One of my favorite things about visiting my Grandmother - which, sadly, hasn't happened in years - was catching up on her magazine subscriptions. My grandmother subscribed to both the "traditional" kind of women's magazines (usually Good Housekeeping) and the magazines of the black community - Ebony and Jet, and occasionally, as I recall, Essence. Between them, I had a good sense of my grandmother and her life and her views of the world, as a black woman.
And, to this day, I think, combine Good Housekeeping or Woman's Day with Ebony and Essence... and you have a pretty good picture of just what Oprah Winfrey's media empire looks like, and what it sees.
The new year marked the launch of OWN, Oprah's new cable network, advertised by the woman herself with a lot of balloons and herself towering over the everyday proceedings of mere mortals, befitting her move from player to playing field. And, as usual, many people were awed by her accompishment... though a healthy sprinkling of doubt has started to creep in.
If it's now becoming slightly more hip to be critical of Oprah, a little less thrilled by her power and control... I find myself less critical over OWN than amused. OWN will probably do fine. And when it was called Lifetime and Oxygen... that was fine too.
There's this perpetual sense - perpetuated by that crowd of awe - that Oprah has created something revolutionary in television, magazines, everywhere she looks. But O, the magazine, is easy to place in the mag market - it's a standard women's bible of self help, food and fashion and household style aimed at a young-ish, probably stay at home mom (or a young working woman who, soon, will be). Oprah, her TV show, is standard issue, after soaps programming for women, of talk and advice.
And now OWN, the Oprah network is women's television, focused on advice programs and chat shows and style guidance and cooking demonstrations.
Time will tell if she succeeds - the success of OWN is definitely not a given - but mostly, I think, it would be nice if we finally admitted the obvious: that nothing Oprah does is especially new, and not necessarily especially daring or positive in terms of what it says about how media treats women and their concerns. Spiffily packaged, self consciously multicultural, Oprah and O and OWN (see a pattern there?) dress up traditional "women's programming" and content, but the result is frutratingly, depressingly the same.
And that criticism is a lot more concerning than the fact that she's rich, or famous.
A few weeks in, even Oprah's had to admit the obvious - in recorded messages thanking new viewers, she's quick to note that OWN's programming is mostly repeats and previously seen material. There's a daily rerun of Dr. Phil, films that are not new (Meg Ryan stuff, The Bridges of Madison County... that sort of thing), repeats of reality shows that aren't all that fresh (like Trading Spaces for the umpteenth time)... all filling huge gaps left after Oprah's managed to produce about 5 new shows: a cooking program, a daily venue on TV for Gayle King's radio show (and as dull or duller than Don Imus doing the same thing), a couple of reality shows (including a contest for a future OWN show), and Oprah's Behind the Scenes of, well, Oprah, in its 25th season.
That last show probably amounts to Oprah's best and only original idea: it is actually interesting to see Oprah's team of producers build shows and tape them, and refreshing to see Oprah in more candid moments (even if, obviously, the whole exercise is carefully controlled). But... lift the curtain and it's pretty much what you expect: this is a show that's been successful for 25 years, they're not reinventing the wheel, and the whole thing runs pretty smoothly. The lack of drama is palpable... and killing.
OWN is, basically, cannibal television: the question is whether OWN can swipe enough viewers from some combination of Lifetime and Oxygen, plus some wanderers from HG and Food Network, to justify her own exercises in doing pretty much the same things. If she succeeds wildly, one or more of those channels is probably doomed (I'd guess Oxygen, first); if she's modestly okay, then all the channels limp along... but that can't last forever.
I wouldn't bet against Oprah... but since she announced this plan for her network, the practical implications have always been the problem; a network built, basically on her drawing power that would have to succeed largely without her presence (her OWN show, which is apparently traveling and doing interviews, doesn't appear for months) doesn't entirely make sense. Still, now that it exists, it's easy to see the thinking behind it: women's magazine, women's TV channel... QED. It's easy, and not exactly innovative, however much Oprah and her handlers try to dress it up in her "live your best life" purple and gold majestic colors. The insights she's offering up are not especially insightful. Her design sense amounts to a tasteful gloss on "New Jersey Elegant" (that office of hers! Oy!). And the life she's recommending is defined mostly by its tasteful, upper middle class ambitions, not its strong moral compass.
The real message behind O and OWN and Oprah is her brand, and her "brand" isn't all that different, in the end from what Martha Stewart built, and achieves the end, mainly, of redirecting the existing audience for women's magazines and self help programming to them from elsewhere (with Rachael Ray looming up behind the both of them). I worked in marketing just long enough to be skeptical of this modern day, buzzy talk of people and individual "branding" which is rearranging and redecorating a world which already exists (and it's why Redbook and Woman's Day, not mention Oxygen, are on their last legs), and sells but so well. And maybe Oprah's got something else up her (voluminous) sleeves... but I tend to doubt it. This is Oprah doing what she knows and what she's always done. And sticking with what works.
At best, I'm guessing OWN will fall somewhere between mildly derivative and guilty pleasure for most: familiar without seeming fresh, a way to pass a few mindless hours. I doubt Oprah can go the sensationalistic route of a reality show (like a Kardashian or other celeb-ish train wreck, or a Jersey Shore or Teen Mom shock fest) that would up the ante, and her other choices are similarly predictable and safe. There's an audience for that, and she's not wrong: she owns it. As a stand alone proposition, I'm not sure that's enough. But then, I'm not the woman she's looking for, anyway.
Comments