Queen Winfrey can rub his hands: at 67, the version of Michel Drucker in the petticoat of the American chains pulled off quite a blow by obtaining the first big interview with the Sussexes after their Californian exile. If the presenter is very famous in the United States for her multiple star denominations, this new scoop confirms her status and completes the making known on all continents, where the adventures of the Windsor are closely followed.
Not to mention the financial side of the business, since showbiz is first and foremost a business. And in this area, producer Oprah Winfrey is a formidable business leader. According to Wall Street Journal, CBS wrote him a check for about $ 8 million to get the first broadcast of the Princely Rendezvous, the deal including the right to then resell it on the international market. More than sixty channels in the world have been in the running, with as many different contracts, the most important being undoubtedly the one signed with the British network ITV which would have spent one million pounds (nearly 1.4 million dollars) for a Monday night broadcast in England. In France, it is TMC which has put its hand in its pocket, without communicating on the purchase price.
With in the end good audience scores. CBS thus gathered more than 17 million viewers on Sunday, we are far from the interview with Michael Jackson by Oprah in 1993 which had been watched by more than 30 million households, but it is still the one of the best scores of the American channel out of sports competition. CBS, betting on the interest of the public, had moreover partly recovered its investment by selling the 30 seconds of advertising for 325,000 dollars, that is to say the double of the traditional price… In England, ITV also made a card of audience with 11 million Britons in front of their posts. As for TMC, it also achieves a very good score with 1.5 million viewers glued to their screens to listen to the secrets of the Sussexes.
Three years of approach
Oprah had been planning her shot for a long time. She was close to Meghan in the spring of 2018, before her wedding, getting a date at Kensington Palace, before also sympathizing with her mother. Invited to the princely weddings, she will then be the first to support the couple in their desire for emancipation, keeping in touch and distilling their advice – the Sussexes have settled as neighbors in the very chic Californian town of Montecito.
A year after their exile, the timing was right to set up the media event. Oprah Winfrey negotiated her scoop with the big networks, including ABC and NBC before finally concluding with CBS, with which she worked for a long time. His company Harpo Productions remains the owner of the content, which should bring him, in addition to the 8 million dollars of purchase, good rents in the years to come, in the form of extracts or reruns. What to round off his nest egg which exceeds, according to Forbes, the $ 2.5 billion, making her the most powerful woman in the entertainment industry in the United States.
According to Wall Street Journal, the Sussexes would not have received any dollars for their confession. Even if it is hard to believe it, since they now intend to monetize their outings or public interventions, we can assume that they have relied on the firepower of their friend Oprah to optimize their communication. This is their last weapon to exist against the Windsors: the more empathy they have from the public, the more popular they will be. But by dint of mourning over a gilded existence, they take the risk of tiring their fans …
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