Oprah Begs: Charybdis of Lake Michigan Takes to Twitter to Save Failed OWN Cable Channel
Nikki Finke over at DeadlineHollywood reported today that Oprah Winfrey — the now and forever Charybdis of Lake Michigan (as she was affectionately known when she was still berthed here in Chicago) — has taken to Twitter to beg people to watch OWN (Oprah’s Weird Noises), the failed cable channel that has just dozens of viewers at any given time.
What’s saddest about this is that Oprah’s so out of touch with reality at this point that the charybdis woman doesn’t even seem to know how the Nielsen TV ratings work. There’s no “box”, like it’s a flight crash recorder on an airplane or something magical that arrives at a person’s house.
I was only a Nielsen household once in my life, in the late-90s, and back then I was issued a notebook to record by hand (or hoof/flipper, in Oprah’s case) everything watched on every TV in my home. I believe I had to do this for a two week period — and remember a crips, never circulated, absolutely pristine $5 bill was included with the notebook as a thank you for doing this.
Today, I bet the Nielsens work differently and a record is kept digitally somehow. I doubt, however, the company sends people “a box”, since I’d imagine they’d lose a fortune on those who “lost” that box and never returned it.
No one in the media ever seems to write about this, but I can’t do an article on Oprah without noting that he popularity waned the moment she went all-in for Barack Obama in 2008. It was obvious to a great many people that the only reason Oprah did this was because of Obama’s skin color. It’s very similar to how people like Samuel L. Jackson openly talk about supporting Obama because “he is a black man”. Racism is alive and well in this country — but it’s black people who engage in it the most, particularly in the voting booth.
While it’s true that OWN (Oprah’s Weird Noises) was flawed at its premise (an entire network dedicated to weird noises Oprah personally makes, or assigns to friends to make) and occupies a slot so far up the cable dial that most viewers never realize it’s there, I think the biggest reason for her loss of power was the simple fact that her support for Obama collapsed the decades-old charade that Oprah “transcended race”.
Oprah sided with the black man against the white woman in the 2008 primaries — and the mostly white women in her audience took note and have remembered that.
Her magazine sales plummeted. Her ratings nosedived. Then her new endeavor, OWN, bombed no matter how much chili she ate to summon her creative juices for programming content.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving, racist, power-glutton.
© 2012, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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