Even Oprah is struggling to find a successor to her show
Ten months after Oprah Winfrey signed off her long-running syndicated daytime talk show, the TV industry is still trying to fill the vacuum.
There is no shortage of contenders – or shows – trying to reclaim the daytime talk show crown from Winfrey, who has her hands full running her OWN network. But it’s not easy to dominate daytime programming in this day of splintered media outlets, any more than it is to launch a new network.
Just ask Winfrey: On Monday, she laid off 30 staffers after cancelling Rosie O’donnell’s talk show Friday.
All eyes are now on Katie Couric, who launches Katie in the fall, to see if she will have more luck than CNN star anchor Anderson Cooper in the daytime talk show arena. She is one of several contenders to launch next season, including Survivor host Jeff Probst, Family Feud host Steve Harvey and talkshow vet Ricki Lake.
“Katie Couric will probably do better – I think she’s a little more versatile, and she’s well-known,” said Brad Adgate, Senior VP Research at Horizon Media.
He also suggests that Couric might have an additional initial edge as the 2012 election season kicks into high gear, given her six-year run as CBS Evening News anchor and The Today Show before that.
As the ghosts of talk show hosts past can attest, it’s not easy to succeed – regardless of the time of day. Programmers are increasingly gravitating toward daytime talk shows because they’re cheaper to produce than soap operas or other scripted fare.
“It’s not an expensive proposition – it’s relatively inexpensive to produce, and I don’t think that’s going to go away,” Adgate said.
Even so, with the pie being split so many ways, it’s going to be tough for any one particular talk show to dominate the way Oprah did in her 25year run – or even come close to that.
Women 25-54, a key demo for daytime talk, continue to work outside the home. And those women who do stay home are likely to be of the “helicopter parents” variety, who “are more interested in monitoring what their children are watching” than developing their own viewing loyalties, Adgate said.
ABC replaced two soap operas with talk shows the past year: Culinary-oriented talker The Chew bowed in September as a replacement for the axed All My Children. The Revolution, featuring Project Runway guru Tim Gunn, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition dream-fulfiller Ty Pennington and celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak, replaced axed soap One Life to Live in January.
Already, there are signs of oversaturation.
Cooper’s syndicated daytime show Anderson debuted in September and has never really found traction. His show averaged a little under 2 million viewers for the week of Feb. 20–26, the most recent ratings available.
A fall 2012 launch for a syndicated series starring Real Housewives’ Bethenny Frankel was kiboshed after it became apparent that Frankel would be entering a very competitive field. (The show will now receive a six-week trial run this summer on Fox TV stations.) And in December, Sony Pictures Television and Harpo Studios decided to put The Nate Berkus Show out of its misery after its second season of ho-hum numbers.
O’donnell, a successful daytime host in the 1990s, couldn’t make a go of it during her short stint on OWN.
New daytime talk shows must also vie with standbys The View, The Ellen Degeneres Show and the newly christened Live! With Kelly and CBS’S relatively recent entry The Talk.
Couric has promised “smart conversation” in Katie, which debuts Sept. 10. She said stories will run the gamut from serious to “fun, popular culture stories.”
The show will be executive produced by former NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker, a fellow Today Show alum.
20th Television, which is producing Lake’s offering, is banking on her familiarity with audiences. Paul Franklin, executive vice-president and general sales manager, broadcast, of 20th Television said that she’s “already presold to the marketplace.”
Franklin contends that daytime is basically up for grabs. “Oprah is gone, Regis is retired,” he said. “Daytime is going through a metamorphosis.
“I think it helps, too, that the soap operas are going away,” Franklin added. “The soap operas have been on for 40, 50 years and people are saying, ‘What are we going to watch now?’ ”
“I think that these shows are going to face a lot of stiff competition.”
MEDIA EXPERT BRAD ADGATE
Adgate doesn’t think anyone can capture Winfrey’s former ratings at this point.
“I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation. I think that these shows are going to face a lot of stiff competition,” Adgate said. “If you can get 3 million viewers, that’s a hit.”
John Nogawski, president of CBS Television Distribution, argues that all the changes in daytime have cleared the way for Probst’s new show, which his company is distributing.
“There were a number of changes in the marketplace from Oprah’s departure to some lower-rated shows which we anticipated would be cancelled, so we knew stations would have holes to fill in their schedules,” Nogawski said. “That makes it a good time to strike.”
He points out that, “whether it’s prime time, cable or daytime, there’s always competition, so when the right idea and personality present themselves like they did with Jeff, then we seize the opportunity.”
He argues that The Survivor host will bring a different perspective to the daytime audience than current hosts. Nor does he accept that the audience for daytime talk is in danger of dwindling.
“We certainly don’t think so or else we wouldn’t be launching a new show,” he said. “If it’s the right show with the right host, the audience will come.”
And if not? Perhaps a moment of silence will be in order.