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It’s Harpo Time! Oprah Winfrey Inks Content Deal With Apple

It’s Harpo Time! Oprah Winfrey Inks Content Deal With Apple

Written by Ann Brown

Jun 18, 2018

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Apple has come out swinging hard in its battle with Amazon and Netflix over original programming. Amazon just signed a new first-look deal with Nicole Kidman’s production company. Netflix recently inked a deal with Shonda Rhimes as well as former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, and now Apple has announced a partnership with Oprah Winfrey, who has a proven track record on hit original TV programming. “Her Harpo banner has produced multiple Oscar-winning features including ‘Selma,’ in which she also had a featured role. Her TV works include HBO’s ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,’ ‘Oprah’s Master Class’ and, most famously, hosting the syndicated ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’” The Hollywood Reporter reported.

This is a big move for Apple.

“As a shot across the bow that Apple has arrived in the content environment, it’s as big as you can get,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, told NBC News. “By signing her, it’s got great symbolic value. But whether or not big exciting content comes out of these big exciting signings is yet to be determined,” Thompson said.

Under Winfrey’s non-exclusive multiyear content deal with Apple, her Harpo Films will create new original programs. Of course, she will continue to serve as chairman and CEO of OWN, which is 70 percent owned by Disney. Although the terms of the agreement were not immediately available, sources “say the pact includes everything from film, TV, applications, books and other content that could easily be distributed on Apple’s all-encompassing platform. (The deal does not include podcasts, as Winfrey has her own platform for that.),” The Hollywood Reporter reported.

Oprah
Oprah Winfrey arrives at Selma And The Legends That Paved The Way Gala on Saturday, Dec. 6, 2014, in Goleta, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

 

“Together, Winfrey and Apple will create original programs that embrace her incomparable ability to connect with audiences around the world,” the company said in a statement Friday. “Winfrey’s projects will be released as part of a lineup of original content from Apple.”

It is not sure Winfrey, once considered the Queen of Daytime TV, will appear in any of the projects, although it is believed she will most like appear at as host or commentator for many of the projects. Also, the exact timing of when the programming will begin has not been released either.

Winfrey’s podcast version of her Emmy-winning “Super Soul Sunday” series just reached No. 1 on Apple Podcasts.

“We don’t know anything about making television,” Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue told CNNMoney in March. “So what skills does Apple bring to that? And the viewpoint is: very little. There’s other things we bring. We know how to create apps, we know how to do distribution, we know how to market. But we don’t really know how to create shows.”

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