Posted on Wed, Aug. 06, 2008 10:15 PM
Does ‘Oprah’ need a makeover?
When local TV ratings were released for the month of July — rarely a newsmaking event in this or any other city — one set of numbers practically leaped off the page.
“The Oprah Winfrey Show” finished fourth in its time slot.
“Oprah” is in reruns every summer, but this July viewers had less interest than ever in watching them. “KCTV-5 News at 4” won the 4 p.m. time slot, followed by “Judge Judy” on Fox 4. Incredibly, KMBC even finished behind two game shows on KSHB, a station it once routinely trounced during the Oprah power hour.
“Oprah” — the show and the host — has long been the most dominant name in daytime television. When KMBC-9 outbid Fox 4 for the rights to the show in 1988, it was a watershed in the station’s history, bringing tens of thousands of new viewers and propelling it into first place for all local newscasts. There was a time when “KMBC-9 News at 5” following “Oprah” drew a bigger audience than any other station’s newscast at any hour of the day.
But Winfrey’s reign as a ratings powerhouse is over. The show has been drifting back to Earth, losing 7 percent of its audience nationwide this year alone. O the Magazine saw a double-digit decline in circulation. Authors can no longer count on the “Oprah effect.” And her endorsement of Barack Obama may have turned off, literally, viewers who supported Hillary Clinton.
When asked about this in May, the head of Harpo, her production company, denied that Obama had hurt the Queen of Talk.
“Those stations pay us a lot of money for that show, and if they felt she was doing anything that was diminishing the mother lode, we would get a call saying, ‘Enough,’ ” Tim Bennett told the New York Times. “We didn’t hear one iota of feedback.”
Either Bennett is not telling the truth or he has learned to drown out any negative vibes by turning up the soothing sounds of Oprah’s XM satellite radio channel.
As I went through the ratings in market after market, they showed an undeniable trend. In July “Oprah” finished third in Houston, D.C., Pittsburgh and Miami, and second in New York, Dallas, St. Louis and many others. In two major markets “Oprah” was beaten by “The Young & the Restless.”
As for that fabled ratings bump for the news, it’s gone. In New York, L.A., Philly, Dallas, Atlanta and on down the list, late afternoon newscasts following “Oprah” actually picked up viewers — a third more viewers, in some cases, than were watching Winfrey. (In fairness, she still appeals to younger viewers, unlike “Jeopardy” and “Y&R.” And, again, “Oprah” is in reruns, though I doubt TV stations got a price break on those.)
C. Wayne Godsey, general manager of both KMBC-9 and KCWE-29, which reairs “Oprah” at night, didn’t want to be quoted on what it felt like to be in fourth place. That is understandable. It almost never happens at KMBC, still the market leader in news. But I’ll bet Godsey — a longtime TV executive who once managed several stations for Pulitzer Co. — shared his opinions freely and forcefully with the “Oprah” people.
In the past, whenever her show seemed to be losing its edge, Winfrey always got it back. But her billion-dollar empire was not nearly so vast then. Next year Discovery is giving her a cable channel to run. She’s losing “Dr. Oz” to a syndicated spinoff in 2009. She’s not just in the TV-movie business but the movie-movie business as well (“The Great Debaters”).
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