Jeffrey have the freedom to walk away from any deal and deal with anyone else.
Most entertainers, wielding power yes, are still highly paid employees. Jeffrey’s initial edict and convincing to Oprah, own yourself, has matured and blossomed so that Oprah doesn’t have to demand or sue, she can ask/negotiate and walk away if a deal is not to her liking. It is to the other’s loss, not hers.
The distinction can’t be stressed enough. The distinction also allows Oprah to develop others.
If Harpo gets a large share of the real pie in its deals, it now starts baking its own pies,m with its own recipes to replicate a thousandfold. To get paid a thousand times.
The financial reaping that Harpo/Oprah did/got from the whole Rosie debacle was in the hundreds of millions:
- It proved that Oprah was a Platinum Brand and had Platinum instincts and team. Not just any daytime host could push out a magazine with a publisher’s assistance and it is a resounding success. The $150–200 million that Harpo reaps yearly from O Magazine seemed to be worth every cent.
- This lined up advertisers in a bigger way than were done so for TOWS on ancillary TV movies, specials Harpo had done. Suddenly everyone who wanted to have Oprah as a spokesperson that she uniformly turned down for decades could get “endorsed” by her by being in her magazine. The surety of her hand and instincts was a deliberate extension of the Oprah Effect, Platinum Branding to the advertisers.
- # 2 meant that Hearst could charge a premium and every increasing price, in the hundreds of thousands, for singular and multiple month advertising spaces. The lifeblood of any publication was insured.
- Rosie didn’t leave her show in 2002 on a complete high because this was the middle time of her litigation war with McCall's. This meant that Rosie stayed Gold brand, perhaps even took a dusting down to Silver Branding. Had her magazine flourished, capturing some of and uncaptured demographics then O Magazine one, wouldn’t be a singular success and two, the way would’ve been paved for other knockoffs that didn’t have the Oprah Blessing?
- The Oprah Effect/Blessing is then able to be extended in the future to other Oprah related entities—-including:
- O at Home—-a magazine focused on interior design (supervised heavily by Nate Berkus—-who often contributed to O Magazine as well.)
- Every Day with Rachael Ray on October 25, 2005. The magazine featured seven issues in 2006 and increased to 10 issues in 2007. In October 2011, Meredith Corporation acquired the magazine.
- Dr. Oz and the Hearst Corporation launched the bi-monthly magazine Dr. Oz: The Good Life on February 4, 2014. He has a column in O Magazine.
- In 1998, Dr. Phil McGraw published his first best-selling book, Life Strategies. In the next four years, McGraw published three additional best-selling relationship books, along with workbooks to complement them. And he had a monthly column in O Magazine for well over a decade.
- Suze Orman writes a financial advice column for O, The Oprah Magazine.
- Iyanla Vanzant writes an advice column for O magazine.
- 6. When Rosie came into the Harpo/Oprah fold in 2011, while she didn’t save OWN, she was instrumental in drawing attention and viewers to the initial offerings in 2011 and offset the -production cost loss of Oprah no longer taping in her studio. This gave time for Harpo/OWN to understand the new market it was entering. She wasn’t the sacrificial lamb…but she was like a canary sent down the cable mine. She was also yet another a long line of acolytes to Oprah’s Effect, Oprah blessed acolytes.
- 7. Rosie’s exit from daytime TV opened up the space that would eventually seemingly come around to bite Oprah when one of her acolytes was poached by the gap left by Rosie, the mess created by the poaching of an acolyte and the redemption/revenge Jeffrey was able to reap on daytime, more than made up for the stress and drama to come in 2001 to 2002 then 2006 and 2011.
The Blessed Acolytes-Partners
“In the next few years, we’re negotiating with other networks and our distributor network, King World, to launch shows for them all. We’re a boutique TV/film/commercial production studio with Oprah blessed branded talent that expands out across every major network—-that she’s introduced and therefore shared her Oprah Effect with. Her audience will now include these people into their viewership as trusted advisers on mental health, life issues, medical health, interior design, and personal finance.
- Rachael Ray
- Dr. Phil
- Nate Berkus
- Suze Orman
- Dr. Oz
- Iyanla Vanzant….sort of.
(Oprah has long wanted to move on from being the one exclusively on the couch even going so far as to offer the entire show to Gayle, her bestie. They’ll co-host for awhile and Oprah will phase out. Oprah is even thinking about doing a phase-out like The View, she’s concerned that they’re running out of ideas for her, she’ll get bored and it will show, or she will be stuck as the host forever.
From a business perspective, TOWS, her personality, is the main cash cow of Harpo Inc. It’s not a balanced business situation. TOWS is bringing in over 90% of the companies revenue they have to change this.
What if they can create enough mini-spin offs that are in viewership and financial equivalency in partnerships on multiple networks to the $275 million TOWS is bringing in a year?
(The natural split would be Harpo, Inc. gets 50% from each spin-off a year as a production partner so that the Chicago production studios are still used for shows and movies and TV shows and the staff of 490 at Harpo stays employed. It’s an evolutionary growth plan.)
Oprah’s success is becoming a singular trap to her. She knows that there is a natural end eventually to every show/star and she wants to heed Cosby's advice and get off of the air as the primary person before she’s “been in the ring too long and is punch drunk and has to be carried off or canceled.” Stay Number #1 and walk away Number #1.
(Interlude)
The Tragic Tale, Loss, and Redemption of Iyanla Vanzant with Oprah Winfrey
Iyanla Vanzant, bestselling author and life coach/relationship coach, becomes a mainstay on the show, Oprah giving her the stage, much as she does to the others on a rotating basis, grooming them in ability and presentation as she presents them to her audience for eventual “spin-offs”. Oprah sees the time needed for this gestation to work like 4 years.
Iyanla gets antsy at 1+ years.
Iyanla is on the team then off the team after a hiccup where she left the Oprah stage/show in the late 1990s for a show deal offer from…Barbara Walters, though Harpo was developing her for a show. And went to her own show (where she didn’t even have an office and she was given a wig) and crafted in BW’s vision and version of cough (Oprah) cough Iyanla.
Umm hmm…Barbara Walters.
Oprah’s North Star who she’s looked up to as a female guide in media/TV work world and personally as a friend and mentor. Well, maybe a professional “friend”. (Frienemy?)
Barbara goes soft Iago on Harpo/Oprah and poaches Iyanla, in secrecy, promising to use all of her considerable influence and ability to make a hit (she has after all made The View a hit) with this shining star who is big enough to be as big as Oprah. ABC Cap Cities loves BW so she’ll have the lead in time before The View at 11am, Iyanla will come on at 10 AM…(pay close attention to this time slot, it gets funky.)
Iyanla tells Oprah and her team that God told her that she should go with this offer with a bigger company. Oprah takes her seriously, God told her so! So she didn’t fight or try to keep her. Gayle, however, ran after Iyanla and told her in the hallway she was making a big mistake.
Iyanla walks out thinking she was going to be a next cough (Oprah) cough.
(Interesting side note: I, Kyle, was at the first Iyanla Show taping. It took so long to start due to delays (we audience member s waiting outside in line, even as BW arrived. She’s as tall as my kneecap.) I was tired of waiting in line for two hours, I left. I didn’t miss much The Iyanla Vanzant show was canceled within a year.)
Now, Oprah, I wouldn’t call her gullible or naive, I would call her honest and openhearted—in a way that is easy to connect to personally and emotionally but hard to believe sometimes within a business arena because it’s so anti-business “cold” and calculating in some ways—-believed Iyanla when she said in the parting meeting that she was offered her own show by someone bigger than Harpo/Oprah. Oprah thought it was someone bigger, outside of the wheelhouse, the network she was with, the parent company. She thought it was Viacom (CBS). Or maybe Sony Telepictures. She thought BIG. Which is why she believed Iyanla that maybe it was God’s voice/plan for Iyanla to move on from Harpo so she didn’t grouse it.
(Jeffrey on the other hand…………)
Word on the media street was that he doesn’t forgive nor forget when you outplay him in business and poach. His clap back was eventually polite, poetic but pointed.
The Come To Jesus TWO part episode over a decade later where Oprah and Iyanla Reconciled
It’s now 2011: Oprah and Iyanla reconcile as Iyanla reveals humiliation, bad business decisions, literally the wrath of the universe fell upon her, her life, her business, her bestselling books are taken away for late tax payments even her husband left her! She’s making hand lotions and potions in her kitchen when Oprah gets back to her in 2011.
They reconcile on air.
Oprah doesn’t even get bitter or condescendingly I told you so about it and in typical Oprah aikido fashion she turns it into—-Iyanla, what was going on with you, girl? interview judo and Iyanla……..emotionally breaks down on Oprah why she broke out from Oprah!!!!!! (pay attention, Oprah does one more Alpha Talk Show Host Aikido move before her show ends in 2011.)
Iyanla gets honest and explains that with hindsight she didn’t feel worthy, she didn’t trust all the profit and blessings, she lost her way to her ego trying to become the next Oprah and didn’t trust Oprah who was setting her up to be …..the next…Iyanla.
Oprah’s philosophy sticks to her mild ire at Jeffrey’s comment in the Fortune 2000 magazine article about finding/developing/creating the next Oprah. She firmly understands——from a deep spiritual POV——that there can only be one.
One Oprah.
One Iyanla.
One Dr. Phil.
You can’t replicate her but you can establish a rapport with the audience for them to see in Iyanla, what she sees, the gifts Iyanla has, the abilities Iyanla brings to the stage, that Oprah doesn’t have in the same way.
Spiritual Aikido
“I did believe in you 100%. In your gifts. I always believed in you….even when I tuned into your show and saw it was all wrong for YOU, the Iyanla I see and know. And I still believe in you, Iyanla. And I always will. I am never false in my esteem, trust, estimation nor truth in what I think of you or what you are worth. They (BW) did not know your worth.”
“No”, Iyanla corrects, “I did not know my worth. It wasn’t you, I was afraid that you were being (business) nice to me, that I wasn’t enough, that I was false, a fake for all of this, all that you were bringing to me, giving to me, setting me up to walk into for myself. I believe in my skill but not my worthiness to receive, reap, from it..”
“You are enough. Always, Iyanla. Always!”
NOT. A. DRY. EYE. IN. THE. AUDIENCE. IN. THE. STUDIO.
Nor 40 million people around the world who watch both back to back episodes.
And there is always redemption: Oprah announces the launch of Iyanla, Fix My Life on her new network, OWN, as a flagship show, coming in 2011. She’s giving her a TV show…on her brand new network!
Alpha Queen
And just to, you know, show how a real Queen shows that she’s Queen. Oprah has on all the talk show hosts who lasted the longest against her Number # 1 show on one of her final shows…but never beat her in the ratings and was canceled.
Phil Donahue, Geraldo Riviera, Ricki Lake, Sally Jessy Raphael, Montell Williams.
And toasts with champagne them to a game well played,…….non-winners.
(Technically Donahue ran for 29 years, 26 in syndication. 1 more year than TOWS.)
Revenge of the Jedi…Jeffrey
BW had Bill Geddie, her longtime Executive Producer, right-hand man. Her Debbie DiMaio….
But Oprah. Oprah had Jeffrey. He went Michael Corleone on BW. He waited. Patient as Death. Subtle like. You don’t beat enemies, you don’t trash talk them, you don’t get even. You get better than even. Success is the best revenge. The best revenge is a dish served cold. Very cold.
Steel goes brittle in Jeffrey’s mouth.
Iyanla’s ABC show produced by BW and Bill Geddie ran from 2001–2002. 1 year. But made a gap in the programming schedule. A few more shows run nationally and locally but never take hold at 10 am. No one takes hold. And then Oprah/Harpo contracts come up for negotiation again.
How can you keep Oprah post-2000?
Revenge is Spelled EVOO
In 2005, after appearing on TOWS for years, Rachael Ray is spun off to her own TV show.
On ABC.
At 10 am…before The View….the coveted slot that BW had wrangled from ABC/Cap Cities and lost when Iyanla’s first show tanked.
Produced by Harpo as leverage-incentive within the Oprah/Harpo contract renegotiation.
Rachael Ray is entering its 13th season with Harpo Inc as a partner in 2018.
Hey, girl!!!!!!
Barbara Walters retires in 2014 after 50 years on TV. Oprah comes to The View and sits center table for her retirement.
Umm hmm. Yes, she did.
Dr. Phil is on CBS. From 2002 to present—-renewed through 2022.
Nate Berkus is on NBC for two years. Harpo and Sony Pictures co-produces.
And Suze Orman ends up on CNBC in 2002 but is still regularly on TOWS through to the end and does exclusive webinars with Oprah herself.
Dr. Mehmet Oz debuts his show in 2009 for Fox after years on TOWS, being groomed. But there’s a catch to him.
The Dr. Oz show though was unique in it’s syndication agreement because Harpo negotiated that all of the distributors/affiliates that originally broadcast the Oprah show—-if they wanted to be in her 2 year last episodes contract would have to take Dr. Oz’s show on in her time slot and maintain him for 5 years out.
92% (about 225 of the 250 affiliates across the nation she was on, took the deal after she’d spent the nominal 4 years grooming him. He literally slips right into her shoes, guaranteeing he’s a hit before his show even debuts and everyone who was making money from TOWS isn’t at a loss when she leaves AND Harpo still gets a 50% production payoff from their old time slot/his show. Harpo literally gets half of the salary/revenue by her handpicked replacement when she leaves network TV. for her time slot.)
He’s going into his 10th year.
Harpo Controls Time
- Rachael Ray comes on at 10 AM across the nation.
- Soap operas/game shows/rivals talk shows like The View are on from 11 am until 1–2 pm across the nation.
- Nate Berkus comes on a 2 pm
- Dr. Phil comes on at 3 pm
- Oprah comes on a 4 PM—-then is replaced by Dr. Oz at 4 pm (and syndicated times.)
- Suze Orman comes on every evening and the weekends then naturally leads viewers back to TOWS during the week….and then helps gather them online and then helps bring them to OWN.
Harpo/Jeffrey set it up so that you don’t kill your enemies/poachers——you outdo them on so many levels that you show them up as incompetent.
Back To Black and Black Don’t Crack…until it met Harpo in 1999/2000
Jeffrey takes a meeting with Cathie about a potential Oprah magazine.
“Cathie, may I call you Cathie? A magazine would be a great add on with a readership of about 4 to 5 million subscribers that we can pull in, low end, because that would mean about $200–300 million in revenue, split down the middle.
We provide Oprah and Oprah-ness, have total control over the magazine from content to distribution, and you get to sit back, distribute and count your money. Harpo never puts in money, it would express a lack of faith in Oprah. But the whole Oprah camp and talent bank will contribute and their fan base will buy issues too.”
“Jeffrey, no one has been given this level of distribution, autonomy, profit structure, and control before. Putting up no money?!! Ever.”
“I know, right! Exciting huh!? To be on the cutting edge. Call me when you work out that distribution snafu Oprah mentioned. Then we know you’re the one for us. I’m thinking ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years of a magazine, month after month.
“What’s that at $150 million a year domestic and then international down the road? Five, six billion? Yes, that would be a crown jewel in Hearst’s crown….especially with print going the way of the internet.
“Do you know the group over at Time Warner Publications they said they could be here next week? Great guys. Oprah likes them a lot too. I’m sure whatever Hearst can’t do, someone, somewhere will figure out the way to do it looking at the whole picture, the future picture, the profit picture. Have a good day.”
Cathie went back to Hearst and amazingly enough, they were able to figure out how to get the O magazine distributed everywhere, all at once, on the same day, throughout the entire country, by timing their semi trucks better.
As always, with Hearst Magazines, Harpo Print, LLC publishes O, The Oprah Magazine. The company also published O at Home, which Hearst officially folded in 2008 after a four-year run but occasionally does spot issues like October 2018’s.
2001 to 2011 Net worth $2–3 billion dollars;
- O Magazine becomes a mega-hit; first in the US and then pointedly in Africa and around the world, averaging sales of 4 million copies a month.
- last year of the 25 years of TOWS
- the OWN Network deal with Discovery (getting one of their 8 channels is signed in 2009, to launch in 2011)
- All the Blessed Acolytes are in place across the board of network TV channels—-bringing in revenue so that Harpo is no longer dependent on Oprah solely
Dr. Phil is on the air on CBS, Rachael Ray is on the air on ABC, Nate Berkus is on the air on NBC, Dr. Oz is on the air in syndication/Fox, and then the last disciple she slowly trains and introduces to the world on her show and then releases from the fold—-is given 94% of the slots on TV that TOWS occupied as a swap deal with the affiliates when she ends her show at the 25 year mark in 2011—-Harpo is reaping 25% to 50% of each of the show's revenues of between $100–250 million a year.
Oprah Goes Back to Her Roots in Radio…in a BIG way
Harpo has also signed a deal with Sirius XM Radio to broadcast 4 years of new and old programming from the Harpo catalog—-which includes all the above shows. She brings on Friends of Oprah (newly Blessed Acolytes who may already have their own success/followings. Synergistic partnerships in multimedia.)
You Get a Radio Show, You Get a Radio Show, You Get a Radio Show!
- Marianne Williamson
- Nate Berkus
- Gayle King
- Deepak Chopra
- Tony Robbins
- Old Oprah Winfrey Shows
- Oprah herself
- Plus others.
It’s a $50 million dollar deal.
All (Really) Good Things….
TOWS ends after 25 years, most notably business wise it produces in its last couple of years about 130+ episodes, making the valuation of each episode/the budget about $300,000 to $500,000. capping at $50 million. The Oprah Winfrey Show episode library worth about $1.8 to $2.5 billion, by the valuation of budget, costs, syndication fees.
But how to resell that catalog a second, third and fourth, infinite time(s)?
Guess Who Owns Half of OWN…and some of ABC Cap Cities, and some of King World and a little bit of Disney, and a significant piece of Viacom?
King World is bought out by Paramount and then Paramount is bought out by Viacom, bundled together into National Amusements by Sumner Redstone, a prolific, tough, smart….special billionaire who even fires Tom Cruise when he gets on his nerves. And then ABC Cap Cities is bought by Disney.
CBS and Viacom acquisition
For one year, the King World on-screen identity was kept for the programs it distributed at its closure. However, most of the programs handled by King World were distributed under CTD. On September 27, 2007, CBS Television Distribution introduced a new closing logo to replace the old logos of King World, CBS Paramount Domestic Television, and its predecessors.
In all iterations, Oprah’s stock stakes survive and converts, so she’s a partial owner in Disney and in Viacom. And the Discovery deal is a 50/50 split.
Oprah has moved on to the Discovery Partnership for 50% ownership in rebranding one of their 8 channels into OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, again following the Hearst mode of Harpo puts up Oprah and Discovery puts up hundreds of millions of dollars. Close to $300-$550 million to get it up and running as she steers the ship and finds it’s audience, it’s best productions and content creators. and makes it a hit within 4 years of the 7-year initial contracted deal (2009–2016). She begins traveling the world Canada, UK, India, Australia, South America making deals to broadcast throughout the world throughout the Discovery world network. Expanding her fame.
But why cable, some wonder?
Discovery has roughly 100 million cable subscribers to its 8 channel bloc a month around the world who pay cable fees to view. Cable fees per channel are set and often shift depending on regulations and offerings, premium offerings, viewership, and expansion.
In 2012 -2014 new payment rates change Discovery’s payment amount to approximately $1.15 per cable subscriber. Approximately $115 million dollars a month X 12 months equals about $1.4 billion a year, divided by 8 channels equals about $172 million and then divide that into Harpo/OWNs stake of 50% valuates at a fluctuating $75 to 80 million a year.
That’s not counting old shows from her catalog (answering the quandary of what does one do with a catalog of 4600+ TOWS shows; including other people’s shows (Blessed Acolytes and newly created shows) they rebroadcast and Discovery pays a fee to Harpo for and new shows OWN/Harpo develops and gets paid a fee for while retaining ownership.
But wait, you know Oprah, she has to pull in quality talent and filling 20+ hours of a channel a week is a tough deed. When you’re in doubt, debt and trying to swim upstream who do you call?
An old Black woman.
Wait, a young Black man dressed as an old Black woman.
Tyler Perry
Tyler Perry has been rocking films that are….attractive to a large segment of the Black…and White demographic. Broad comedies. Simple dramas. He’s spread out into an unprecedented deal with sitcoms on TBS. He agreed to do 200 episodes of multiple sitcoms for payment of $100 million upfront. Because he owns his own studios in Atlanta, similar to Oprah’s Harpo, he can churn out TV shows, films, commercials, stage plays at a staggering rate.
His initial deal with TBS has ended, fulfilled perfectly, and he’s slowly pulling his chips and relationships together with Lionsgate and others—-considering starting his own cable network.
But Tyler is a Silver brand. He’s good, very good. But he’s not Platinum brand yet. What Oprah has done with a handful, he’s done with ten times as many products. She calls him up.
“Tyler, it’s Oprah. I need you, baby. These mofos got me in a corner. I have a headache, they said I can’t make this ship fly. Harpo is in a contract with Discovery from 2009 to 2016. It’s 2012 and momma’s feeling the heat. I need this bad boy to fly.”
“What you need, girl?”
“I need you, your shows, maybe some movies on my network. I need you to bring that audience you’ve been cultivating and leading to OWN.”
“That’s money, momma. You know that. I don’t want to hurt our friendship by poaching cash from you. Not the way we run hard at business.”
“It’s okay, sugar lump. Discovery is paying the bills. How about this though? I’ll break you off a piece of my ownership percentage and get them to break you off a piece of their ownership percentage—-let’s call it 5% ownership plus episode production fees in total, for 4 or 5 or even 6 shows. As many as you want to make. Let’s say approximately 100–150 episodes of some original stuff and I’ll even get them to pay up for some of your other show reruns.”
“That’s a lot, momma.”
“They like me. Plus think of it this way—-practice for your own network in the future AND I’ll sweeten the pie down the road. I’ve got some good shows and ideas and relationships coming. Ava Duvernay, others, even Iyanla, but they all need time. I need a bridge-hitter. Tent poles. Someone to keep us in the game for a few more years as I develop the others from scratch.”
“What else could you possibly give me besides your mentorship and this deal, sweet teacher?”
“Baby, I own part of Viacom from all that King World-ABC Cap Cities-Paramount-Disney stock options paying, swapping, takeover, boom boom over the years, about 2% of the whole mama jamma. I’m one of the largest single stock holders. You know Gayle is sitting pretty on CBS right now, right? You sign with us, produce for us, exclusively for awhile—-say five to ten years and I’ll hook you up with the really big boys—-you know Viacom has been trying to woo me to CBS any which way they can since TOWS was on—-I used to use them as leverage .
“ In 2000 I toyed with them by threatening to leave ABC Cap Cities for CBS to up my contract fees and incentives with ABC/Cap Cities. ABC Cap Cities saw the error of their slow-poking ways, gave me everything I wanted and finally I threw Viacom Dr. Phil to give them a good taste of my love and then I kept, every contract negotiation with ABC Cap Cities, suggesting I might slip on over there and create a 3pm and 4pm whammy with him.
“Hell, I might even start doing network evening specials for them—-interview the Obamas, maybe even join 60 Minutes. I’ll present you to them as I walk in the door for more production deals. Each one help one. Sound good? I got you, baby, momma got you.”
“I’m in!”
Tyler gets 5% of OWN, Harpo-Discovery—-Harpo owns 47.5%, Discovery owns 47.5%.
- The Haves and the Have Nots.
- Love Thy Neighbor
- For Better or Worse
- The Single Moms Club
- If Loving You Is Wrong
- The Paynes
All premiere on OWN between 2013 and 2014, all ratings stars, from moderate to some of the highest rated shows on all of cable TV for their respective nights. Perry’s shows don’t save the network as much as Oprah’s bonds and acumen allows her to negotiate a deal with someone to add ballast to OWN long enough for them to have years for developing other successful shows and weed out the shows that won’t work.
This also gives Tyler Perry more Hollywood street cred in the TV space so that he’s able to secure a future deal with Viacom
(On June 14, 2017, Perry signed a long term deal with Viacom for 90 episodes/year of original drama and comedy series. Viacom will also have distribution rights to short video content and a first look at film concepts. The TV deal begins May 2019, as he is still under contract to OWN.) and use this all as leverage to create a ginormous movie studio/campus in Atlanta—- it also hosts 12 sound stages (The blockbuster Marvel film, Black Panther, was the first to be filmed on one of the new stages.)
Oprah Needs You to Go To Work and Pay Your Bills, Thank You
But most importantly—-you have cable?
You have Discovery channel as part of your cable TV basic package?
You pay your bill?
You’re paying Oprah about 15 cents a month as Harpo gets 50% of 1/8 of Discovery’s cable revenue payments from each subscriber.
“Sincerely, from my new office in West Hollywood (that Discovery built out for Harpo), thank you for your 15 cents every month. All 100 million of you. Thank you.”
But wait, where’s Jeffrey?
Well, there was some meshuggas about 20+ years in—-him, his wife, perhaps a secretary or two. Can’t be any meshuggas and since 1996 Oprah has stepped up as a boss. Even your Merlin must sometimes go, King—-errr Queen Arthur——-err Queen Oprah.
She quietly let’s him go. he still retains an original ownership stake in Harpo Inc but over the years the percentage has gotten smaller as the company has expanded into films, magazine, network deals, radio, publishing, stores, etc. etc.
His stake is about 3–5% now….of a multi-billion dollar company.
OWN/Harpo, Inc. now occupies this spectacular building….for the most part some form of rent free as part of a convoluted:
- You (Discovery—(from Advertisers and Cable Subscribers)) Pay For It (all shows production, Distribution, Branding, Marketing, manufacturing, design, cable systems distribution and management, legalities, insurance, HR, etc.)
- We (Harpo—Blessed by Oprah) Make Shows for You (Discovery),
- You (Discovery) Pay for What We (BLessed by Oprah/Harpo & Production Companies of Shows like Tyler Perry and others) Make,
- We (Harpo) Sell It to You (Discovery),
- You (Discovery) Have Us (Harpo & Production Companies) in the Building, You (Discovery) Pay For
so it gets made right, and then
- They (Discovery from Cable Subscribers) Pay Us (Harpo Staff & Production Companies/Staff)
and
- We (Harpo) Pay Them (Harpo Staff & Production companies)
and then
- They (Discovery Channel) Hand the Money Right Back to Us (Harpo to keep our cut and distribute to partners like Tyler Perry and production companies of other shows)
Deal!!!
Ultimately know though….the money stays with us at Harpo.
Trust that.
All Good Things….Bye, Chicago!
The Chicago Harpo campus is sold to….McDonald’s for $32 million, Oprah sells her condo, her Indiana ranch and heads to California.
Discovery is kind enough to put Harpo up in a brand new spanking building of studios…which totally alleviates all of the Harpo studio physical costs. In many ways Harpo has evolved into a boutique production company of storage, temporary offices, a formerly swelled staff of 400+ but now leaner, tighter, though other entities in the catalog, swell Oprah’s touch/responsibility staff is about 12,000+.
But Harpo has one thing now that it didn’t have before—-a stable of shows it owns, co-owns, and produces, through the Discovery deal so that the burden of revenue no longer rests on just Oprah shows/shoulders——which was always the razor's edge worry at Harpo—-what if something happens to her? What if she burns out? The whole house of cards falls down.
Oprah used her space, fame, acumen, business to essentially buy media “acreage” and farming “equipment”, till the soil, plant some Oprah vegetables; then sell those to market to start spreading out more acreage purchases, differing vegetable plots; partnerships with mills and farms; borrowing of their equipment to create Harpo into it’s own fresh media supermarket with production deals with Discovery, HBO, film studios, and most recently Apple for original programming.
She’s parlayed the original 4561 episodes of TOWS talk show by selling them and reselling them multiple times—-
- First Time first run syndication (1986 to 2011)
- Second Time played as audio on Sirius XM (2009 to 2013)
and then again
- Third Time repeated on Discovery as a whole or chopped up into new shows (Oprah: Where are They Now?, Season 25: Oprah Behind The Scenes, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah Builds a Network, Oprah's Favorite Things, Best of Oprah (100 Episodes))
that are charged to the venture at new show prices.
Like steak one night, hamburger the next, pasta with meat sauce the next, Sloppy Joes the next, tacos the next, beef broth soup the next, but always at a premium price. Jeffrey taught her and the staff well. His business vision was right. They were never in the business of the talk show—-they were in a media, intellectual property, branding enterprise.
OWN’s productions since 2009 to Present (all of which Harpo & or Oprah acts as the owner, partial owner, executive producer of)
Original Programming
Dramas
- Greenleaf
- Queen Sugar
- Love Is_
Comedies
- The Paynes
Soap Operas
- The Haves and the Have Nots
- If Loving You Is Wrong
Docu-series
- Black Love
- The Book of John Gray
Talk Shows
- The Dr. Oz Show
- Dr. Phil
- Home Made Simple
- The Nate Berkus Show
- The Oprah Winfrey Show
- Rachael Ray
- Super Soul Sunday
Reality
- Iyanla: Fix My Life
- Mind Your Business with Mahisha
- Oprah's Master Class
- Released
Acquired Programming Syndicated
- 227
- Benson
Newsmagazine
- 20/20 on OWN
- Dateline on OWN
Reality
- Undercover Boss
Upcoming
- Ambitions (2019) (soap opera-style drama from Will Packer and Lionsgate)
- David Makes Man (2019) (drama series starring Phylicia Rashad)
- My Name Is Love: The Darlene Love Story (TV movie)
- Tulsa, miniseries
Former (Expired/Cancelled, Non-Renewed)
- 2 Fat 2 Fly
- 6 Little McGhees
- 10 Kids 2 Dads
- Addicted to Food
- All My Children
- The Ambush Cook
- America's Money Class with Suze Orman
- Are You Normal, America?
- Ask Oprah's All Stars
- Belief
- Beverly's Full House
- Beyond Belief
- Blackboard Wars
- Breakthrough with Tony Robbins
- Carson Nation
- Checked Inn
- Commander in Heels
- The Customer is Always Right?
- Deion's Family Playbook
- Deliver Me
- The Diamond Collar
- The Doc Club with Rosie O'Donnell
- The Dr. Laura Berman Show
- Don't Tell the Bride
- Extreme Clutter with Peter Walsh
- Extreme Weight Loss
- Finding Sarah
- Flex & Shanice
- For Better or Worse
- For Peete's Sake
- The Gayle King Show
- Golden Sisters
- Help Desk
- Houston Beauty
- In the Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman
- In Deep Shift with Jonas Elrod
- It's Not You, It's Men
- The Judds
- Kidnapped by the Kids
- Knight Life with Gladys
- Life with La Toya
- Lindsay
- Lives on Fire
- Livin' Lozada
- Lost and Found
- Love in the City
- Love Thy Neighbor
- Lovetown, USA
- Married to the Army: Alaska
- Miracle Detectives
- Mom’s Got Game
- My Life Is A Joke
- Mystery Diagnosis
- NY ER
- One Life to Live
- Operation Change
- Oprah Builds a Network
- Oprah Prime
- Oprah's Favorite Things
- Oprah's Lifeclass
- Oprah: Where are They Now?
- Our America with Lisa Ling
- OWN Documentary Club
- Party at Tiffany's
- Police Women of Broward County (marathons are still aired)
- Police Women of Cincinnati (marathons are still aired)
- Police Women of Dallas
- Police Women of Maricopa County
- Police Women of Memphis (marathons are still aired)
- Raising Whitley
- Real Life: The Musical
- The Rob Bell Show
- Rollin' With Zach
- The Rosie Show
- Ryan and Tatum: The O'Neals
- Searching For...
- Season 25: Oprah Behind The Scenes
- Shocking Family Secrets
- Staten Island Law
- Super Saver Showdown
- Super Soul Sessions
- Swell Life
- T.D. Jakes
- Trouble Next Door
- TV Guide Magazine's Top 25 Best Oprah Show Moments
- The Tyler Perry Show
- Unfaithful: Stories of Betrayal
- Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind
- Wanda Sykes Presents Herlarious
- Welcome to Sweetie Pie's
- Why Not? with Shania Twain
- Your OWN Show: Oprah's Search for the Next TV Star
Long live the Queen.
2011 to 2018 net worth $3–$4 billion dollars.
“Yes, them is some Louboutin’s….I bought a few more shoes.”
The Discovery deal ran initially from 2009 until 2016, with Harpo having the right to back out, no harm no foul, at any point. Instead they re-upped for another run until 2025 with a portion of the stake being sold to Tyler Perry to bring his shows onto the network under her banner and then to another portion of the 50% being sold to even out the deal with the acquisition of the Scripps Network to acquire that behemoth, by cashing out $70+ million of the stake from Harpo. They decide to hire Oprah.
Oprah gets a job…at Harpo.
2017 to Present-Oprah gets a job at Harpo!!!!!!!!, the company she owns,
Takeovers, Blowing Yourself Up, Cashing Out and ultimately as always, paying Oprah and now Harpo as TWO separate entities.
In a takeover as Discovery took over Scripps you have to basically puff up your company.
The way you puff it up is you show to the takeoveree and the banks that you’re big enough to absorb the company you’re after and/or take care of it.
- The new company/bank you might be getting loans from asks in a very simplistic way—-have you got enough money to buy this on hand?—-or instead of cash money do you have enough of your own company as a mass to do this?
- Discovery turns to Oprah and says we need to buy back some of your percentage to puff ourselves up.
- Harpo/Oprah says we’re worth as 1/8 of approximately $150 million a year—-that’s what we’ve been getting from you for our end of the partnership.
- Discovery then said ok, we’ll forward you $70 million in cash to buy your ownership stake out, get you down to 24.5% ownership stake (Tyler Perry probably being bought/phased out in percentage ownership from Harpo’s end, .5%, the burden of sharing on Discovery to total to his 5% stake plus production fees on his 5–6 shows——-approximately $7 million in stakeholder value to Perry a year, over 10–12 years—-worth about $90 to 100 million) and Discovery then makes it up by Oprah being “hired” as the CEO of the OWN Network at a salary of $70 million a year. Her entire salary then becomes a taxable expense to Discovery and not a revenue drain.
- Discovery gets puffed up, Oprah/Harpo gets paid this year and next year we pay you both two checks, equaling $150+ million.
Oprah signs a 7 year CEO contract with Discovery to be the President/CEO of OWN, $70 million a year. Or a $490 million dollar employment contract… to work at her own company. Harpo getting another $490+ million, as cable subscriber rates could, will change.
Harpo (Oprah) signs on the dotted line, to own 24.5% of OWN, worth $70+ million every year from subscriber fees.)
This clarifies that the Discovery deal in total from 2009 to 2023, 14 years, is worth first $1 billion in cash/pay and ownership stake and then production fees for all the shows run on Discovery from the Oprah vault, acolytes and new OWN productions.
Harpo Ideology
Stay lean and free of entanglements and in control of one’s destiny….never be a slave….always own your work…be able to walk away… own yourself, your work lock, stock and barrel.
Oprah got back to acting, making a few movies along the way (Selma, The Butler, A Wrinkle in Time, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks—-her pay rate probably from $2 million to $5 million per project—-but she/Harpo is often a production partner so that fee fluctuates), plus some more TV shows (appearing in Greenleaf on OWN), interviews, you know just for the contracts, making new friends and fun.
HBO Deal in 2008 and Harpo Films
Previously, Harpo Films had a deal with ABC, which included production of Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom's For One More Day.
In February 2013, Harpo Films was shut down, citing that "the demand for long-form projects, especially on the broadcast side, has dried out." Many of its employees will move on to Harpo Studios' new scripted series division.
Harpo Feature Films
- Beloved (1998)
- The Great Debaters (2007)
- Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
- The Hundred Foot Journey (2014)
- Selma (2014) (under Harpo Productions)
Harpo Telefilms (all on Network TV, ABC, per the ABC/Cap Cities deal)
- There Are No Children Here (which Oprah starred in with Maya Angelou)
- Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom's For One More Day
- Tuesdays with Morrie
- Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Amy & Isabelle
- David & Lisa
- The Wedding
- Before Women Had Wings (which Oprah starred in)
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (which Oprah starred in on HBO)
Apple Production Deal in 2018
Stay loose and commitment to no singular entity indefinitely so that no one can ever shut you down or out. Harpo signs a deal with Apple which seemed shocking but really wasn’t if you trace this back to you guessed it…Jeffrey’s omni-vision for Harpo. His comment in the Fortune 2000 article was bundling together all of his ideas and plans, including the internet, not nearly as big as it is now… but both he and Oprah thought it had possibilities. So they started experimenting with it.
The Oprah Book Club
80 books have been chosen for Oprah’s book club, started in 1996 as a way of extending Oprah’s love of reading to the audience. Simply put she announces she loves a book, some audience members and the author came on the show and discussed the book and the audience could follow along.
That sounded so simple.
It’s not simple when Oprah blesses something.
First off she wanted it to be a secret so that you had to tune in to the show for her to announce the book—-and as a precursor to the O Magazine idea, bouncing off of the initial idea of TOWS coming on at 4pm all at once across teh nation, she wanted the same thing to occur at bookstores. Sealed boxes of the books that wouldn’t be opened until she announced at 4pm what the book would be.
The first time they tried this, Harpo alerted teh bookstores and teh publisher.
“It’s Oprah. When she announces the book, there will be a mad rush. You should order like a massive amount of copies. Like a lot, a lot.”
Barnes and Noble: “Tut tut, Harpo. Don’t toot your horn so loudly. We got this.”
OPRAH TOLD ME TO READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
1 million copies of each book. Minimum.
At the show's conclusion in May 2011, Nielsen BookScan created a list of the top-10 bestsellers from the club's final 10 years (prior data was unavailable).
The top four with sales figures as of May 2011:
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth (2005), 3,370,000 copies
- James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, 2,695,500 copies
- Elie Wiesel, Night, 2,021,000 copies
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road, 1,385,000 copies
It become s a phenomena as America….reads! ‘Cause Oprah suggested it.
But wait there’s more. In 2008 the right bok comes along to experiment with along Jeffrey’s “synergistic multimedia intellectual property platform.”
The Future/The Internet
For 10 episodes, approximately 2–3 hours each, follwoing a chapter in the book, Oprah opens the book club, A New Earth to… cyberspace.
And breaks the internet.
See Oprah again had a “vision”. (Probably the most frightening sentence heard in Harpo hallways because it means a team of folk has to figure out how to make something that’s never happened before…happen.)
Oprah’s vision was her and Tolle and people could Skype in from home. Like a worldwide audience. And then the producers/directors could have face bubbles appear on teh screen and she’d be talking live in the initial broadcast of the webinar to people from everywhere.
“Wouldn’t that be cool, producers?” Oprah beamed.
“Ummm………………….ok.”
“Yay, team!” Oprah cheered. “I’ll come to the studio Tuesday afternoon after the taping of TOWS with my post it dogeared copy of ANE and chat it up with Eckhart. See ya then, guys!”
And so it was Tuesday afternoon………
Of course.
OPRAH FIASCO
By Don Kaplan
March 5, 2008 | 7:59am
OPRAH flattened the Internet Monday night.
The first of several heavily hyped live Webcasts featuring Oprah Winfrey and the author of her current book club pick crashed about 10 minutes into a promised, history-making 90-minute show.
Only a handful of viewers were able to see the entire event.
Most of the audience, estimated at more than 500,000 viewers, could only see the first few minutes before their screens froze.
“This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done,” Winfrey told viewers at the beginning of the Oprah-cast.
“I’ve done a lot of exciting things in my life but I am most proud at how all of you have joined us in this global community,” she said shortly before the Web site crashed.
It was to be the first of 10 live Monday-night broadcasts with Oprah and Eckhart Tolle, author of the best-selling spiritual book, “A New Earth,” Winfrey’s latest Oprah Book Club selection.
Nearly 3,000 people left messages yesterday on Oprah’s Web site complaining about the screw up and expressing their frustrations.
“The broadcast kept freezing and sputtering and only caught a word here and there,” complained a fan going by the moniker, 4sandrella. “It was very frustrating and it only got worse as the broadcast went on.”
“After having waited so long for this. . . it was heartbreaking to have the screen freeze continuously and then finally stop with only an explanation that the network was experiencing technical difficulties,” wrote another fan, calenejd.
Officials at Harpo, Winfrey’s production company, issued an apology yesterday and promised that technicians were working to fix the problem.
“Harpo Productions, Inc. . . recognizes that interactive Internet broadcasting to a mass audience is still an emerging medium, and we’re proud to have been pioneers in pushing the industry forward.
“We deeply regret that some of our audience did not have an optimal viewing experience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Internet industry experts blamed the crash on several factors, among them the inability of local Internet service providers to handle the traffic – much the same way local phone companies have trouble shouldering simultaneous phone calls when people try to vote for “American Idol.”
2018 to 2025 net worth $5–$10 (?) billion dollars.
- The Discovery deal will start to bear revenue fruit. $1 billion plus.
- The Apple deal will bear fruit. (Though undisclosed, a minimum value is at least $100 million for Harpo to get involved with their development of programming for ITunes/online consumption.
- The food line of healthy pizzas and vegetable combinations with start to bear fruit (she’s always wanted to do this similar to Paul Newsman’s line which has garnered $125 million back to philanthropic causes—-she likes this idea of how to use celebrity to give back with food.
- There’s no coincidence that the Weight Watchers parlay of buying in at $6 and selling at $60 with a significant ownership stake while publicly using the programming and losing weight isn’t synergistic to a food line.
- She’s the CEO of OWN so she’s getting a real boss salary in the millions, $70+ million in ownership stake plus a salary in the tens of millions (and part of a building) by some estimates—-which might explain the trade off of ownership to cash—-
- more cash plus show ownership of dozens of shows,
- plus plenty of shows played from the catalog and none of the associated risks of stock exposure.
The leverage play here was how do you dissolve a company in one part of the country and recreate it in another, not all of the employees wanting to move but keep revenue streams coming in to offset the shift of the major revenue cash cow, TOWS, no longer first run, with it’s star Oprah, no longer in the hot seat of having to be the 90% revenue creator?
How do you resell your past work and create new work to sustain the company?
You latch onto a bigger fish in a much bigger pond, ocean actually, than an ABC/Cap Cities/Disney network pond.
Cable is a an (international) ocean.
Nicely done, Harpo, Inc., Team & Oprah.
Nicely done.
Edit 1: Thank you all of the Upvotes and Comments and I have read the Private Messages with further Questions so here is the link to Jeffrey Jacobs “thinking” in a nutshell, a book I hear he uses regularly and gave him some framework to business. Hence why I got it—-How to be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth eBook: Martin S. Fridson: Kindle Store
Edit 2: I will link here all of my Oprah Answers within the next few days that are about the marketing design of “Oprah” to create a marketing effect and details about specific deals as well as celebrity.
Further Information:
How did Oprah Winfrey become such an important and powerful person? What is her social significance?
Smile,
Kyle
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
It’s kind of good. I was just laying in bed, cuddled with my wealth of pillows and comforters and thinking on what my next moves were going to be. Two books had arrived from the printer (of course there are minor corrections, but that’s to be expected.)
Rewind.
I was on the #5 bus headed up Broadway to the post office to pick up this box of books. And since it was just a short jaunt of a few blocks, I had my phablet and was listening to music but hadn’t brought along a book. So I was thinking.
I was thinking about a past relationship and as I am inclined to do—-getting a little steamed about the thought, person, argument. Replaying it in my head and looking at it from a new angle—-which was spurred by a spontaneous dinner with a colleague a few weeks ago and she’d asked me about my dating life, as we’d talked about hers. I laughingly told her a comment a guy had made, judgmental but complimentary, yet it had taken me a couple of years past the relationship, to realize he meant that he was intimidated by me. It didn’t help that my bus ride, weeks later, was to pick up a book that had included bits and pieces of that relationship, fictionalized.
This is why said gumball was rolling around at the back of my mind. I get to the post office——frightened there will be a long line in the middle of the afternoon—-no line! I wait maybe 30 seconds and hand my slip to the attendant and a minute later have this huge box in my tote bag. I open it in the park across the street and the books are brand new and sexy and pretty and heavy and smell good and when I page flip, the text is crisp and visible.
I start smiling and beaming, overjoyed.
I realized, running mentally through past classmates and friends and folk who wanted to be writers that I’m standing here with more of my books, adding to the passel selling around the world. I’m not just blooming with gratitude and joy, I’m grateful that I’m not living the tortured life of some other folk.
I made a decision over 10 years ago to step out of the matrix known as Corporate America——having done financial work, securities litigation work, a host of things, a strong resume——for education and then used my time to control my schedule and to simply write.
Write, I do.
When I was young, scoring 6,7,8 grades ahead of my own peers on Standardized tests and imagining what I might be interested in, I was writing. I never took my writing “business” seriously so after undergrad I went into companies because they were “serious business”. You get to go up in the elevator and you have a desk—-that one!—-and it’s yours and you decorate it. Eventually I didn’t decorate as much because I was consulting so there were time limits on how long I would be there. I made it a point to not get comfortable. To not make that part of my identity. For about 10 years or so I didn’t know what the alternative to that corporate identity was….because I liked business, liked the intricacy of it, had owned several businesses as a child/teenager.
I even had friends/schoolmates who sailed into CA, never to be heard from again…..until I saw FB pics or them on the street—-fatter, a lot less hair. I realized they had a desk and probably decorated it, perhaps even the Holy Grail——an office—-a room, a little room in a bigger office, that is yours, but not really yours.
But I get to—-write even this blog post—-write a novel most of my working time, my work now taking up about 5 hours of active working. The other 35 is my writing Kyle stuff. I’ve been offered several promotions, could get all ambitious and hungry, and play dirty games……but I can literally feel the days, the hours, when I write less at work. When work takes up too much of my attention away from my Life’s Purpose.
I’m living and creating my Life’s Purpose. Yes, I know when I die, but I often think about what happens if I die this year? To the books? The TV show? I then think in production plans and product plans, I have to make an Exit Strategy plan for me, in case of death.
I used to think my giftedness meant I could do anything, that I could simply focus and learn and master anything—-which I sort of can. Which for awhile provided a whole range of possibilities.
Then I found this one, good thing to do well, very well, and it all clicked.
I’m walking down Amsterdam, swinging my tote bag full of books I’ve written, good books, and I’m beaming like the sun. I start to think of the ex and friends, near and far, and how they’re going to that desk, maybe in an office, inside of a bigger office, and how I’ve made the conscious choice not to.
It’s not what I expected, but I am happier with myself, little ol’ me.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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