Adele and Oprah discuss Adele’s new album ’30’ and her life’s struggles that inspired it.
After a six-year hiatus between albums, Adele resurfaced on CBS Sunday Night, drawing nearly 10 million viewers and proving that broadcast TV can still perform mightily, when harnessed correctly.
Oprah Winfrey once again did the interviewing honors, providing her first prime-time celebrity conversation since her news-making special featuring the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan, earlier this year.
While the “Harry and Meghan Special” earned higher ratings for CBS , the Adele/Oprah concert-interview managed to raise the roof in an age when the NFL is the only other consistently high ratings-grabber on broadcast TV.
Oprah was helped by emerging TV impresario, Executive Producer Ben Winston – – the genius behind The Late Late Show with James Corden, and as noteworthy, the creator/producer/visionary behind the massively successful Friends reunion, which aired earlier this year on HBO Max.
But credit must firstly and finally go to power-ballad-fueled, physically and emotionally transformed Adele herself – – a 15-time Grammy winner, Oscar-winner for her James Bond ballad, Skyfall and an intriguing and legit diva – – with personal drama that was cleverly interwoven and revealed via her interview with Oprah and a private concert held at the never-more-beautiful setting of the Griffith Park Observatory, in the Hollywood hills.
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Among the music icons with “single name” status – – Elvis, Prince, Madonna, Sting, Cher, Bono, Beyonce and others come to mind – – Adele’s challenges and triumphs over the past few years set the stage for what industry insiders call “good TV.”
Oprah inspired Adele to open up about a range of topics speculated about, but never discussed on camera until Sunday, including:
· The reasons behind her divorce from Simon Konecki after three years, and their successful co-parenting of Angelo, their 9 year old son
· News that Angelo would be seeing Adele perform live in front of an audience, for the first time in his young life
· How Adele reconciled with her long-estranged father, only to suffer his death earlier last year and how she’s successfully healed from that tragic loss
· Her new relationship with “super agent” Rich Paul, best known for managing basketball legend, LeBron James
· Adele’s work-out regime – weight training in the morning, hikes in the afternoon – that led to her losing 100 lbs., not strict dieting or surgery, over a two-year period
Winston cleverly created not only a spectacular miniature concert that created soaring musical interludes between Oprah’s probing interview, but in an act of “made for TV” romance, he engineered a surprise wedding proposal, featuring civilians Quentin Brunson proposing to Ashleigh Mann. Spoiler alert: Ashleigh said yes.
Ironically, Adele’s latest album, 30, deals primarily with her personal struggles in the face of her own marriage failing.
(Adele and Winston must’ve wanted to compensate for the album’s heavy grieving with some pure, on-screen romance by providing the wedding proposal magic.)
Judging from the range of celebrities’ present – Seth Rogen, Leonardo di Caprio, Melissa McCarthy, Lizzo, Ellen and Corden himself — and their warm response, the concert and the proposal gimmick itself, worked brilliantly.
Viewers were treated to Adele’s signature anthems, as well as new, equally vivid and instantly memorable tunes, as she took the stage bedecked in a gown designed by Daniel Roseberry, looking like a living version of Samuel Murray’s sculptural masterpiece, The Winged Victory of Samohrace (found in Paris’s The Louvre Museum.)
And what a victory the special was – – showing that network TV can create soaring ratings music when in harmony with what viewers expect from it.
Handsomely produced specials, intriguing reality shows, documentaries, news magazines and especially live sports competitions continue to perform well for broadcasters, while scripted content remains poorly rated and viewed much more aggressively elsewhere on cable and streaming (Yellowstone’s season 4 premiered at a mega 12.7 million viewers, on Paramount’s cable channel, as just one example among dozens.)
Adele and Oprah were “rolling in the deep” together for CBS on Sunday.
Will the other broadcasters finally get the memo that their air can be used more majestically and successfully with event interviews — usefully reminding viewers of network’s relevance but also providing genuine entertainment and “good TV” — or will they simply sit back and continue to let Oprah reign on CBS as the Queen of Appointment TV?
