OPRAH pulled a fast one and staged her annual “Favorite Things” Christmas show in Macon, Ga. over the weekend.
Some 300 lucky fans left the local convention hall pushing shopping carts groaning with tens of thousands of dollars of gifts – including high-def camcorders, clothes, beauty products and (for delivery later) the promise of refrigerators with HD TV sets built into the door.
“It was mind-boggling,” one woman told the local newspaper. “Everybody went crazy. This was much more than we expected.”
Oprah, who stages the “Favorite Things” show every year at holiday time, usually tries to find a deserving group to put in the audience.
In past years, the audience was made up entirely of teachers or rescue workers from Hurricane Katrina.
This year, she took the show to Macon because it consistently has the nation’s highest percentage of viewers tuned into her afternoon talk show.
Local reports say that 45 percent of homes in Macon watch Oprah at 4 p.m. – a huge market share. (In New York, the local share of audience is closer to 20 percent.)
Taking the “Favorite Things” show to Macon was a thank-you to the fans, she told the audience.
Some 4,500 people applied for the 300 tickets last month. They were told the show was merely going to be about hometowns in America.
Because the “Favorite Things” episode is probably the hottest ticket in TV every year – because of the thousands of dollars in loot each person in the audience takes away – the show keeps the date of the show top secret.
“Everybody just went wild in there,” another lucky ticket holder told local TV reporters. “Disbelief, we were screaming, crying, everything you can think of, speechless.”
The show is set to air nationally tomorrow (Ch. 7 at 4 p.m.).
The audience members were sworn to secrecy about what gifts were given out, but TV news cameras were rolling outside the convention hall as trucks pulled up during the show and unloaded the goods, according to reports.
Manufacturers compete desperately every year to make the list of Oprah’s favorite stuff. The promotional value of getting on the give-away show far outweighs the cost of donating 300 samples for the audience giveaway.
Some fans who got in line early said they got a clue of what was coming when they saw a wardrobe van pull up to a side door and unload racks of elves costumes.
That’s the costume that Oprah staffers wear every year while distributing gifts to the audience.