But apart from all her undeniable talents and abilities and charms, Oprah Winfrey also offered something unique in daytime television: food for the hungers traditionally fed by organized religion and spirituality. Her shows were a daily dose of redemptive confession or suffering, a vision of justice, and the promise of salvation in this life.
At times Winfrey described her work as a religious mission: “I am the instrument of God. I am his messenger. My show is my ministry.” If we take Winfrey at her word and consider her work a ministry, it would have been one virtually unrivaled in size and influence in the late twentieth century. Oprah’s teachings, as a rule, hewed to a generally Christian view of existence, emphasizing love for the distressed, human weakness, life as a struggle, the value of confessing sin, and an ongoing effort to achieve redemption.
She also emphasized ideas with twentieth-century origins, like the importance of self-esteem and self-respect, of positive thinking, and of treating oneself well. “Live your best life” was one of the show’s mottos. But in one major respect Winfrey’s teaching tended to differ considerably from both Christianity and other traditional religions, which steadfastly warn of the spiritual dangers of materialism. *
The show’s prescriptions for personal growth always included consumption as a means of self-actualization and self-reward. “For her, transformation is about self-esteem and about buying stuff,” says Susan Mackey-Kallis.13 Viewers were encouraged to treat themselves well with their purchases (“show yourself love”).
Oprah’s great innovation was to amalgamate the ancient attention-capturing potential of a great faith with the programming function of a broadcaster, and the mass drawing power of her own celebrity. It was by the standards of any attention merchant a potent proffer for advertisers.
Advertising was indeed Winfrey’s main revenue source, and when she sold her audiences she was delivering not mere eyeballs but minds whose buying decisions had been conditioned by her unusually strong influence, which eventually “exceed[ed] that of any other celebrity—perhaps in history,” according to Craig Garthwaite of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.