Oprah Winfrey doesn't miss talk show
Oprah Winfrey doesn't miss her talk show though she misses the connection she built with people.
Oprah Winfrey doesn't miss her talk show.
The veteran broadcaster helmed the Oprah Winfrey Show from 1986 until 2011 and while she loved being able to connect with the audience, she admitted making the programme and delving into hard-hitting topics became very "hard".
Speaking on the Let's Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa podcast, she said: "I miss the everyday conversation. I miss the conversations afterwards.
"As much as I loved the audience, I'm telling you, the nature of what we were doing every day became just so hard."
And Oprah admitted her producers would get "overwhelmed" if the programme didn't win awards so she eventually stopped submitting herself for the major prizes so her team could focus on "doing the best work possible and she could focus on "putting out the effort to do good things, to be a force for good in the world".
She added: "It's not gonna be measured by an award at the end of the year. It's measured in every viewer response.
"I've said many times, your legacy is every life you touch. It's measured in all the lives that are being affected by what you're doing and saying.
"I still hold in reverence all the opportunities we had to reach into people's lives and be there for them in ways that mattered."
The talk show was known for its generous gifts and giveaways to the studio audience, but Oprah admitted it became stressful trying to outdo the last competition, and had a realisation when one producer suggested sending someone into space.
She remembered thinking: "It is time to bring it down."
The final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show saw Oprah take more than 300 of her audience members to Australia for eight days, and while she enjoyed the experience, there were logistical difficulties her team hadn't thought of.
She said: "What we didn't realise is 90 percent of the audience didn't have a passport.
"So the producers were, like, out of their minds trying to get passports for the people in time for the show in Australia."
Oprah made her comments after Kelly - who co-hosts Live with Kelly and Mark with husband Mark Consuelos - asked when she would know it was time to "step away" from the show, which she has fronted since 2001.
The 71-year-old star insisted it wasn't yet "time" for her interviewer to move on.
She said: "First of all, it's not time for you to step away. And I, if I were advising you, I would say absolutely not.
"[You and Mark] are in a groove, and that groove continues to work."
Oprah praised the tone of the show for being "easy" and "light" but also "serious enough when it needs to be."
And Oprah argued that Live... is "vital and important".
She said: "Don't let go of the platform that you have.
"Do not do it. Don't even consider it, because I feel that the reach that you have, the audience that you've built, the family that you've created — both inside the studio and in the rest of the world — is really more vital and important now than ever before."
