Thanksgiving week is traditionally the time viewers drool over the list of Oprah's Favorite Things on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Every year since 2002, audience members cry, hug and scream as Oprah Winfrey announces that they will take home refrigerators, Target gift cards, laptops, camcorders and more of her favorite things.
According to a report on the Huffington Post, it looks like Oprah won't be playing the favorite things Santa in 2009. The "Favorite Things" show is not part of this week's lineup and a Harpo employee told Huffington Post exclusively, "We have no plans this season for a 'Favorite Things.'"
A glance at The Oprah Winfrey Show website shows that there is no mention of the much-watched 'Favorite Things' episode in this week's line-up. On Wednesday, November 25, Oprah's guest is Vicki Kennedy, wife of the late Senator Edward Kennedy. On Thanksgiving Day, Oprah is scheduled to be on location at the Walter Reed Medical Center. Wrapping up the week, Oprah will reveal her favorite recipes.
That's must be it -- this year's Oprah's Favorite Things are free recipes. Not positive there will be "ooooohs" and "ahhhhhhhs" about these freebies, but even Oprah needs to scale back in this tough economy. Or is it her sponsors that decided not to give away roughly a bazillion dollars worth of goodies to screaming Oprah fans?
That doesn't seem likely since after being featured on the
'Oprah’s Favorite Things' segment, businesses typically experience a large boost in their website traffic and in visits to their stores. For small businesses with limited resources and a small staff, the resulting boost in customers can cause the business to become overwhelmed and unable to meet customer demands.
According to Scott Schroeder, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Garrett Popcorn Shops, being featured on a previous Oprah episode resulted in over 100,000 hits to the website on the afternoon the episode was aired and sales increased by over 100%. This caused the business to go from "making popcorn eight hours a day to 24 hours a day."
With Oprah's recent announcement to end her show in 2011 and the Huffington Post report that her "Favorite Things" show will not happen in 2009, could this be the end of a generous era for Oprah? Perhaps it's just time for a change and giving away refrigerators isn't Oprah's style anymore.
Written by Cheryl Phillips
HULIQ.com
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