Way to Ruin Television, Oprah

Dear Oprah:

I can appreciate that having loads of money is a valid reason to open a network with your own name plastered on it. I can even appreciate that Discovery Health, the Discovery Channel network dedicated to real-life versions of House, Bones, and a number of random stories about various types of pregnant women, really couldn't be all that profitable. Taking over that channel makes good business sense, probably. (So I am a little prejudiced about what most Americans are interested in, well...hell.)

But....

Talk shows? Shows about giving people talk shows? This is what we're getting instead of afternoon workouts at the perfect time for college students and the employed? Oh, I guess I'm not being fair—I could now sit down to a home movie about a "hardened loner" (quoted from DirecTV's description) who opens up for a factory girl...instead of learning about medical oddities or healthy cooking options like I would normally be doing.

In short,

Oprah, I get wanting to be all about talk shows. Hell, you got big because of them, and because quite frankly Americans do like listening to other people talk almost as much as they enjoy hearing themselves.

But if you insist on doing all this, you need to drop that crap about helping people. How does it help people to sit around watching sappy movies when they could be learning? Or getting their first workout in a few months, for that matter? And, for the love of whichever deity you worship, why do you think the country needs two channels playing Lifetime movies?

Just remember...I know where you work.*

P.S. There's one good side effect to all this. My mother no longer thinks Oprah knows everything about everything.

_{*West Loop, near Greektown (Chicago, IL, USA). It's called Harpo Studios.}