Oprah Winfrey said that she wanted to create a cable network without a trace of “mean-spirited” programming, and she has wrung every drop of it from the Oprah Winfrey Network.
The unveiling of her 24-hour cable network, OWN, which began at noon on New Year’s Day, was most striking for what it lacked: nowhere in that opening gush of feel-good highlight reels, self-improvement plans, spiritual quests, aha! moments, celebrity master classes, and people finding their truths and living their own best lives was there a snicker of malice or a hint of raillery. At times, it seemed almost like a comical conceit, like those movies that pivot on the sudden disappearance of a basic pillar of life, “Death Takes a Holiday” or even “The Invention of Lying.”
OWN is a place where cynicism takes a holiday and mockery hasn’t yet been invented.
Ms. Winfrey has expertly marshaled all of her media resources, and especially the 25th and farewell season of her syndicated talk show, to promote her new venture. But OWN is a gamble not because it is the first cable network to be so tightly wrapped around the persona of its creator. OWN aims to be a 24-hour non-news network that inspires, entertains and educates viewers – with the back of the hand tied behind its back.
There is no Chelsea Handler baring her big, sharp teeth on OWN; there is no Kathy Griffin or Joan Rivers standing up to take a crack at other people’s appearances or ages. There isn’t even an Oprah Winfrey standing in the studio audience, raising a quizzical eyebrow at a guest’s self-deceptions. Ms. Winfrey has created a ridicule-free zone where people like Tatum O’Neal and her father, Ryan O’Neal, and Naomi Judd and her daughter Wynonna can explore their personal growth in public.
Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, will also have her reality show, a quest for self-esteem and self-discovery called “Finding Sarah,” beginning later in the year. “Princess or not, duchess or not, titled or not, fat, thin, whatever you might be,” Ms. Ferguson explains in her promos, “we’re all the same, actually.”
And that may be the most distinctive feature in a network crammed with glossy programming and Oprah protégés like Dr. Phil and Gayle King. Lots of cable networks offer ordinary people the chance to become famous. On OWN, celebrities are allowed to pose as ordinary people.
Or just pose. On “Oprah Presents Master Class,” celebrities like Maya Angelou, Condoleezza Rice and Simon Cowell are given a chance to present the best versions of themselves, the ones that rarely make the editorial pages or tabloid spreads. An Oprah master class is not actually a how-to course; it’s more like a video version of self-publishing: celebrities talk about their careers to the camera without a visible interviewer and without interruption or contradiction.
On Sunday, when the news anchor Diane Sawyer talks about her days as a weather girl in Kentucky, she describes herself not as a gorgeous blond former pageant winner but as a poetry-spouting “geeky weirdo.” Ms. Sawyer, who says the secret to success is “curiosity,” explains her rise without ever using words like “drive” or “ambition.”
The master class of the hip-hop artist and businessman Jay-Z was shown as a sneak preview over the weekend, and in it he posits that “hip-hop has done more for racial relations than most cultural icons save Martin Luther King Jr.” There was no one in the room to counter that jazz, R&B, Motown, or even just Oprah Winfrey might also have played a significant crossover role.
Many of the OWN programs are Oprah-fied versions of existing cable programs, without the freak shows or histrionics. The sex problems couples describe on “In the Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman,” which had a sneak preview on Saturday but will be shown regularly on Mondays, can get a little blunt (one woman uses a laundry basket to achieve orgasm with her husband) but not at all salacious.
The competitors on “Your Own Show: Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star,” which begins on Friday, don’t talk smack about one another. Workaholics are taught to spend more time with their families on “Kidnapped by the Kids.” Even the desperate souls who require the intervention of an organizational expert, Peter Walsh, host of “Enough Already with Peter Walsh,” aren’t described as hoarders like those crazed Collyer brother types on the A&E reality show “Hoarders.” Instead they are people with “clutter issues.”
Faith healers, miracle-workers, self-promoters and crackpots are treated with dignity, but a few of the less dignified guests of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” are not part of the new venture. When Ms. Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers to share her controversial views about bio-identical hormone treatment on her syndicated show in 2009, it won Ms. Winfrey a rare dollop of unflattering press, including a Newsweek cover story titled “Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures & You.” Ms. Somers was very visible on OWN over the weekend, but only in paid ads for her Web site, SexyForever.com.
Not all of the shows are humorless, of course, because Oprah loves to laugh. But most of all she likes to make people cry with joy.
OWN isn’t for everyone, and it certainly isn’t for viewers who like Oscar Wilde or can’t read of the death of Little Nell without laughing. But it lives up to the Oprah Winfrey ethos — a “meaningful, mindful” cable network that seeks its own truth and tries to be its own best self.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 2, 2011
An earlier version of this post misspelled Wynonna Judd's given name as Wynona.
