It's easy to understand how she/Harpo accumulated over $2 billion. Oprah and Quinta Brunson Abbott Elementary (HBOMax & OWN) 2022 DAYTIME EMMY . And theres a big one that we didnt touch on yet that I was shocked by when I did the research. Vernon settled down there, married a woman named Zelma Myers, and he was working at Vanderbilt University as a janitor. So in the last 10 years, you don't really know. They were tossing PS4s, cellphones, Xboxes, and then tossing $10,000 cheques and stuff. I don't know how many people watch the Hallmark Channel, it's a good idea, or OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). This nine-year-old to be raped and exposed to everything at that age. They own about 73%74% and Harpo owns the rest. Oprah the Billionaire Ms. Winfrey became the first female Black American billionaire in 2003 with a net worth of $1.0 billion and remains the only female Black American born billionaire. I think this episode belongs in the whole broadly affiliated Disney Saga because of all the ABC and Cap Cities connections here, but we're talking about the Marvel Deal, the Lucasfilm deal, the Pixar deal, all these companies that Disney bought. Ben: Dude, that's so funny. David: This was such a classic Acquired. Therefore we estimate Marvel generates about $6.75b in annual revenue for Disney, or nearly 10% of all the companys revenue. She gets put in the slot as the weekend features reporter. September 8, 1986, first national Oprah Winfrey Show airs in 138 markets. The station sees people love her. What does Suzy relate to? Ben: Yeah. Cars driving towards the cliff, pulling the ebrake, and spinning around because the station was in the dumps. No offense to ESPN/Lebron, but well probably never see another acquisition thats so unquestionably dominant across every dimension of the M&A game as Facebooks 2012 purchase of Instagram. In doing the research for this episode. I don't know if it was maybe too parochial to Baltimore or just what, but it doesn't work and the syndication deal gets canceled. We're going to take some cut of the ad dollars that come in from whatever those TV networks in Houston, Phoenix, and Cleveland are able to generate, and then we're going to give the rest to you. Ben: Yeah, and if you look at over the course of a week, the number of unique viewers who would tune in to one of her shows would be 4050 million. I intend to be a mogul. The mindset has taken. Ben: Let me pop-up another level and generally condemn the beauty pageant industry, but then the racist part. Debbie's a producer now. Ben: No, but youre right. Unlike a game show or something like that, what they really tried to do was think of what is on these folks minds? In Montecito, one of if not probably top 5 or 10 highest-valued real estate properties in the world is a five-mile-long driveway. What kind of questions would they ask if they were asking the guests these questions? I assume some of the proceeds from that, she then does a deal with Discovery in 2008, the Discovery Channel, to turn the Discovery Health Channel which is struggling into The Oprah Winfrey Network. Less than 300 million at that point. Ben: Yeah. Join the Acquired Limited Partner program at: https://glow.fm/acquired/, We close out Season 6 with the story of perhaps the single most successful media entrepreneur of all-time: Oprah Winfrey, and her juggernaut conglomerate Harpo Studios. Let's also be honest here, Oprah, as I think we've hopefully described here, is an exceedingly once-in-a-generation sharp media businesswoman. Those were huge syndication deals. So fun to watch on YouTube. Oprah drops out of TSU and makes the move up to Baltimore. Her grades get her into the National Honors Society. David: She spoke a lot about this and I can't even imagine. David: Weve been in the 80s, 90s moments here. Get more inspiration like this delivered to your inbox. David: Complete on a totally different playing field. You get a car. After accepting her seventh Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host and the 9th Emmy for. Oprah's going to be the perfect show. Oprah is a fixture of American life entering the homes of tens of millions of Americans through their television set every day at 4:00 PM for the 25-year run of her show. He had been installed by Capital Cities, which owned the station, to fix it. The companies began buying film rights to literary works, including Connie May Fowler's Before Women Had Wings, which appeared in 1997 with Winfrey as both star and producer, and Toni Morrison's Read More Two fantastic sources if you want more Oprahwho doesn't more Oprah?that you should go check out. They're producing all their own stuff. He crushed it. You're now subscribed to our email list, and will get new episodes when they drop. Ben: Here's another good tech theme. Broadcast Media Production and Distribution Latest update. Its first feature film, Beloved, was released in 1998 by the Walt Disney Company (see entry). They were going to watch whatever was on. With the acquisition being necessary but not sufficient to create Apples $1.4 trillion market cap today, we conservatively attributed 5% of Apple to this purchase. Pontiac spent all the money and they were like, this is well worth it for our advertising. Clearly Walt Disney doesn't need to be alive for. They have the perfect host there. Ben: That's even the way it would have worked for a game show. Ben: Right. David: Totally. When Oprah was born in 1954 in Mississippi in the deep south, she was born to a single teenage mother, Vernita Lee, who was a housemaid. Everybody knows it. Ben: The way that I label this theme is she had the perfect timing where you could reach the national audience, but everyone couldnt reach a national audience and this could never happen again. David: Totally. She becomes the first black woman on television in Nashville, I think in all of Tennessee, but definitely in Nashville. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You guys already shoved me over to covering zoos. David: On this going out on top, she decides that the 25th season of the show is going to be the last and she's going to fully transition to mobile status and she's working on a big deal which we'll talk about in a sec. So great. We finally did it. The plan is they're going to launch in January 2011 because the King World CBS distribution rates for The Oprah Winfrey Show ran through May 2011. David: He's a good identifier of talent that is for sure. It was part of a series of things that she started where it was like when I have an idea of a thing that I love that I want to give to my audience, like pajamas, for example, we will just give them to the audience because I want them to enjoy it. Oh my God. There's no reason to tune in. She is pregnant and she tries to hide it from her family. I don't know how much of this was a calculated plan. OPRAH IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF HARPO, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2023 HARPO PRODUCTIONS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. If you havent listened to Reply All and you like this show, I bet youd really like that show. I thought this whole Oprahs giveaway thing is shes so rich, she doesnt need to be rich, she doesnt care about being rich, she loves her audience so she buys some things. Perhaps most relevant to the Acquired auditions, she really invented the idea of what we call today an influencer. Who Is Oprah Winfrey? How Did She Get Rich? - Investopedia Single-handedly responsible for one of the greatest business model innovations in history with the advent of cable carriage fees, ESPN proves Albert Einsteins famous statement that Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.. It is the sole subsidiary of her media and entertainment company Harpo, Inc. Then, of course, the Disney merger and all of that ride of a lifetime stuff. He has a $16 million, more modest estate nearby. Ben: The car giveaway was not random. I don't know exactly why. What Oprah Knows for Sure About Healthy Living, Oprah Just Cleaned Out Her Entire Closet at Harpo Studios, Behind the Scenes of Oprah's March 2016 Cover, The Documentary About Nora Ephron Only Her Son Could Make, What It Was Like Growing Up With a Sibling Afflicted With Bipolar Disorder, What an Overweight Former Model Can Teach Us About Breaking Free of Bad Habits, The One Lesson Cory Booker Learned from His Father We Should All Think About, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Its interesting that they were able to produce something with four people that then scaled up to hundreds of people to produce it, but still, their audience was so big that the revenue massively outran the cost of the show. She moves out, she gets an apartment in town, and she starts to keep up in her sites, setting them even higher. We kicked off the six-part series with a deep dive into sourcing. She probably wouldnt have felt that she was doing right by herself, but its also hard to guess what the unintended side-effects were of staying in that station. David: Yeah, and buy the whole walk. She replaced him with a Chicago lawyer named Jeffrey Jacobs. She wins that and then she enters Miss Black Tennessee. Based in Chicago, and with additional offices in Los Angeles, Harpo Inc. is one of the most successful production companies in the history of entertainment, one of the largest black-owned companies in the world, and the brainchild of one of the television industry's highest-paid performers ever, Oprah Winfrey (Harpo is Oprah spelled backwards). They don't really care what their affiliates are doing during the rest of the non-primetime hours. Ben: It's just so unbelievably authentic. Now, remember, Donahue is the OG, the king of morning talk. Thank you for sponsoring the grading section of the show, which were moving onto now. If you want to help us out and take it, you can go to acquired.fm/survey or click the link on the show notes, and thank you so much if you decide to participate. It's happening. David: Yeah. Not only is Oprah an amazing talent, but he's like this is the key. Let's buy this thing, let's own this thing, and let's build this thing. Hundreds and hundreds of people, producers, and just massive staff to be able to pull off these gambits that they did. Today, we are covering an incredible entrepreneur, Oprah Winfrey, and her company Harpo Studios. Of course, it does. David: Yup. We can talk about what powers that fit into, but you have these other properties that aren't Oprah-specific like Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, and Rachel Ray. Ben: I used the word mogul in the intro. They say we're going to take The Oprah Winfrey show national, syndicated in a big way, not 17 markets, 138 markets. It's to be an owner. On September 8, 1986, the first national show is broadcast. Let's get her out here. David: I think they switched around when they did it. Knowing Oprah a little bit vicariously now, I suspect it was. Well get to this in grading. Would she have seen this as this is my in, this is my opportunity? Harpo Productions Inc. - Encyclopedia of Chicago David: So, so crazy. Oprah only had appointment television, but because of that, there's also such a cacophony of content out there. What's the defensibility? harpocareers.com. He immediately takes Oprah upstairs to his office after the mock show and he offers her the job on the spot, $200,000 salary. See how Oprah pares down her memory-filled closets at Chicago's Harpo Studios. Now we can see everything set in motion where everything for Oprah becomes about control, only doing things that she wants, doing things on her terms, doing things that feel authentic to her. Estimated Current Contribution to Market Cap: $20.5 billion, Back in 2009, Marvel Studios was recently formed, most of its movie rights were leased out, and the prevailing wisdom was that Marvel was just some old comic book IP company that only nerds cared about. It was a self-serving investment. But I think a lot of people don't. Rosie was her personal chef. One is the local Chicago NPR affiliate, WBEZ. With Harpo, Inc., Winfrey used her popularity on television to expand into movie production and publishing, making her the most successful African American business owner in the United States, and one of the wealthiest entertainers in the world. She had a deal with Knopf Publishing house to publish it. So keep an eye out for an email, if you're an existing LP or a new LP joining. It's going to be too painful to my family. David: UGGs boots, amazing. The idea is it's going to be a 50-50 JV. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 5 that CBS paid between $7 and $9 million for rights to broadcast the interview, during which advertisers had to pay $325,000 for 30 seconds of commercial. Its a career. We're not going to out-Donahue Donahue, we're going to zig where he's zagging. David: Yeah, you should do radio. Literally, Bob was about to quit Cap Cities and go have this whole different life until he met Dennis. The gatekeepers are gone, but long live the gatekeeper. Ben: We will link in the show notes. David: Isn't that awesome? This is the next line, There has been so much hoopla about this premiere show that it's enough to give a girl hives. This was a huge moment. Again, for folks who are newer to the show, we basically grade how good of a use of capital was for big co to buy a little co and compared to everything else they have done with it. Now we all have our cell phones. The combination of this and the book club. She goes to Philadelphia. Lets move on to grading. She flies out, she does it, and Swansons blown away. Ben: And he would have celebrity guests on, right? Im feeling so good. There's a survey in school about who you want to be when you grow up and her answer was famous. Aside from our story, I was going to say I've never actually watched an episode of Oprah. We could have used ROI multiple or annualized return, but we decided the ultimate yardstick of success should be the absolute dollar amount added to the parent companys enterprise value. Famously very decentralized. I just went on this diet, I lost all this weight. It was crazy. A pure software business capped fixed cost and potentially unlimited or zero marginal cost created unlimited upside. David: More modest estate, understatement of the century. We didnt give the Buick away, but you do an unboxing of a Buick. 2 / 66 Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images 2. Oprah's ready for a bigger stage. When it comes to G.O.A.T. David: Yeah. This isn't going to stop her. If she or he is willing to join us, we are also going to give all LPs access to Ben and my notes on the book. It's sort of easy to understand how she got there where she basically had this ramp from making $35 million in 1988 all the way up to making $200 million-plus a year by 2008. Morgan Stanley estimated that Google Maps generated $2.95b in revenue in 2019. The wall of fame displaying shots of The Oprah Winfrey Show's famous guests. You can contract with us for us to have that be a part of your publication for a period of time, but that's a thing that I own. In the United Kingdom, the interview aired on ITV on Monday, March 8, at 9 p.m., and streamed simultaneously on the ITV Hub, where it can still be watched. Ben: Let's touch on that now because I think Oprah has some quotes looking back on this that are worth mentioning. Remember, Donahue was recording in the same city. We transformed a television production company into a major influence in our culture. Harpo Productions, Inc. | American company | Britannica What are the questions Suzy wants to ask? She certainly knew that by doing this she was going to get these ratings. Ben: Yeah, it's crazy. They watched channels that she was on and when she had moved over to a new channel, like Joe Rogan or like a lot of what we're seeing unfold on podcasting now, she doesn't necessarily have an ability to reach out to all those people and say come on over. About 315-365 audience members fill the seats at every tapingtotaling approximately 1.3 million people in 25 years! Ben: Yeah, wasn't it something like people mispronounced her name so she just said ah screw it and changed it when she was younger. What if we launch a book club? Thats a great way to put it. Ben: Yeah. They do a special version of I Gotta Feeling with new lyrics just for Oprah. David: When did ESPN start? It was the first time I had ever seen a colored person wearing diamonds that I knew were real. Tiny yet mighty! Born to a poor single mother in the segregated 1950's deep south, Oprah's rise from terrible adversity to wealthiest Black woman in the world ranks among the very greatest American success stories. David: The biggest syndicator at this point in time is a company called King World. Effectively extending Googles advertising reach from just its own properties to the entire internet, DoubleClick and its associated products generated over $20b in revenue within Google last year. If you watch a YouTuber, TikToker, have ever brought a product that an internet personality recommended, or even more abstractly you like thinking about how social platforms are transforming the consumer economy, you really have Oprah to thank for paving the way. The name "Harpo" is "Oprah" spelled backwards, and it was also the name of her on-screen husband in The Color Purple. I just want to plan a little seed with people. Very quickly after that, she gets recruited to move to Baltimore and take the co-anchor job in the evening news next to Jerry Turner who was a total legend at WJZ in Baltimore. Way more than she's making in Baltimore. David: I have to imagine that if we would ask Oprah this question it would be like everything is so much better. . They pitch it to the networks, the networks don't want it. Harpo Studios was once a roller skating rink called the Roller Bowl. Harpo Productions (also referred to as Harpo Studios) is an incorporated US-based multimedia production company founded by Oprah Winfrey (the name "Harpo" is "Oprah" spelled backwards, and was the name of her on-screen husband in The Color Purple) and is the sole subsidiary of her media and entertainment company, Harpo, Inc. Harpo Productions's subsidiaries consist of Harpo Radio, Inc. (the . This is the kind of stuff that he was doing, just human interest-type stories, in addition to celebrities. Reported by Bloomberg to be doing $20B of revenue annually now within Facebook (up from ~$0 just eight years ago), Instagram takes the Acquired crown by a mile. She gets back after that to Nashville. There's no board, Oprah controls everything. Ben: What was Donahue doing? Here are just a few fun and informative facts concerning them: In the early 1900s, the Harpo buildings' housed Chicago's Second Regiment Armory.