Want to sell something? Anything? Arrange an audience with Oprah. And if you doubt the power of the Holy Queen of Daytime, just take a look at this up-to-the-minute chart from Amazon:
Who the hell? Devo?!? No. Not even.
When he’s not berating carefully selected auditioners for Fox television, Simon Cowell pretends to be a modern day Maurice Starr. So Il Divo is Cowell’s own version of NKOTB, only older, better dressed and operatically-trained. Before yesterday afternoon around 4pm, nobody on this side of the Atlantic had any idea who they were. In less than an hour, the O’Faithful met them, heard them, and were convinced that they were the best thing they’ve ever seen on God’s green little Earth. And now Il Divo is the number one seller on Amazon.
This doesn’t surprise me. All too well do I remember weekday afternoons spent behind the counter at WaldenBooks, fielding phone calls from frantic viewers who’d just received their latest instructions from the Almighty O. “Do you have the new book that there Deepak Chopra / Stephen Covey / Tony Robbins / [insert smiling motivational speaker here] fella? He was on Oprah, y’know, and I just got to read me some o’ him!”
The worst of them all was Robert James Waller, an absolutely unknown regional author whose little bridges book spent months collecting dust on our “local” shelf. Or it did … until he showed up on the O Show. We were out of them within seconds of the show’s credits, leaving tons of rabid housewives distraught and standing stunned in the middle of our store.
“Didn’t they tell you?!? Why aren’t you prepared?!? He was on OPRAH, for God’s Sake!!!”
Update: Six hours later, and the Not-Devo are still on top … and now sporting an virtual sticker of Oprah-tic approval.
Oh, and did I say that #3 Joss Stone was the other musical guest on yesterday’s O Show?
