Anyone who ran to sign up for Paramount + to watch CBS ‘ Oprah with Meghan and Harry special interview at your leisure was treated a real bummer.
As evidenced by an easy Twitter search for “supreme plus oprah”, many people were shocked and frustrated to find that the hottest topic of pop culture on Sunday night was no available for broadcast before or after being broadcast on your market. Instead, the only options were to watch it on the newly launched Paramount + (fka CBS All Access) in real time via your local CBS station or broadcast it on demand using the CBS.com app.
Search for “Oprah” in the Paramount + app and you will get nothing. Ditto for “Prince Harry” and the full title of the special. Searching for “Meghan Markle” at Paramount +, however, only one special from the 2018 Smithsonian Channel appears.
Why would ViacomCBS not use the well-promoted and highly busy special interview to get people to Paramount +, watch it from the West Coast while frantically tweeting it on East Coasters or putting it up on Monday morning?
Or, as some have suggested, why not end the primetime Sunday special by promising that additional clips could be found the next morning in the new Paramount + app (instead of via CBS this morning)?
Simply said, it was out of the hands of Paramount +. Insiders confirm to TVLine that although Oprah with Meghan and Harry was available for Paramount + subscribers to broadcast live through their local CBS station in service, an SVOD (Streaming Video On Demand) component was not part of the deal with Winfrey’s Harpo Productions, which produced the exclusive meeting. As a result, the full Q&A is only available for streaming on demand for free using CBS.com and the CBS app.
Just watching linear TV, Oprah with Meghan and Harry delivered a sizable audience, averaging 17 million viewers – triple what the Golden Globe did a week earlier and marking the largest prime-time audience for any entertainment special in more than a year (since the Oscars on 9/9) February 2020) – together with a robust demonstration rating of 2.6, according to preliminary Nielsen figures.