Oprah Winfrey: I learned from OWN to expand beyond shows that only appeal to me

Variety

By expanding her perspective, Oprah was able to latch on to shows like this week's David Makes Man. "When I was doing the Oprah show all those years, I was basically doing shows for myself and my producers; whatever was going on in our lives, we would sit around and talk about what we thought was important,” Winfrey tells Variety. “What I realized is when you’re doing a whole network, you need to speak to whoever is willing to listen...Fortunately for me, the African American audience followed me from the The Oprah Winfrey Show, so I learned to speak to who was listening, which has been one of my greatest lessons as a programmer for television."