In the beginning, we couldn’t pronounce her name — “Was it ‘Oaf-rah‘? ‘Off-ra?’ ‘OP-ray‘?” Concerned, WLS-Ch. 7 shot a promo that featured people simply pronouncing it. When her 30th birthday rolled around, her co-workers treated her to a small party at an off-track betting parlor on State Street. And, perhaps most shocking of all, soon after she arrived, she was sent to Africa on assignment and had to fly coach.
Oprah Winfrey. Flying coach.
There is no Oprah creation myth. She didn’t descend to Chicago on a cloud or rise from Lake Michigan, resplendent. She arrived from Baltimore, a team player at a struggling station, a new personality hired to replace a departing personality and inherit the hosting duties on a low-rated morning show, “AM Chicago.”
“She didn’t walk in a big deal at all,” said Mary Ann Childers, who co-anchored the 10 p.m. news on WLS at the time. “She was just her, in the Christmas parade with the rest of us, part of the ebb and flow. She came to do a morning show, not a nationally syndicated show. People forget the big star then was Phil Donahue.”
Twenty-seven years later, as Winfrey prepares the final episode of her nationally syndicated show, which blossomed out of “AM Chicago,” it’s a good time to be reminded of this, of the people who brought her to Chicago, the circumstances, the seemingly insignificant moments that push a minor career toward stardom.
For instance, there was a moment in Schaumburg, during a focus group in 1983, when WLS became fully convinced of Winfrey’s appeal, according to Joe Ahern, station manager at the time. The core deciders at the station — general manager Dennis Swanson, program director Tim Bennett and Ahern — had slogged through 100 audition tapes. They settled on five (one of which came from Janet Davies, now the host of Channel 7’s “190 North”). During the focus group testing, WLS staff stood behind a two-way mirror, watching.
“There was this one older white guy and he’s sitting next to an African-American guy,” Ahern said, “and you could tell from their body language they weren’t comfortable with each other. Both had their arms crossed, legs crossed away from each other, not giving each other the time of day. So the moderator shows the video of Oprah, and 60 seconds in the white guy sits up, nudges the African-American guy and smiles and goes, ‘She’s great. I’d watch her.’ And by now the African-American guy’s arms are down and he’s nodding too.”
Winfrey was 29, co-host of a morning show in Baltimore that, unlike “AM Chicago,” routinely whipped Donahue in the ratings. When asked who made the decision to bring her to Chicago, she always credits Swanson — in 1994, she declared a National Thank You Day on her show and thanked him for having the guts to hire her at the time. “Harold Washington had just been made mayor, and this was a racially volatile city,” she said. But as Swanson said in an interview last week, “There was no way to out-Donahue Donahue then.”
Swanson became GM in August 1983 and was eager to try something different with “AM Chicago.” He was 45. On his first day, Rob Weller, the host, asked to be released from his contract. Swanson had his chance.
“The first time I saw Oprah was on tape,” Swanson said. “This young woman at the station named Debbie DiMaio had a tape of her. She said it wouldn’t show just how good Oprah was, but it’d give me an idea. I was intrigued, and since Oprah couldn’t get time off to come during the week, we brought her in Labor Day weekend, a holiday weekend. It was empty at the station. We had her go to the studio and do a couple of segments, and I’m watching it on the monitor in my office and thinking this is the best audition I have ever been associated with — that I had the answer to my ‘AM Chicago’ problem.
“When she was done, she came to my office. We talked for a while. She wanted to know if her being black was an issue. She wanted to do the show alone, and I told her I would rather do it with one (host) because the show wasn’t making enough money for two. She said, ‘I’m overweight.’ I said, ‘So am I.’ I told her having vulnerability was a good thing because she was going to have to be accepted by a number of people who wouldn’t ordinarily accept her.
“I told her I didn’t want her to change a thing; I didn’t even want her in fancier clothes. But I had one concern — how would she be able to handle the success? I wanted to know if she knew how to cope with success. She said, ‘Do you really think I could be that successful?’ And I said, ‘You’re going to shoot out the lights.’
“But it was my career on the line. To put an African-American woman on morning television in ’83 was not as obvious as it seems. People wondered if I made the right decision. When I called ABC in New York (WLS’ parent company) and I told them it was the right decision, I believe the response was, ‘It better be.'”
Nevertheless, said Bill Applegate, WLS’ news director in 1983, “Dennis was making a lot of decisions back then that turned out to be magical.” In January 1984, Swanson added the syndicated “Wheel of Fortune”; nine months later, WLS got the syndicated “Jeopardy!.” As for Oprah, she debuted Jan. 2.
Within two months, by the end of the February sweeps, “AM Chicago,” the worst-rated show on Chicago television at 9 a.m. on weekdays, was beating the highest-rated, “The Phil Donahue Show.”
Swanson left WLS a year later, promoted to president of ABC Sports; he’s now president of station operations for Fox Television Stations. Ahern replaced Swanson as GM and remained there 12 years; today, he’s executive director of the 100 Club of Chicago, which provides financial assistance to the families of local police officers and firefighters who have died in the line of duty, and lives in Barrington. DiMaio was Winfrey’s executive producer until 1994. Bennett retired last year, as president of Harpo Productions.
And Oprah?
“She got rich,” Swanson said. “I got promoted.”
Twitter @borrelli