Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [53]
Frank said, “If we do this show right, it should have a white guy and a black woman. It crosses all lines then.”
Baker agreed. “Then came the hard part,” he said. “I had to talk Oprah into it.”
Even at the end of her rope, she would have preferred being let go to doing daytime television. “She really wanted to be a news person,” Baker said. “She knew that news was all that mattered in television at the time. She saw daytime as a real come-down, a failure. She started crying. ‘Please don’t do this to me,’ she begged. ‘It’s the lowest of the low.’ I told her, ‘If you can become a success in daytime, Oprah, I promise that you can have a more profound effect on Baltimore than you can as a news anchor.’ What I was offering her was a real job and, quite frankly, she had no other option.”
Rather than play his take-it-or-leave-it card, Baker promised to help. “I told her I’d open my Rolodex. ‘I’ll do the booking, if need be,’ I said. ‘I’ll make the calls. I’ll oversee the producers. I’ll be there every step of the way, because I’ve got my career riding on this morning talk show as much as you do. We’ll make it a success together.’ ”
What Bill Baker told Oprah he also told reporters. “This show will be the ultimate refinement of every morning talk show that has ever been presented.… Housewives are bright, intelligent people. They are deep-thinking people.” He promised to give them shows of substance, which he defined at the time as dealing with Valium abuse, special diets, male sexuality, fashion, and cooking. “People Are Talking will be the biggest studio morning show this city—or any city—has ever done.” He also wanted to create a talk show to compete with The Phil Donahue Show, which was getting astounding ratings all over the country, including in Baltimore.
Baker promised Oprah a big production budget, a raise in salary, an elaborate new set, a sophisticated telephone hookup, wardrobe consultants, and lighting and makeup specialists, plus the booking office of Westinghouse, which he said would ensure better guests because they would be offered the opportunity of appearing on all five Westinghouse stations around the country.
“Oprah finally agreed to do it,” Baker recalled years later, “but she left my office with tears in her eyes.”
RICHARD SHER cringed as he recalled the August 14, 1978, debut of People Are Talking. “I still remember the headline in The Baltimore Sun,” he said decades later: “ ‘A Breath of Hot Stale Air.’ ”
Television critics shredded the new morning talk show. They blasted Bill Baker for promising intelligent fare for stay-at-home moms and then delivering a “mindless” show about soap operas. They blasted Richard Sher for hogging airtime with an ego that “swallow[ed] up the co-host, the guests and most of the furniture.” They slammed the producers for a herky-jerky pace: “People Are Talking sputtered into life yesterday like some sort of souped-up car with a rookie driver who had never used a clutch before.”
Only Oprah escaped the damning reviews. She was commended for a “well polished” smile and handling the Dialing for Dollars segment “with unusual grace, giving this tacky little gimmick about as much class as is possible.” Still, Bill Carter issued a warning in The Baltimore Sun: “A long run at this and Oprah’s image as a news reporter is not going to be helped.”
Oprah continued anchoring the news at noon, but she was no longer driven to become “the black Barbara Walters.” She had been so nervous the day before her talk show debut that she ate three Payday candy bars and five chocolate chip cookies the size of pancakes. But