What to Do When You’ve Fallen in Love With Oprah?
I recently met the man who made Oprah’s voice heard in ways we hadn’t considered. He created and owned the Internet radio station of Oprah Winfrey in the United States, and he did it because he wanted to make her life a little easier. His decision was anything but easy.
In fact, it took him four years to launch his creation out of the ashes of Winfrey’s AM/FM station, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which launched in 1982. His name is Paul Taylor, and he is the Chairman and CEO of Taylor Communications Group. He met Oprah just before she left the show in 2020 and was one of the first people to provide her with advice when she took her long hiatus from the media.
Buy or sell? That was the question he posed to her when they first met, and she was very hesitant to enter the buying and selling business. She has always been a great supporter of youth education. Taylor immediately saw this as a lucrative opportunity. He began his first foray into the world of the radio market almost immediately.
The first time he attempted the business he partnered with four other men to buy out another firm that held a station, but they were in a high-tech industry. This time, the sale took him nine months to complete.
Paul felt as if he had already accomplished too much. He thought his band of friends, with their computer skills, could do it just as easily as he could. His solution was to shift focus to Internet marketing. He was the first person to get the name Oprah Winfrey Internet Radio Station is going, and he followed up by purchasing a half-million dollars worth of radio advertising from the show.
He was a bit late to this game, but he had an idea to use the publicity for good, and that is what he had in mind when he finally asked her to do the program. Taylor used the local talk radio stations to cover his new venture, and he thought that they would take the bait if she was willing to have her name attached to her own success. He got his answer, just hours after she accepted the offer.
In Oprah’s first appearance, on August 4, 2020, the women of America were introduced to Olivia Guthrie, and the success didn’t stop there. Taylor listened to the response he had received, and he knew this was a business worth investing in. He joined forces with my husband and me, and we created a more targeted advertising campaign to reach more people.
This is the real story behind the success of the company I founded called Orbitz Radio Networks with Paul Taylor, our friend and mentor. Our strategy focused on reaching people who were looking for the help that they needed in order to build their lives.
