Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [47]
Oprah made her debut on August 16, 1976, but all the hoorahs went to Jerry Turner. “He has managed to become a coanchor without losing any of his impressive prestige and class,” wrote television critic Bill Carter. “More and more he drives home the point that he is head and shoulders above anyone else as a local newsman, maybe above most of the local newsmen in any market in the country. Which brings up the question of why he was ever given any anchor help at all.”
Oprah was saluted for “flawless” news reading and accorded “some style,” but not much. “It is a subdued kind of style that might be easily forgettable.… This is not to demean her on-camera abilities, which are considerable. But … Oprah’s personality is not as strong as some of the other Channel 13 people or else it has not really come through yet.… [S]he is not in any way arresting—at least not yet.”
Within weeks it became clear that the chemistry between Oprah and her silver-haired, silver-tongued coanchor was toxic. He saw himself as the reincarnation of Edward R. Murrow, and to him she looked like an imposter who had no right to serve the sacred host of television news to the community of Baltimore. He was astounded that she allowed others to write her copy and then went on the air without reading it ahead of time. This was incomprehensible to a man who revered writing and always came to the office early to compose his newscast. He was appalled by the arch manner she assumed on the air, which she later mocked herself as her condescending lady-to-the-manor-born tone of voice, saying she thought that was how an anchorwoman was supposed to sound. Turner was flabbergasted when Oprah read the word Canada from the teleprompter as “Ca-NAY-da” three times in one newscast. She later mispronounced Barbados as “Barb-a-DOZE.” She read a report about a vote in absentia in California as if “Inabsentia” were a town near San Francisco. A few nights later she characterized someone as having “a blaze attitude,” not knowing how to pronounce blasé. Then she began editorializing on the news, breaking in at one point to say, “Wow, that’s terrible.” Ratings tanked.
For Turner, though, the capper came when Oprah, twenty-four years his junior, turned to him on the air and quipped, “You’re old enough to be my father.” That ripped it, and unbeknownst to Oprah, her days were numbered.
“From the start I knew it wouldn’t work out,” said Bob Turk. “Oprah was just too inexperienced and limited in her knowledge of world affairs, especially geography, to be placed in [the] position … of anchoring with the dean of Baltimore news.”
When the dean became displeased, Oprah got dumped, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put her back together again. On April Fool’s Day 1977, eight months into her reign, Oprah lost her crown. Toppled from the most prestigious position at the station, anchoring the news, she was tossed into television’s scut bucket, to do early-morning cut-ins. The consensus around the station was that while she may have been a power pitcher in Nashville, she couldn’t get the ball over the plate in Baltimore. A minor leaguer who would never make the majors, Oprah became the baseball goat, shunned by fans and blamed by the team for failure.
Years later she and her best friend, Gayle King, a WJZ production assistant at the time, recalled what happened:
OPRAH: [T]hey decided it wasn’t working because the anchorman—
GAYLE: Didn’t like you.
OPRAH: But I didn’t know it. I was so naive. The day they decided that they were going to take me off the 6 o’clock news, I said to Gayle—
GAYLE: I’m just typing at my desk. She goes, “Get in the bathroom now.”
OPRAH: We’d always meet in the bathroom. We were like, “Oh, my God. Do you think Jerry Turner knows?” Of course, Jerry Turner was the main anchor who was kicking my ass out, but we didn’t know that. Jerry was like, “Babe, I don’t even know what happened, Babe.” You know, “Sorry, Babe.”
GAYLE: I was stunned.
OPRAH: It’s like your life