Oprah audience get wild car entry
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2004 06:15:40 AM ]

WASHINGTON: Entertainers love to send their audiences into transports of delight, but trust the queen of talk shows to find the perfect vehicle for the ride.


Oprah Winfrey, America’s celebrated TV diva, stunned a 276-strong studio audience by presenting each of them with a new car to mark the opening of the 19th season of her show.

It had initially been announced that 11 people would get cars. After the 11 were picked, the rest were given a gift box and told that one of them had the key to a 12th car. When they opened it on cue, each of the remaining 265 found keys to a new Pontiac G6 sports sedan worth $28,000. Squeals and screams of delight erupted as the audience went hysterical, with Oprah herself yelling, "Everyone gets a car, everyone gets a car!"

The $7 million promotional handout, courtesy General Motors, came after Oprah invited viewers to send in letters on behalf of themselves, friends or family explaining why they needed a new car.

One woman’s young son said she drove a car that "looks like she got into a gunfight". Another couple had almost 400,000 miles on their two vehicles.

"No dream is too wild, no surprise too impossible to pull off," Winfrey said during the telecast, which was taped last Thursday but broadcast on Monday. The audience were sworn to secrecy till the telecast.

Even when they walked in for the taping on Thursday, some of them sensed a bonanza because the theme of the show was ‘Wildest Dreams Come True’.

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