Essay on How Did Oprah Winfrey Start Her Business

Oprah Winfrey was a host of the highly-rated talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show which ran from 1986 to 2011. It won dozens of Emmys and was seen by approximately 30 million viewers a week. After the airing of the show in 2013, an American specialty television channel was created called the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) which is currently jointly owned by Discovery Inc. and Harpo Studios which is Oprah’s production facility. It replaced the Discovery Health Channel and is now led by Oprah and features lifestyle programming as well as drama, sitcoms, and reruns from the Harpo Studios library. Previously, this network was targeted at African American audiences but later Discovery Inc. bought a major portion of the network and changed up a few of the programs.

OWN is a privately held business as it contains “LLC” in its name. This means Limited Liability Company which is commonly used in American companies. As well as this, the shares in this business have been offered to companies or individuals such as Discovery Inc., who are interested in helping this business expand. Furthermore, the shareholders who have invested in this company, in this case Oprah and Discovery Inc., have a limited liability meaning that if the business collapses or cannot pay its debts, they only lose the money they have invested. Since Discovery Inc. acquires most of the business, they will have the most liability. OWN has three executives including Oprah Winfrey who is now the chairman and CEO of the network, Neal Kirsch, the CFO and COO, and Lisa Erspamer, the Chief Creative Officer. There is a board of directors which includes Oprah and Thomas E Freston. The network offers a variety of services and products that cover many topics such as health, parenting, and lifestyle in general. As well as this, there are many non-scripted and scripted dramas. It aired many well-known TV shows including Dr. Phil and The Oprah Winfrey Show. It also aired shows such as Queen Sugar, Ambitions, To Haves and the Have Nots, SuperSoul Sunday, and Oprah’s Master Class. Typically, this channel airs multiple episodes of the same series for a different show each day, followed by an overnight movie. Overall, OWN programs consist of original content, specials, documentaries, and movies. The channel does not air infomercials. In 2017, Discovery Communications became the majority owner of OWN where they bought another 24.5% for $70 million, leaving them with 70% of the company. Now, Oprah currently acquires around 30% of the network in which her shares are worth $75 million. At the beginning of the launch of OWN, there were problems with which Oprah struggled with. The network then found a way to tackle the problem: targeting the channel to African American viewers. They overcame this problem by funding the success it had with black viewers. The network found this out due to the success of a black audience-based show called “Sweetie Pies”. Due to the success, many African Americans held a connection with the show in which the network looked for ways to “nurture and grow that”. Due to market research being done, they found that African Americans watch the most television than any other segment of the population. Thus, the Oprah Winfrey Network began to target African American audiences to tackle disparity as well as help the business become successful. OWN’s target demographic of the 25-54 age group expanded by 39 percent. As well as this, the network's marketing strategies are clever as they use Oprah as the icon and representative of the business. Due to her being well known and being one of the ‘Most Influential People’, her network can succeed and grab the attention of more viewers. The Oprah Winfrey Network is distributed across TV, on Oprah’s website, and the OWN application. On these platforms, viewers can access all the TV shows aired on the channel. The variety of platforms gives viewers a more accessible way to watch the TV shows aired. Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954, in the isolated town of Mississippi to a teenage mother, Vernita Lee, who was a part-time maid, and her father, Vernon Winfrey, who owned a barbershop. As soon as Winfrey was born, her parents separated, and was left in the care of her grandmother who lived on a farm. As a child, Oprah entertained herself by talking and acting in front of the farm animals. At the age of six, she was then sent to live with her mother and her two half-brothers in a ghetto in an extremely dangerous neighborhood. At just nine years old, Oprah’s perspective of life changed forever when she was raped by a teenage cousin. Over the next five years, she was assaulted and abused by three other men, who were all friends of the family. As a young teenager, she became rebellious and developed stealing behavior. This is when she moved in with her father who lived in local Nashville. At Nashville High School, Oprah was voted the most popular student and competed in the Miss Black America pageant. From this, she won an oratory scholarship to Tennessee State University in 1971 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech and drama. When Oprah was still a college student, she took a job as a broadcaster at a local TV station where she became the first black person and first woman hired to anchor the news in Nashville. Later, she took a job as an evening news co-anchor and after breaking down while delivering heartbreaking news, she realized hard news was not her specialty. Instead, Oprah signed up to be on a local morning show. Seven years later, Oprah’s career became set when the show she presented, AM Chicago, became The Oprah Winfrey Show.

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Oprah’s Influences

One of Oprah’s teachers, Mrs Benton, was a great inspiration for her whilst she was growing up. Due to her rough childhood, she was unable to have anyone who believed in her which lowered her self-confidence. Mrs Benton helped overcome her lowered self-esteem by simply telling her that Oprah was just “the smartest little girl” she’d ever seen. Just from this, Oprah could see it in her teacher’s “shiny” eyes that she truly believed in her. From this, she would always stop and acknowledge her presence. This inspired Oprah to influence other children and individuals by having a “shiny” moment with them and always assisting others to believe in themselves.

As well as this, Nelson Mandela was another one of the most influential and motivational figures Oprah was inspired by. Oprah began serving the brightest and the most underprivileged South African girls many of whom survived on less than $950 per month. Her decision to do this started as a promise made to her friend and yet her mentor, Nelson Mandela. Mandela and Oprah met up and they started a conversation about what was in the newspaper; poverty and how to change it. This was the one topic Mandela and Oprah were passionate about. This was the point in Oprah’s life where she was able to change South African girls’ lives because of Nelson Mandela.

Oprah’s Skills and Traits as an Entrepreneur

As Oprah was growing up, she faced many difficulties and obstacles which inspired her to motivate and encourage other people. To do this, she created her TV series, The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her ability to emotionally connect with a wide variety of topics made her a huge success. A trait that Oprah has inhibited while growing up is being a hard worker. This can be seen when Oprah has attempted several times to get into talking on TV shows since she was in college. According to Oprah, she “would never see daylight” due to the amount of work she has been doing to get a stable and successful career. This can be seen where while she was inspired by her success at WTVF-TV where she was a co-news anchor, she left college to accept a position with WJZ-TV as co-anchor of the evening news. From this, it is evident that Oprah took a risk to acquire a more stable pathway for her career. She has always known what she wanted to do early in her life. As well as this, Oprah is seen as persistent and passionate as she always wanted to inspire and talk to individuals about everyday obstacles. After her new job, she was fired due to her breaking down while reporting stories that touched her. However, this did not stop her from becoming a co-host on a talk show called “People Are Talking” which became successful after her appearance.