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Oprah Effect
The
Whether it’s making stars out of
unknowns, sending authors on to the
bestseller lists or inspiring people to live
their best life, the influence of television’s
talk-show queen knows no bounds.
Words by Joanna Tovia
N
lean on me
Oprah Winfrey embraces
Nelson Mandela on a
visit to South Africa
in September 2009.
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obody becomes one of the richest, most influential
women in the world without more than a little
determination, and for Oprah Winfrey that
determination sparked to life as a 10-year-old lying
on the linoleum floor of her mother’s Milwaukee
apartment watching television. It was 1964 and The Supremes
were appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.
“It was a moment that changed my life … it was magical
to me because I had never seen black women on television or
anywhere for that matter who conveyed such glamour and such
grace,” Winfrey said. “I wanted to be Diana Ross … I had to be
Diana Ross.”
The event was symbolic of a cultural shift taking place in
the US in the 1960s, empowering ‘coloured folk’ to transcend
the barriers holding them back. As a trendsetter and global icon,
Winfrey now plays a substantial role in making cultural shifts
happen, shaping what her massive and widespread audience
thinks, feels, buys, reads and – since backing Barack Obama in
the last presidential election – even who they vote for. Research
produced by economists Craig Garthwaite and Tim Moore of
the University of Maryland concluded Winfrey’s endorsement
was responsible for approximately 1,000,000 additional votes for
President Obama. That kind of influence translates into success
not only for Winfrey, but for just about everyone who manages
to scramble aboard the glorious Oprah Winfrey bandwagon.
Winfrey has made her mark on every medium in which
she has dabbled. On TV, 44 million viewers watch The Oprah
Winfrey Show every week in 146 countries across the globe. In
print, more than two million readers consume O magazine
every month. Fifteen minutes after Oprah opened her Twitter
▶
account in May 2009, she had 76,000 followers – that number
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has since climbed to 4.5 million, despite the fact her tweets are
really just alerts as to what’s coming up on her shows. Then
there’s Oprah Radio, the Oprah Store, the oprah.com website
and the surprisingly successful Oprah Book Club, which, since it
started in 1996, has sent every one of the 64 books recommended
straight to the top of the bestseller lists.
A mere mention on air turns products, people and services
into household names. In 2007, Winfrey explored the wonders of
The Secret DVD and book by Rhonda Byrne, generating millions
of book sales as people clamoured to find out how to use the law
of attraction to make their dreams come true. When Winfrey
unveiled her dramatic weight loss in 1988, she attributed her
success to Optifast, a weight-loss company that reportedly
recorded a million attempts to get through to its toll-free
number before Winfrey had even finished the segment.
“Getting on Oprah is like winning the lottery,” ad agency
DDB’s chief US strategist told CNBC. “The beauty of Oprah is that
she can be an icon and at the same time very, very approachable –
it makes her so relevant as a brand to consumers.”
With an estimated fortune of more than $3 billion, Winfrey
instills trust in her viewers with what she recommends because
she can afford the very best. Materialism goes mad during
a Favorite Things show – before Winfrey agrees to name a
product, the company making it has to agree to supply 300 for
“The beauty of Oprah is that she can
be an icon and at the same time very,
very approachable – it makes her so
relevant as a brand to consumers.”
each audience member. The audience hysteria generated in 2004
by Winfrey shouting, “Everyone gets a car! Everyone gets a car!
Everyone gets a car!” was surpassed only by her announcement
in 2010: “We’re going to Australia! We’re going to Australia!
We’re going to Australia!”
Not surprisingly, companies are only too keen to send Winfrey
their wares in the hope they will be one of the chosen ones. Lafco
New York tried for seven years before one of its soaps was finally
picked. It cost the company $15,000 to put together gift packs of
soaps and bon-bons for Winfrey’s audience, but the outlay was
recouped within days and sales reached $1 million within a month.
A whole industry has emerged to help people make it into
the magazine or onto the show. Author of The Ultimate Guide to
Getting Booked on Oprah, Susan Harrow, charges upwards of $500
an hour to advise businesses on how to get Winfrey’s attention
and reveals her secrets on CDs, DVDs, e-books and webinars.
Some of our favourite Australians have found themselves
on the Oprah Winfrey Show set, and most admit to feeling a little
jittery in the star’s presence.
Jamie Durie first appeared on Winfrey’s show in 2006. “I felt
like a nervous little schoolboy, actually,” Durie said at the time.
Chef Curtis Stone has also spent time on Winfrey’s set: “The
second you have done her show it is like, ‘Oh, you have done
Oprah.’ It changes the way everyone looks and deals with you.”
Durie and Curtis now have their own US cable-TV shows.
▶
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HAIR APPARENT
Winfrey’s extraordinary range of
hairstyles over the years marks the
passage of time she has been in the
public eye. Last year she expressed
her gratitude to longstanding
hairstylist Andre Walker, for taking
care of her hair for 24 years; braiding
it, then attaching weaves to prevent
the need to apply heat to her real
hair every day. Over the years, she
has pressed, relaxed, permed and
braided her hair, even sporting a
‘jheri curl’ early on. That style requires
wearers to apply heavy moisturisers
daily, and sleep with a plastic cap
on to stop the style from drying out.
2009
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Now in its 25th and final season, The Oprah Winfrey Show
will make way for even bigger things when the Oprah Winfrey
Network (OWN) launches on January 1, 2011. Winfrey was
in the process of planning her semi-retirement when she was
approached by David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications,
in 2007. He pitched her the idea of creating a cable TV network
together, but the crucial element he wanted was not her financial
backing – it was her. In fact, her brand and her commitment to
the channel ended up being her total investment in the 50-50
partnership, in which Discovery invested $100 million. Winfrey
will appear in 70 hours of programming a year, and OWN
promises to deliver Winfrey-endorsed programs around the
clock. Australian personal organiser Peter Walsh will host his
own show, Enough Already! with Peter Walsh, on the network.
Walsh is a regular guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Being so influential does come with a downside, as Winfrey
found out when she mentioned she’d never eat another burger
during the height of mad cow disease. Cattle groups banded
together to sue her but were unsuccessful. Winfrey also faced
embarrassment after endorsing James Frey’s ‘memoir’
A Million Little Pieces, which turned out to be largely fictitious.
Born in Mississippi in 1954, Winfrey started out as a radio
news reporter before becoming a TV newsreader. But, eight
months in she was deemed unsuitable for the job. When she was
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OPRah WINFREY
AND HER PALS
Top row, from left: Oprah
Winfrey with music
producer Quincy Jones;
longtime partner Stedman
Graham; Bono; Nicole
Kidman; Italian fashion
designer Valentino.
Middle row: with best
friend Gayle King; Tom
Cruise; John Travolta;
Tina Turner. Bottom row:
with Vogue editor-atlarge André Leon Talley;
actress Hilary Swank;
with Michelle Obama
at a democratic rally;
with Mariah Carey and
Mary J Blige from the
film Precious; with Julia
Roberts; with designer
Oscar de la Renta.
“The second you have done her show
it is like, ‘Oh, you have done Oprah.’
It changes the way everyone looks and
deals with you,” says chef Curtis Stone.
asked to co-host a lowly morning talk show, she had little choice
but to accept. Fate was on her side, however, because Winfrey
soon realised this was what she was born to do.
And so began her rapid rise to the top of talk-show television,
where she has reigned for more than 20 years. It goes without saying
that Winfrey has legions of diehard admirers. Dedicated fan Robyn
Okrant committed to follow all of Winfrey’s advice for one year,
whether it be the clothes she should wear, the gratitude journal she
should write in or the disagreements she should resolve with her
husband. She has since published a book on her experience, Living
Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk.
Three hundred other loyal fans shrieked and cheered on
learning they would be travelling with Winfrey to Australia in
December. The eight-day, seven-night December trip, named
Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure, features filming in
various locations, including the Sydney Opera House, and
touring a range of iconic Australian attractions. “We’ll get
up close with kangaroos and koalas, kick back on some of the
world’s most beautiful beaches, and experience one of the seven
wonders of the world – the Great Barrier Reef,” said Winfrey.
Three thousand lucky Australians won tickets to attend the
taping of two shows at the temporarily renamed Sydney Oprah
House. One ecstatic winner was 42-year-old Nicole Bradshaw –
▶
her Facebook page is called Oprah’s Ultimate Aussie Fan, she
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“She asks the questions everyone
wants to know, even when they’re
ridiculous questions … she doesn’t
have a problem with being silly.”
Bradshaw says. Known as one of the most giving celebrities,
Winfrey backs charities supporting disadvantaged women and
children, research into AIDs, animal rescue efforts and disaster
relief – she funded the building of 300 new homes in New Orleans
for people who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina, for example.
Her work in Africa is also significant. In 2007 she founded the
Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Africa to educate
academically talented girls from economically disadvantaged
backgrounds in the hope that the school will create the future
women leaders of South Africa to generate long-term change.
The first time Winfrey bared her soul on national TV marked
her as a victim who overcame the odds – someone people could
identify with and draw inspiration from. In 1985, during a show on
sexual abuse, Winfrey dissolved into tears and divulged that she had
been abused from the age of nine. This, combined with the poor
mothering she received, led to promiscuity, an unwanted pregnancy,
drug abuse, an obsessive need to control and compulsive eating.
“Rather than seek psychotherapy to deal with her wounds,
she sought the salve of public confession on television, thinking
that would be the best solution for herself and for others,”
writes Kitty Kelley in her unauthorised biography, Oprah. “Her
personal victimisation would shadow her shows for the next 20
years, influencing her choice of topics and guests, her book club
selections, her charities, and even her relationships.”
In her book, Kelley casts doubt on Winfrey’s claims of being so
poor that she dressed in second-hand clothes and made her only
doll out of corn husks and toothpicks – but this isn’t the first time
Winfrey has endured public scrutiny. “Years ago, it made me cry a
lot because I’m such a pleaser. I would say that’s my single greatest
character flaw: the importance I put on wanting to be liked. That
comes from having been abused as a child – being beaten and not
even being able to be angry or to have any emotions about it,”
Winfrey said. “I was trained to believe that other people’s feelings
were more important than my own, and that only through
pleasing somebody could I be loved. It has taken me 56 years to
overcome that.”
In place of her real family, best friend Gayle King, life partner
Stedman Graham and celebrity friends such as John Travolta and
Julia Roberts form a close circle of support around Winfrey.
“In all those 56 years I have never once called my parents to
share anything with them. Not ‘I got a job’, ‘I met a guy’, ‘I made
a million dollars’ – not once, ever,” Winfrey said. “I’m in awe of
people who felt their parents’ love every day of their lives. They
start out in the world with a full cup. The rest of us go through
life trying to fill ours.”
more AT MiNDFOOD.COM
read MiNDFOOD editor-in-chief Michael McHugh and
deputy editor Pip Cummings share their highlights from
the live Sydney Opera House Oprah Winfrey Show.
KEYWORDS: oprah, sydney
oprah’s media empire
TV show
Magazine
O was launched in
April 2000. Winfrey has
appeared alone on every
cover except April 2009,
with Michelle Obama,
and December 2009,
with Ellen DeGeneres.
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The Oprah Winfrey
Show is seen in 146
countries. Airing in
the US since 1986, it
will end on September
9, 2011. Memorable
moments include a
2005 interview with
Tom Cruise (above).
radio show
On air since 2006,
Oprah Radio includes
programming on
current events, selfimprovement, health,
nutrition and fitness.
Contributors include
regulars from her TV
show and magazine.
network
Launching in January,
the 24/7 Oprah Winfrey
cable network (OWN)
will be devoted to ‘selfdiscovery’. Winfrey
will appear for 70
hours a year, including
hosting a globetrotting
interview show.
book club
Running since 1996,
the book club has
turned many obscure
titles into bestsellers.
To date, Winfrey has
made 64 selections.
The most recent was
Jonathan Franzen’s
novel Freedom.
movies
Winfrey’s Harpo Films
produces feature films
and TV programming.
She received an Oscar
nomination for her film
debut in The Color
Purple (pictured),
and also produced its
Broadway adaptation.
All photography: harpo productions; getty; reuters; official white house photographer chuck kennedy, Richard Termine
has a blog by the same name and shares a Winfrey tidbit daily
on Twitter. Each time she turns on her mobile phone, Winfrey’s
words ‘Live your best life’ provide inspiration. When she was
seriously ill in hospital this year, Bradshaw followed Winfrey’s
advice and created a vision board to feel more positive – on it
were pictures of where she wanted to go, what she wanted to do
and the words ‘Oprah Winfrey will speak to Nicole Bradshaw’.
“I like her because she asks the questions that everyone in the
audience wants to know, even when they’re ridiculous questions
… she doesn’t have a problem with being silly and daggy. She’s
just like we are except that she happens to be famous and
extraordinarily rich.” Winfrey’s willingness to share the trials and
tribulations of her life has also endeared her to viewers. “She takes
you on a journey with her,” Bradshaw says. “I’ve followed her diets
and have had the same successes and failures over the years as she
has – losing weight, putting it on, putting more on, losing it again.”
Yo-yo dieting may be one of the talk-show queen’s trademarks,
but so is her big heart. “She can change someone’s life forever,”
on a mission
Clockwise from top left:
Oprah Winfrey is joined
by students of the Oprah
Winfrey Leadership
Academy for Girls outside
Johannesburg in 2007;
with her best friend, Gayle
King, interviewing teaching
candidates in Durban,
South Africa, in 2006;
alongside Elizabeth Banks,
Tracy Chapman, Mary J
Blige and Jennifer Hudson
at the ribbon cutting for the
Live Your Best Life Walk in
2010; with Barack Obama
and Michelle Obama at a
2007 rally in Manchester,
New Hampshire; planting
trees with the Kenyan
environmentalist Wangari
Maathai in 2008; after
giving a commencement
speech to Stanford’s
class of 2008; with one
of her South African
students in 2006.