Oprah Winfrey’s latest attempt at creating a cable television network, OWN, has been struggling for some time. They have experienced success with Welcome to Sweetie Pies, a reality show about a Black restaurant in St. Louis. I did not know that OWN was struggling but I cannot say that I am surprised. Her best option at this point would be to syndicate the programs to networks that run on the digital subchannels that exist. No one is exploiting those subchannels, and this would be an interesting way for her to expand her brand. She might also want to look at making her shows available for Internet distribution through Netflix and Hulu Plus, or even YouTube.
Oprah Winfrey’s producers would like to duplicate the success of Welcome to Sweetie Pies and develop more “Black themed” reality shows to appeal to the African-American community. Pandering to the Black community, who she has abandoned for decades is going to blow up in her face. Having one or two shows with a primarily African-American cast is fine, as every television network worth their salt has one. But competing with BET is not going to work for Oprah Winfrey as there are a lot of upstarts that want to directly compete with BET. When you have a 30 year head start over the other networks it is extremely difficult for anyone else to reinvent the wheel. It is unclear if there is a market for another Black network, and it would be much easier to focus on creating quality African-American programming for Internet distribution.
This is not an innovative move for Oprah Winfrey, and it makes her a follower, not a leader, which is definitely not a good look for her at this point in the game. Everyone knows that Oxygen was Oprah Winfrey’s first attempt at getting into cable television, and that was a collaboration with a former executive from Nickelodeon, and the producers behind Casey-Werner Productions.
The average African-American is somewhat disillusioned and indifferent when it comes to Oprah Winfrey. You want to support her, but her legacy is that of being the “Tiger Woods” of television, when it comes to openly supporting the African-American community. In fact, Oprah Winfrey “wrote the book” on distancing yourself from the Black community. It just is not a good look to digress and put out more Black reality shows just because one has already been successful on OWN and comes across as hypocritical and desperate to Black viewers. Even though I feel that Oprah Winfrey could actually raise the bar for Black reality shows, because there is a lot of trash out there, it just feels as though she should stay in her lane.