The Oprah-fied Winners

As Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decide to give their first interview after leaving the Royal Palace, how could our marketing minds not dig deeper?

While the jaw-dropping interview by Prince Harry and Meghan moved half the world against the monarchy of Britain, there were more winners than losers after this interview. When Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan aired on CBS on the evening of March 7, it wasn’t a victory for just those who like sharp inside-the-palace intrigue but many others. Let us prove it how!

The Network

CBS beat out other rival networks for the rights to air the interview, produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions. CBS paid a license fee of between $7 million and $9 million in the agreement, which gave CBS the rights to license the special in international markets including the U.K.

Why do you think the network paid out this enormous fees for a special? Was it because ..hey.. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle? Well..

While airing the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their network would be a huge privilege, it also comes with other perks.

The network charged advertisers a premium rate of about $325,000 for 30 seconds of air time during the program, which is about twice what CBS normally charges for a 30-second spot in that time period! More than 55 ads were aired in about 62 ad spots during the extended two-hour special and the network booked a whopping $20 mn in ad revenue!!

Couple this with the revenue garnered by parent ViacomCBS as they sold the Oprah Winfrey interview to 80 markets around the world!

17 mn US viewers, 11.3 mn UK viewers, 12bn social media impressions and counting.. worth it.. we shout!

Fun Fact: Since CBS retained exclusive rights to air the show, people who missed the interview on TV could not access it through any streaming service. Interestingly, when the whole world was going bonkers over this bombshell interview, the top trending show on Paramount Plus platform was Spongebob Squarepants – our condolences!!

Oprah Winfrey

This interview has been emblematic of a career in which Oprah knows how to gravitate to the right platform for a given piece of content. With her past relationship with the network CBS via the news division and “60 Minutes,” for which she was once a correspondent, the network was her obvious choice to sell the interview to. And the $7 million we talked about in the above segment was raked in by none other than The Harpo Productions – the production company of Oprah Winfrey.

Yes, she could have gone exclusively to a streaming service [like Apple, considering her past relationship with the brand as well]. Why do you think she did not choose modern day entertainment sources & chose to stick to an OTT platform like television? Just FYI, The streaming services would have paid an equivalent sum to her as CBS did.

Here’s why..

Oprah understood that CBS on Sunday nights, with a broad audience but also a certain amount of seriousness, was going to get a lot of people watching on television with also a lot of online engagement. While her syndicated talk show is long behind her, this was a talent forged in those days!

Apart from the 17 million viewers, the special also garnered what the TV business terms a 2.6 rating among adults ages 18 to 49, a strong number suggesting that young people who normally don’t watch broadcast television tuned in to see a pair of the world’s most well-known millennials. This, experts say, is further proof of Winfrey understanding corporate partners as well as her audience. And it suggests she can create live-event television, a once-popular skill that is fading in the age of thousands of archived programs on endlessly available digital platforms.

That lady knows what the market wants, what people in Midwest want, what dads want and she knows the best how to leverage on her strengths!

Prince Harry and Meghan

As per a YouGov poll, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s popularity in the United Kingdom fell to a new low after the couple aired grievances about the royal family. But the reverse happened in the U.S., where a Morning Consult poll showed the couple’s primetime interview made Americans view the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in a far more favorable light. And why do we call them winners?

Apart from the ‘liberation’ that the couple felt after speaking boldly about the issues they faced in the Royal Palace, the interview was also used by couple to publicize their audio production company – Archwell Studio. They’ll be collaborating with Spotify for various podcasts through this company.

Also, the interview was a sign that they are ready to be financially independent and are open to new revenue sources. Though they have already signed huge deals with Netflix and are set to shows and films with the streaming service, this interview may help them land even better deals with acting careers, guest appearances, etc. Because all things aside, we can’t refute that the interview was a huge publicity magnet.

The interview was a strong signal that even though they had been financially cut-off by the Royal Family, they are well within their shoes and know how to sustain themselves.

All in all..

The interview reaffirmed Ms. Winfrey’s status as America’s grand inquisitor. It helped the most sought after couple in the world to win the US audience as they got anointed into American royalty through their visit to the queen—that’s Oprah. As for people like you and me, it helped us lift ourselves above the false belief of Royal Life being straight out of a fairy tale!

A win-win for all, we applaud!!

By: Anmol Gupta | Isha Garg

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