Oprah Winfrey may just have committed the strangest promotional give-away ever. She just tracked down the 352 audience members from a show she’d taped two and a half years ago — and then gave all of them a Kindle.
It’s part of the count-down to Oprah’s final show, which airs May 25 (in just six weeks). After 24 years and 5,000 episodes, Oprah’s been looking back on her legacy. And there was one particular audience that she felt had been short-changed.
“You know the saying that it’s the thought that counts?” Oprah said in an introduction. “Depends on what the thought was.” Calling it a “holiday oopsie gone wrong,” she remembered the day in November of 2008, when her audience entered the studio, and noticed that her set was decorated with enormous props shaped like Christmas presents. Each Christmas, Oprah taped a show where each audience member received a lavish gift package, each containing a complete set of “Oprah’s favorite things”. “Could it be? they wondered. Could they have scored the hottest ticket in television…”
Thursday, in a special episode titled “Oprah’s Bloopers, Blunders and Funniest ‘What Were We Thinking?’ Moments,” Oprah described that audience’s reaction as she then informed them that this year’s show was going to be different. “We thought that since we were in the throes of the recession, instead of favorite things, we should do a show about how to have a thrifty holiday.” Oprah had wanted to emphasize the real meaning of the holidays, saying that bringing that back would be her favorite thing this year. “So instead of walking away with bags full of fabulous gifts, this audience got tips on what we thought would be the perfect present that year: an empty box.”
[The show’s camera then panned across the
faces of horrified members of the audience…]
During yesterday’s show, Oprah remembered her audience’s reaction. “I went back into the control room, which is behind that wall, during that show, and I go, ‘I think they’re mad at me! Everybody’s looking real mad!'” Yesterday she even flew in two people who’d been in her audience for that ill-fated show, just to have them describe the emotional roller-coaster. “We thought, ‘Oh my god! We made it! We’re here!” one woman remembered. “It’s the Favorite Things show!” And then the other woman jokingly added what she thought the Christmas show had meant.
“We’re going to see Santa!”
“Yeah, I could feel y’all turning on me…” Oprah joked. “It has now been three years, and my producers still feel badly about disappointing everybody in that audience. So we made a few calls, and the FedEx Elves agreed to make a special delivery to you both. Elves?” (Two FedEx deliverymen then entered carrying two boxes.)
Each box contained a tote bag from Land’s End, some spring wedges from Ugg boots, a Flip video camera, and, yes, a Kindle 3G. (The audience’s cheers actually surged loudly when Oprah announced that the gift packages included Kindles.) “And of course, for everybody in today’s studio audience? You get the same!”
And then the audience rose to their feet and cheered wildly as more FedEx deliverymen — dressed in elf hats — entered with hundreds of gift packages from the back of the studio.
