Empress of empathy makes encounters seem easy like Sunday mornings
DID you hear it? Turn down the birdsong, the whispering breeze, and the honeyed tones of Oprah and her very special guests, and one sound above all rang out from this televisual Eden – the swoosh of money, and lots of it, coming Oprah Winfrey’s way.
While Harry and Meghan were not paid for the interview, it was a good day’s work for Oprah’s Harpo Productions. The queen of talk television, the empress of empathy, had triumphed again.
She was not the only big earner.
A 30-second ad slot during the initial CBS screening of the interview on Sunday cost £234,000 a pop. It was ITV’S turn last night. Having spent £1 million buying the broadcast rights, it reportedly doubled its ad rate to £120,000 for half a minute.
No wonder TV executives were partying like it was 1989 again. Some should celebrate a bumper pay packet – Oprah definitely – while others might want to take a more sober view of the bigger picture. In today’s multi-channel world not every day can be an Oprah day.
ITV was expected to draw an audience of seven to eight million last night, a long way from the 23 million who watched Princess Diana being interviewed by Martin Bashir in 1995, or the 62 million-strong audience for Oprah’s sit down with Michael Jackson in 1993.
But it was a different TV world back then, with fewer channels and precious little in the way of TV “events”.
A moon landing or a royal wedding were once in a generation occurrences and deserved to make TV history. It is far more difficult today to make a similar splash.
Even if it happens the goods will be ricocheting round the planet in nanoseconds.
Before the Harry and Meghan interview aired, several clips were in circulation. By last night the highlights had been in every newspaper and on every website.
Few stories can withstand that sort of saturation coverage and still make viewers want to tune in.
You have to hand it to Oprah, though. She waited years for this interview. On the day she made it look so easy and natural when in reality it will have been prepped like the invasion of a small to medium-sized country.
Her style may not be to the taste of those who like their interviewers to be combative or clinical. She was no Emily Maitlis, running rings around her increasingly rattled subject. She was definitely no Paxman or Neil. But that is how she lands the big interviews. Talking to Oprah is made to seem like a chat with an old friend, even if there are millions watching.
There are always plenty of cameras, trained as much on her as her guests, because Oprah’s reactions are deemed as important as her subject’s responses. To her legions of fans, they are.
Whoever she interviews, be they a duchess or the heavyweight champion of the world, Oprah remains the biggest star on the set. That you can definitely take to the bank.