Pax Arcana
Don’t. Look. Her. In. The. Eyes!
Oprah Winfrey strolls the grounds of her 80,000 square-foot secret lair, tucked into the side of a volcano on a remote island in the south Pacific. She pauses to pick up her platinum-plated megaphone — a gift from Tom Cruise.
“Beebo!” she bellows. “Beebo! Get me ABC on the phone. I have a wonderful idea for a marketing and product-placement bonanza that will make me look like I care about the chimney sweeps and ditch diggers my assistant says make up 99.9% of the population. Each week, I will have them give away token gifts to people in need — then I will award one winner $1 million at the end of the season. All while I rain advertising down on the viewers in a furious torrent of commercials and placement of featured products. The commoners will be so confused by their sobbing and wishful thinking that they will buy anything we put in front of them!”
Sadly, this is not how Oprah came up with the idea for Oprah’s Big Give. The reality is that she stole the idea from a Boston woman who pitched it to her production company back in 2005 — or so the woman claims.
Darlene Tracy, whom the New York Daily News describes as a “mother of four with no experience in TV producing,” says she sent a proposal to Oprah three years ago for a show called The Philanthropist — in which contestants vie for supremacy in drumming up charity money and making TV viewers cry:
Tracy claims she sent her pitch to Ellen Rakieten, executive producer of Winfrey’s talk show, and that Rakieten and another producer, Jennifer Thornton, wrote back to ask for more details.
Tracy contends she shipped off a fine-tuned business proposal on March 1, 2005. Four months later, Thornton allegedly told Tracy that Oprah’s company, Harpo Productions, was going to pass.
Then, in November 2006, Winfrey announced on her show that she was giving money to audience members so they could help their communities. The following month, she and ABC announced they were teaming up for “Big Give.” Tracy, representing herself, promptly filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Boston seeking to stop “Big Give” from airing.
Tracy’s suit was dismissed in the Massachusetts court last year, without comment but presumably because the state of Massachusetts has nothing to do with this disagreement. Tracy is currently appealing.
For her part, Oprah has had 14 journalists murdered just for asking about the case, so don’t expect to see any public comments any time soon.
Her ‘Big Give’ suit says Oprah Winfrey is a big taker [NY Daily News]
Oprah Wins Dismissal of Copyright Infringement Suit [Findlaw]
4 Comments
March 20, 2008 at 1:17 pm
That’s funny because the same thing happened to me. I sent in a pitch to George Lucas for three Star Wars prequels that centered around a talking platapus.
March 20, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Man, you got totally hosed.
March 21, 2008 at 10:46 am
Leave Oprah alone.
March 21, 2008 at 11:03 am
She started it.