O’Donnell Proves She’s Up There With Winfrey

There are talk-show hosts, and then there’s Oprah Winfrey and now Rosie O’Donnell.

Though “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” is just 1 year old, the show’s host has proved herself a mini-Oprah.

And that’s pretty major.

There once was a time when daytime talk shows were mostly about talk - the town-meeting, issue-oriented approach made famous by Phil Donahue and picked up by Winfrey. Or they were those mellifluous, celebrity-oriented gabfests perfected by Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin.

But over the years, the topics degenerated (as did the caliber of the hosts) into demeaning, mean-spirited if not altogether fabricated displays of exhibitionism and demagoguery.

Now, it seems, America has been left essentially with two groups of daytime talk-show hosts.

Over here, there’s Oprah and Rosie.

And over there, well, everybody else: Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, Montel Williams, Sally Jessy Raphael, Gordon Elliott and the rest of the bottom feeders, with their endless parade of strippers, gang members, make-overs and dysfunctional families.

What’s the Winfrey-O’Donnell difference?

Viewers aren’t just watching them; they’re buying them, in just about every sense of the word.

Television has always been about selling, and talk shows are no exception. Indeed, they are one of the more extreme examples. Authors push their books, actors plug their shows and movies, the ratings sell the show, and the wheel goes round and round.

And Winfrey has become an exceptional channeler of television’s enormous power to sell, as has become obvious with her book club, where a thumbs-up from Winfrey instantly translates into a bestseller.

Now O’Donnell, in her own natural way, seems to be following suit.

Several cases in point: the Tickle Me Elmo experience. You would have thought that a Sesame Street puppet, especially Elmo, could sell itself. But it was O’Donnell who, after much soliciting from the toy’s manufacturers, put the product into orbit (after her 1-year-old son, Parker, got one, care of the manufacturer).

“We decided to try to marry Elmo and Rosie,” one of Tyco’s public relations people said at the time.

More recently, O’Donnell, serving as host of this year’s Tony Awards, received a heap of credit for giving the show a much needed boost in the ratings.

And, of course, there’s O’Donnell’s best-selling book, “Kids Are Punny: Jokes Sent by Kids to the Rosie O’Donnell Show.”

O’Donnell has even managed to turn a negative into a positive. When the makers of Scope had the audacity to list O’Donnell on a “least kissable” list, competitor Listerine stepped in and offered to pay $1,000 to an O’Donnell fund for disadvantaged children for every time she kissed someone on the show.

(Similarly, megacoffee company Starbucks recently announced that it will sell Winfrey’s monthly bookclub selection at most of its 1,000 coffeehouses in the United States, with profits going to a literacy fund.)

Is it any wonder that O’Donnell, the woman Newsweek called the “Queen of Nice,” won this year’s Emmy as best talk-show host while “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was named outstanding talk show for the fourth consecutive year?

Do you think anyone doubted O’Donnell’s sincerity when, tears raining down her face, she accepted?

Now picture Maury Povich, or, gag, Kathie Lee Gifford, who just a year or two ago was a kind of “Rosie … with Friend.”

No one would be buying.

And that has made all the difference in the world. Winfrey and O’Donnell aren’t pushing; they’re inviting.

Their programs emanate from within. They’re believable.