Oprah’s OWN Network, Where Fluffy Meets Smart
Oprah’s OWN channel debuts, it appears to be where people like Jerry Springer fans will mix with Oprah fans and self appointed self help gurus and other moonbats who obsess over reality shows.
The author seems too think that Science will be presented too, but I’ve seen WOO win over science on the Oprah show too many times to fall for that.
Can it be worst than the history channel doing supernatural documentaries, or the SyFy channel hosting Ghost hunters? Yes, it very well could be - we will have to wait and see.
But along with this fluffernutter of a schedule comes a real commitment to serious non-fiction shows and documentary films. OWN’s best current series is Oprah Presents Master Class, in which accomplished people talk about who they are and how they got there. The lineup is eclectic enough to include Sidney Poitier and Simon Cowell, and on this weekend’s first episodes, Jay-Z and Diane Sawyer.
Visually, Master Class resembles Sundance Channel’s Iconoclasts; it comes from the same high-powered team of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Sitting against a plain black backdrop, the subject faces the camera, with many quick-cuts to profile and video inserts from their careers; the show is smoothly edited to within an inch of its life. There is no on-camera interviewer, and I’d love to have heard the questions prodding the subjects to talk about recurring topics like overcoming failure. Yet it all works.
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