Oprah is more
of a teacher than a do-er but I mean this in a good way. Her strength has been in identifying talent,
in empathizing with her audience and guests, and in building brand and appeal. The latest “what I know for sure” in her
January magazine declares that she must listen to herself rather than what
others see as her “failure” with her network.
I think she needs to wake up and smell the coffee. I have trolled her lineup regularly and there
is almost nothing there that makes me inspired to pay for getting her channel
added to my lineup. And I’m a big fan of Oprah. There is virtually nothing on this channel
that interests me.
As I lay awake one night I thought about
what she could do to bring over an audience.
When 3 old soaps were going out she could have picked any one of the 3
up and she would have had a built in audience right away. It’s probably too late to revitalize All My
Children, One Life to Live or As the World Turns (was that the other one?) but
I thought could it work to rerun one of them from the beginning with a lead in
or close out chat talking about the storyline, the actors, the fashion of the
day, etc. I have no idea what the cost
would be but I feel confident that this would bring in fans from the show –
which number in the millions.
I also thought that Oprah should do a
Saturday night show of her own, perhaps something along the line of the old
Loretta Young show where she could either narrate or even act on an episode,
all episodes to be stand alone shows. For one
thing Oprah would be able to bring on new actors which she has clearly shown
she has a talent for identifying (Dr. Phil, Rachel Ray, Dr. Oz, Nate Berkus, to name a
few). Or she could stay behind the
scenes but start a new style of variety show for Saturday nights, anything that
would compete with the sports currently shown on Saturday night would be
a relief and preferably something without vampires or zombies!
Finally why is she not creating her own
shows instead of taking general meat market programs of no particular value? Why isn’t she doing miniseries along the
lines of Downton Abbey, Boardwalk Empire or Bomb Girls? Why isn’t she using a format similar to
the regular networks, with standing shows, news shows and talk shows? Who wants to see a string of The Shopping
Bags or any of the others shows that are 5 years old or more?
I’m asking where is Oprah’s sense of
creativity and adventure. It is not
evident on OWN. It is dull, cheap and lacking
imagination. I know nothing at all about
running a TV show much less a whole channel but it is clear that there is no
money being spent to make this into a really creative or innovative
station. If you are going to buy up old
stuff, at least make it vintage and give it some lead in whoomph.
Just some thoughts from the middle of the
night.
No comments:
Post a Comment