Making

By WBEZ ChicagoSociety & Culture

Making episodes

December 30, 2016 Oprah BONUS: Making Donahue
In our final bonus installment, the Making
Oprah production team revisits an extended interview with daytime talk
show legend Phil Donahue. His pioneering show, Donahue, aired
from 1967 to 1996 and laid the groundwork for Oprah's program. It tackled heady,
controversial issues - and landed frothy exclusives with A-list celebrities. Donahue
also used his studio audience and callers in ways that were both innovative and
intimate.
Join host Jenn White, producer Colin McNulty,
and executive producer Joel Meyer as they listen back to one of their favorite
non-Oprah interview from the dozens of interviews conducted for Making
Oprah.
40 min
December 23, 2016 Oprah BONUS: Oprah Gets Political
For more than 10 years after the launch of the Oprah Winfrey Show,
Oprah deliberately avoided having politicians on her show, particularly during
election seasons. In this bonus episode of Making Oprah, host Jenn White talks to
Oprah about the role politics played - and didn't play - in the history of the Oprah
Winfrey show.

22 min
December 16, 2016 Oprah BONUS: Let's Talk About Oprah's Hair
If you look at any image from the Oprah Winfrey
Show, you can pretty much figure out what decade it's from by looking at
Oprah's hairstyle.
In this short bonus episode, host
Jenn White talks to Oprah's longtime stylist Andre Walker about the high stakes of
doing the hair of the most watched woman on television.
14 min
November 22, 2016 Oprah 3: YOU GET A CAR!
In the show's final decade, Oprah and her team staged massive
spectacles of increasing grandiosity, from the infamous car giveaway to a
21,000-person flash mob that shut down part of
Chicago.
“It had become increasingly more
difficult to top what you'd done the year before,” Oprah told WBEZ's Jenn White. “I
mean, to the point where we literally sat in a room saying 'What about outer space?'
”
That's what we look at now:
Oprah living her life at the top, pushing the boundaries of what could be done with
the world's most powerful talk show, and why it all had to end after 25
years.

1 hr 3 min
November 17, 2016 Oprah 2: Skinheads And Scented Candles
In the second episode of Making Oprah, we
explore how The Oprah Winfrey Show elevated itself out of the
heap of trash TV and into a show that intentionally embraced spirituality and
positivity.
The early years of Oprah's show often relied
on sensational, tabloidy topics – cheating husbands, sexy clothes, and murderers. It
was not yet the 'Live Your Best Life' Oprah we would come to know and
love.
“It was during those shows where I just
thought, 'What are we doing?' ” Oprah tells WBEZ's Jenn White. “This is a platform
that is speaking to people, and what are we
saying?”
As the Oprah Winfrey
Show reached maturity -- or at least, its college years -- the program
conducted the on-air experiments that would allow this talk show to become something
more than a talk show
1 hr 1 min
November 10, 2016 Oprah 1: No Strategy, No Plan, No Formula
It was 30 years ago this fall that Oprah Winfrey first said
“hellooooo” to a national audience. By the show's finale in 2011, it was aired in
145 countries and watched by more than 40 million viewers a week in the U.S. alone.
Today's daytime hosts like Ellen and Dr. Oz? They now average only about a tenth of
that.
If Oprah mentioned a book title, it became a best-seller. She landed the
interviews that no one else could get. Her message of spirituality and empowerment
influenced millions.
With an hourlong daytime TV show, Oprah built a powerful brand. She made
billions. And, as CNN, USA Today, Forbes and Time Magazine all proclaimed, she
became the most powerful woman in America.
In the first of a three-part podcast series, Oprah and former producers
talk with WBEZ's Jenn White about the early, scrappy days of the
program. Phil Donahue reflects on
Oprah's entry into the daytime talk landscape that he once
dominated. Plus, the
podcast revisits milestones from the 1980s, like the show's national debut, and some
mixed feelings over the show's highest-rated episode
ever.
58 min
November 03, 2016 Oprah: Preview of Making Oprah
Making Oprah: The Inside Story of a TV Revolution
is a public radio podcast -- about a daytime talk show. This fall marks 30 years
since the national debut of The Oprah
Winfrey Show. Be the first to hear a sneak peek of WBEZ's
three-part series featuring interviews with Winfrey, her onetime ratings rival Phil
Donahue, former producers and staffers, and TV
executives.
5 min