Why Chicago Gave Oprah an Advantage in Building a National Television Audience

When people think about the centers of American television and entertainment, they often think of New York or Los Angeles. But Oprah Winfrey built her television empire from a different place: Chicago.

That location may have given her an advantage that is easy to overlook.

Oprah has discussed how being based in Chicago gave her a valuable perspective when determining whether a topic had the potential to connect with a national audience. The advantage wasn’t that Chicago’s television signal physically reached more of the country than New York or California. Rather, it was the city’s geographic position, size and diversity.

Chicago is one of America’s largest metropolitan areas and sits in the Midwest, between the country’s major coastal population centers. It has historically attracted people from different regions, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and economic circumstances.

That made Chicago an interesting testing ground for television.

If a topic performed extremely well in Chicago, it could provide producers with an indication that the subject wasn’t simply appealing to a small or highly specialized regional audience. There was a reasonable possibility that people in other parts of the country could relate to it as well.

This was particularly important because New York and Los Angeles have their own powerful cultural identities.

New York is deeply connected to the Northeast and the country’s financial, fashion and media industries. Los Angeles is closely associated with Hollywood, entertainment and West Coast culture. A program developed exclusively within either environment could potentially reflect the particular interests and sensibilities of those markets.

Chicago offered something different.

It was a major American city without being one of the two traditional entertainment capitals. Its audience could provide a useful indication of whether an idea had appeal outside the coastal media bubble.

And Oprah proved that the strategy could work.

Rather than having to establish herself first in New York or Los Angeles, she developed a powerful local following in Chicago and eventually transformed that success into a nationally syndicated television program.

That transition is significant. Oprah demonstrated that a television personality could build something enormous from the Midwest and then take it to the entire country.

The lesson wasn’t that Chicago was somehow more important than New York or Los Angeles. It was that Chicago could function as a different kind of national test market.

If a subject could connect with Chicago’s broad and diverse audience, there was a strong reason to believe it might have relevance beyond the city.

In many ways, Oprah’s Chicago experience also illustrates how television gets shaped by geography. Where a show is produced can influence the people who make it, the stories they notice and the audiences they initially learn to understand.

Oprah didn’t have to begin with the assumption that she needed to appeal to Hollywood or New York first. She could build around an audience in Chicago, learn what resonated with those viewers, and then expand outward.

That may have been one of the hidden advantages of her early career: Chicago gave Oprah a large, diverse American audience to learn from before she became a national television institution.