Why Oprah Winfrey, the world’s most popular talk show hostess, didn’t manage mass appeal in India

I love this show. This show has been my life. And I love it enough to know when it’s time to say goodbye,” said Oprah Winfrey announcing her 2011 retirement from America’s highest rated talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Winfrey, 55, considered one of the major opinion makers in the United States and arguably the most powerful woman in the world by CNN, has given viewers many memorable moments since she first began the show in 1986. Hollywood actor Tom Cruise’s couch-stomp, Michael Jackson’s revelation about his skin disorder vitiligo and AJ McLean of the Backstreet Boys openly discussing his drug abuse garnered the highest number of viewers.

Winfrey has used the show to launch her magazine, a book club that turned authors into bestsellers, and a cable TV channel, Oxygen, geared to female and lifestyle topics. All these histrionics on her show may have a stronghold on the homemakers of American suburbia, but she hasn’t quite managed to garner a cult status in the subcontinent.

Is it the lack of English-speaking audience in our country, the afternoon time slot or are we more rooted to our culture than what the common urban opinion suggests?

“We are just too self-contained and it is only in the last few years that Indians have opened up to Hollywood and their movies. So it’s only when an Indian like AR Rahman is on the show that they would like to watch it,” says chat-show hostess Koel Purie.

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