After Oprah

The end of Oprah Winfrey's talk show in 2011 may mean more relief than TV stations are willing to admit. It's because the show, while delivering solid ratings and reliable lead-ins for early evening newscasts, has slipped from its massive dominance into a position where stations are seriously weighing its costs versus benefits.

Oprah's hefty numbers come with a hefty price tag. Stations are paying several hundred thousand dollars a year in license fees to carry her show. That's compounded by limited amounts of commercial time for those stations to sell -- most of the commercial time in The Oprah Winfrey Show is sold to national advertisers, and the stations don't see one penny of that revenue. Back in the 1990's, you could justify such a cash outlay. But since then she's lost a large chunk of her audience according to Nikki Finke, and even if she were to continue her show past 2012, you would probably see her affiliates demanding lower license fees.

With Oprah off the air, stations will have much more cash to sink into other programming, or back into their infrastructure. Early evening newscasts will take a ratings hit, no doubt, but how much of a hit is still uncertain. If a station's general manager can replace Oprah with another effective lead-in, that hit is going to be minimal. I can forsee stations replacing Oprah with Ellen DeGeneres' show, or perhaps Judge Judy, which by the way has been drawing about the same numbers as the big O. For that matter, Two And A Half Men re-runs have been beating both these shows in audiences -- and likely for a much lower license fee.

I remember how Oprah came out of nowhere in the 1980's to revolutionize talk television, single-handedly dethroning Phil Donahue as the leader of the genre. But back in the day, Oprah was more of your favorite gal-pal than media-savvy, socially-conscious baroness. If you want to play the "Jump The Shark" game, I nominate her massive giveaway of automobiles in 2004 and her establishment of her academy for girls in South Africa as the beginning of the slow slide. When Oprah stopped being Oprah, the show lost its connectivity factor. Oprah became more like Martha Stewart, so rich and so polished and so far removed from the 9-to-5 grind.