THE DR. OZ SHOW
4 p.m. today
Channel 5
The food on the table looks enticing. There is a bowl of greasy potato chips, a plate of cupcakes with thick coats of icing. Mehmet Oz stands behind the table, perusing yellow sheets of paper, crib notes for his next segment.
As he prepares, audience members try to steal a fraction of his time. This happens often now, and not just on set. At restaurants and airports, fans clamor for a moment of his time. At airports, they want to share their story; at restaurants, they want to see what he ordered.
"I don't go out to dinner that much anymore," Oz said during a recent interview. "It winds up being a scrutiny of what I'm eating."
Some of this he brings upon himself. As he sets to embark on the third season of "The Dr. Oz Show," slipping into approximately 40 percent of the time slots that once belonged to Oprah Winfrey, the doctor and Cliffside Park resident hovers behind that table of junk food, waiting to shoot poison darts at the items on it.
He is studying those yellow cheat sheets when a few fans finally succeed in interrupting his train of thought. They want him to pass some potato chips and cupcakes their way.
He turns and smiles.
"Although they're called talk shows, they really are listening shows," Oz said. "You have to learn to hear what people are really trying to tell you."
A seasoned master when it comes to the art of listening, Oz has spent the first two seasons boning up on the television end of the job. "He did not learn how to read a teleprompter in med school," jokes Susan Wagner, the supervising producer of the show's medical unit. "He did not learn how to deal with props in the ER."
No. But he did learn at Oprah's knee. And he is a quick study when it comes to incorporating the notes staff members hand him before and after show tapings. Wagner compared the jump to a ballplayer transitioning from the minors to the majors, then transitioning from rookie to star slugger.
"I have never worked with anybody, except maybe Barbara Walters, who could learn something that fast," Wagner said.
Comfortable from the jump, Oz is still evolving and tweaking – even with two "Outstanding Talk Show Host" Emmy Awards on his résumé.
According to broadcastingandcable.com, "The Dr. Oz Show" had a relatively low 2.0 rating for the week ending Aug. 14 – the same rating it had the previous year. The number may be more scrutinized this season, when he inherits the 4 p.m. Oprah slot here in the New York area.
A writer for Media Life magazine opined that "it's almost unthinkable any successor will have the sort of cultural influence Winfrey wielded for two and a half decades." Yet Oz would love to wield that kind of influence.
"We talked a lot about how to modify the show for the 'Oprah' viewer," Oz said. "The goal is to make an Oprah-caliber show. We're giving away $1 million [this season]. That's never been done in daytime. We felt confident we needed to have shows in that scope."
He will do more investigations, but he will also court a few more celebrities. An example: Later this week, Oz devotes an entire episode to the new film "Contagion." Director Steven Soderbergh showed up for the taping. So did a real-life virus hunter and the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The first two years of a show's evolution," Oz said, "they want to sort of see if you're going to survive. They want to let you prove yourself and establish yourself.
They won't commit to you until you do that. And after you've demonstrated you've got the legs, they'll start to give you the time of day."
The taping of the junk-food segment goes smoothly. He encourages viewers to eat endives, onions and sea bass; he dissuades them from drinking soda and eating cold cuts.
As the afternoon taping wraps, he shakes hands with audience members. A few people in the front row want to share stories with him.
Oz is in a rush. He has an event to attend that evening.
But he pauses for just a moment, leaning in to listen.
E-mail: kerwick@northjersey.com
