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Showing posts with label OWN Network. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OWN Network. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Kyle Phoenix Answers: How much has Oprah Winfrey spent on the Oprah Winfrey Network so far?


As with most Harpo deals, the non-Harpo partner puts up the bulk of cash and resources and Harpo puts up Oprah-ness for lack of a better framework word and manages the enterprise. Discovery went as high as $330 and probably higher, close to half a billion but it became profitable at around $300 mil in debt due to finally creating tentpole shows with Tyler Perry content. This gave them breathing space to find and develop shows and then allow for cable rates to be negotiated ---- which means of the 80 - 90 million homes that receive Discovery's channels that fee is split between each as operating capital as advertisers pay for commercial space. Approximately 10 to 15 cents per month times 80-90 million subscribers goes to OWN and the numbers increase as there are access deals with Canada, UK,Australia, India, South America.
That expansiveness is part of what made the deal so attractive to Harpo, a sandbox of it's own to create in, 7 years on the initial agreement, Harpo could walk away at anytime til 2016, have since renewed, a stable of shows created for sale to Discovery and another revenue cycle for Harpo properties like TOWS,Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Nate Berkus, Rachel Ray after their initial run on other networks, so Harpo gets paid again and again for it's old and new content.

The challenge is the time it takes to grow a network, keeping Harpo as a profitable company to support itself and extend but not overtax the Oprah brand. Harpo got leaner by closing/selling 4 square block campus in Chicago for Discovery messed space in Hollywood, lessening employees, closing film division and re-using content library to create Where Are They Now?, a new show of ok and now updated material on nearly everyone so it's almost naturally able to stay relevant.
Harpo essentially got a 7 year sponsor while it trimmed itself down to a content distribution and brand extender company.
The synergistic offering is then Oprah magazine, radio, film work is part of the loan debt Discovery is paying in that Discovery is buying content, ad space, paying employees, providing space and Harpo then recycles that debt-money into productions that it leases to Discovery to put of channel that increases viewership that allows Discovery to get larger subscriber fees, ad rates and take out loans to pay Harpo...and the cycle continues.

The challenge until became profitable in 2013 was to streamline this whole systems.
 Note: While Jeffrey Jacobs initially owned a 10% stake of Harpo in the beginning the business add ons since then (magazine, radio, new shows, part of Discovery deal that isn't Harpo content pre-2000) and the fact that Harpo and Discovery had to give Tyler Perry a stake percentage to get so much of his content onto the platform, have lessened his stake in overall take ins because the pie size increased with more diversified extensions. It's probably down to 4-6% of Harpo proper now.

So in a roundabout way, Oprah spent very little as half her staff and management expenses were covered by Discovery having the mass to get a $550 million dollar loan to fund the project and she could bill back all of the work Harpo does for 50% recoup while making the company leaner and parlaying the relationship for deal with Weight Watchers, Flatiron book publishing, forming a separate production company with David Oyewelo and Ava Duvernay, Clipboard a tablet content platform company and the rights to piggyback into other continents on Discovery's 8 channels and multiplicity of sub relationships with cable networks thereby extending the brand that tunes in folks to TV shows, channel, magazine etc...another systems loop.



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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Rihanna Beat Again by Kyle Phoenix

Rihanna and Oprah Winfrey on
Oprah Winfrey's Next Chapter
I'll be very honest here, I don't know Rihanna that well. I don't own any of her music, know any of it that well nor do I kind of expect to. I understand her fame, the celebrity, the shows, the younger fan base that loves her and Nicki Minaj and Lady Gaga---two others whom I don't own, know the music of that well. I've heard one or two Rihanna songs when out and about but I'm not a "fan". That said I didn't view the original broadcast of her interview with Oprah Winfrey but I thought it would be interesting to expand on some of the videos and The Kyle Phoenix Show episodes with a focus on domestic violence and abuse. Hence, I watched this interview and I was-----frustrated, confused and saddened. I got to know Rihanna and her success and I got really solid in my understanding that she's young and has been thrust into a huge career.



Oprah first set up who Rihanna is, the audiences' understanding of her career and to some degree her identity. Then it went into her domestic violence issues with Chris Brown and for me, that's when it got really wacky. Not wacky bad but wacky in the sense that I missed the old Oprah Winfrey Show format that included audience and therapist participation because some of Rihanna's thinking, truly expressive, needed to be funneled through a psychological lens. She talked about her concern for Brown directly after their explosive fight, her lack of self-empathy and then more tellingly (I had it listed out mentally) her issues with her father. She talked about her father being abusive towards her mother, her witnessing it and more twistedly---thinking he was still a great father.


Let me say this: Good men don't abuse their partners, especially in front of children. Children who see their parents abused, grow up to be abusers or abused unless they do some intervention level psychological work on that heavy contradiction. Love doesn't abuse.


But aside from a healthy perspective on family dynamics, we have to consider who listens to Rihanna---younger, some educated, some not, male and female, all sexualities---who may've come from abusive households themselves.

Point one: Rihanna needs some intensive therapy that can't occur in TV Land.

Point two: Brown needs the same. Really fast.

Point three: People are attracted to what they grew up with. You seek the love (or lack) or twisted love you witnessed/experienced as a child. (Next time you're dating someone ask them HOW their parental figures were in relationship to each other and listen to the dysfunction. Why? That's who you're on a date with.)

Point four: Oprah was unusually passive, letting it be more of a casual conversation than a directive, snatch someone by their coattails episode. I think she too was listening to a young woman who is still in the emotional snare of Brown/her father, this was probably the best way to handle it.

You can't talk sense into someone until they're ready to understand that they will have to change some of the things they think are "normal" to them.

Point five: All media coverage translates to fame/celebrity/money. I'm waiting for the Rihanna book, the domestic violence shelters, the profiteering for herself or somehow making this "work" for her. But I think that I'm getting ahead of her. I think she can't do this yet because she's still "in it". To be around the social workers, non-profits, psychologists would be a level of "help" and when people are "in it" the last thing they want to do---especially when you heap the power of celebrity/power on her abilities to avoid anything she doesn't want to deal with.

There's a sense of fragility when she talks, willingness to be harshly treated, pointedly by men, a whole lot of Caribbean female iron upper lip as your man does you dead wrong and induced sexualization by her career. Thereby in her adult formative years forming her into something that I think has a recipe for tragedy. She talks about love and emotional pangs being "accidentally" around him  at  party after the beating.  But she's able to be both hones and yet still confused by this because she hasn't gotten the psychological help to not only deal with but change those feelings. People who go through abuse and do the work, find out one, WHY they were there and even more frighteningly, two, WHAT they do that attracts abusers/sets them up for abuse, literally changing their minds.

Rihanna has answered WHY she was there. Her past, her parents, her father. But what she hasn't done is the real work of WHAT she does to choose such men, why she's attracted to men who will abuse and what she does once she has those men to trigger the abuse. There's a fabulous center in Atlanta that has both parties in a relationship come for treatment because we often lambaste the abuser not taking into account that the first hit can be a surprise but the second one, is a dark wish fulfilled. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying one likes the violence but when you've grown up seeing/being a part of it, you believe that is what loving reality feels like.

A trained therapist helps someone learn the above and until she does that kind of work, whether it's emotional, financial, emotional or physical, Rihanna will be beat again.

Thank you,

Kyle Phoenix

kylephoenixshow@aol.com

http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/
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Sunday, February 19, 2012

OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network and Its Strategic Future, Part 1


I've spent some time not only watching Oprah but more importantly studying her and to some degree integrating her into my teaching as one of the business examples. It even has lead me to start an online show and a cable TV show---looking at the model of Harpo and design of the multiple shows that have come out of that company. The problem with OWN is our perception of Oprah's success from Harpo. It took 4 to 6 years starting from the early 80's to syndication time to actually completely own the Oprah Winfrey Show. It then took another, 3 to 5 years for TV movies, almost 15 years for a feature film and then a magazine deal with Hearst, 8 years before Dr. Phil, 20 years for Rachael Ray, Dr. Oz and Nate Berkus to be spawned. 25 years for OWN. Along with a timeline, this suggests that time is Harpo's greatest strength and where it's advantage is best seen. So now we're looking at Year 2 of OWN. However the platform of cable in a universe based analogy and Discovery as a galaxy, its a greater opportunity than a disadvantage. There's literally more space and time to expand and explore. OWN will not be Oprah. She'll be the vanguard, the spear, the vision but ultimately in a twenty-year perspective, she cannot be the absolute content. One of the best models is the Fox Network and that it took 5 years to find it's legs and 10 years to become a real player and 20 to become true competition.

Oprah on The Rachael Ray Show,
partially owned and distributed by Harpo
The advantage Discovery creates is that it's worldwide, that it's 7 channels---that gives a range of over 1 billion around the world. Now at the peak, Oprah was rocking 12 to 15 million viewers---to multiply that success over multiple shows/formats is going to take time. She's arguably one of the most famous women in America but not the world. She's playing in a new market. She had on her show a young Chinese, Chen Lu Yu, a woman who has a viewership of 200 million a week in China, while Oprah was doing 40 million a week including America and international markets.

Chen Lu Yu of China
(on a set that looks a lot like the Oprah WInfrey Show)
She and Rosie (who was subsequently canceled, Iyanla Vanzant is the new hit show so far) are tent poles to a huge tent. If they're playing conservatively to cross-channel programming through the Discovery 7 then they're aiming for 150 to 200 million total viewership a week from the singular OWN channel.


Harpo has just inked a deal with HBO, Dr. Phil is repeated on OWN, the Oprah Show (no longer under it's one year contractual restrictions with Cap Cities) is now rebroadcast, finally Suze Orman is doing a show, Chaz Bono/Cher, Tyler Perry, Lisa Ling and all of the celebrity guests on Master Class plus rotating feature films.

Like Fox it will take a Simpsons, a Married with Children, American Idol---along with the Fox model; it will take a Sex In The City, The Wire, deep documentaries ala HBO but those shows that helped to tentpole a network require time.


Oprah with Dr. O Nate Berkus,
Dr Phil and Sue Orman, all of their shows
partially owned and distributed by Harpo

We can't review OWN in these first few years for long-term success. We have to see it in increments of 1,3,5,10, 15 and 20 years. Oprah has always played the long game----holding her show on the air until Harpo was self-supporting beyond just her daytime show, expanding into multiple forms of media to literally create its own engine of production in TV, print, cable, publishing (those O magazines compiled books), radio, public showcases, and relationships.



OWN Year 3---they'll have a handful of mini, mid and 1 or 2 large tent poles for the network.

OWN Year 5---there will be at least 3 to 5 large tent poles as the minis and mids provide enough survival time to grow the big ones.

OWN Year 10---a fuller network that is a hybrid of HBO/OWN--its no coincidence that they're in partnership to learn how to do what HBO has done in 20 years. Not the route of the former MTV President.

Because we have to consider what is AFTER reality television? That's Oprah's long-term ability, the capacity to consider the field, the long-term strategy and play hold 'em and build 'em, while maintaining full control and ownership. Not many businesses/owners have the gravitas to play such a long-range game but what the real investment in Oprah by Discovery is, is that she is platinum branded to keep sponsors with her long-term no matter the choppy seas and the ability to mass millions of people to follow.


Now she's traveling to India and other places in the world, becoming International Oprah---I think she's going to do something unique to Americans---bring them the world through their trusted cipher.

Thank you,


(This blog was originally in answer to a commentary system on Forbes.com (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2011/10/06/oprah-winfrey-and-discovery-hit-the-reset-button-on-own/Oprah) concerning The OWN Network and some responses ideas etc. there.)




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