I wouldn't be surprised to hear over the next year that Oprah's viewership is down.
It already is.
Obama numbers up, Oprah ratings down
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Still No. 1 in the daytime, Oprah Winfrey still has a solid edge over Dr. Phil.
Posted May 27, 2008 8:50 AM
The Swamp
swamppolitics.com
by Andrew Malcolm
As previewed in The Top of the Ticket last month, new ratings of daytime television programs show that Oprah Winfrey's daily talk show for women has dropped in ratings since her highly publicized political rallying for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama last fall.
Perhaps coincidentally, the longtime, daytime talk-show diva has not been seen on the Democratic presidential campaign trail in recent months.
oprah and obamas
Before the primaries and caucuses, she was credited with helping to draw impressive crowds and thousands of new volunteers to Obama rallies in Iowa, which he won, in New Hampshire, which he lost, and in South Carolina, which he won.
An October Gallup Poll before the rallies but after her public endorsement of Obama found that her favorable ratings had fallen from 74 to 66 percent while her unfavorable ratings jumped from 17 to 26 percent.
When this was noted in an April Ticket item, hundreds of female commenters, many clearly supporting the Democratic candidacy of Sen. Hillary Clinton, left angry comments about Winfrey's.failure to support the first serious White House candidacy of a female. They also seemed angered over her public advocacy of new-age spiritualism, including among her book club choices.
Now come new TV ratings showing that her daytime audience, which is still the largest and was nearly 9 million at its height in 2004-05, has fallen for the third straight year, to 7.8 million a year ago and now to 7.3 million.
Her monthly publication, "O, The Oprah Magazine," has also lost 10 percent of its circulation in the last three years, according to a New York Times story. And a new editor is being sought. Officials of billionaire Winfrey's company, Harpo Productions, profess no concern over the dip in numbers.
They say daytime audiences have generally declined and her audience is still about one-third larger than the No. 2 daytime program, Dr. Phil. Many Ticket commenters also said they had switched their viewing habits to The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
Figures also show that Winfrey has lost about 25 percent of her female audience between ages 25 and 54 in the last 36 months.
Harpo sources point to last winter's opening success of Oprah's ABC reality philanthropy show, "Oprah's Big Give," which drew more viewers than all shows but "American Idol." However, the "Give" audience fell by almost 33 percent in its next seven weeks. And Winfrey decided to discontinue production of the program.
Next up: Winfrey's own cable channel called, of course, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint endeavor with the Discovery Channel.
Andrew Malcolm writes for Top of the Ticket, the LA Times political blog. Newsday photo: Michelle Obama, left, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey. |
