you know, phil donahue was the major talent. but that was one of the reasons i thought we should go the female route. we were not beating him head to head, and when i got there, i said to the people who work for me, you know, let's look and give the viewers an alternative and let's focus on female talent. you know, we -- which is what we did. and oprah was the one that came out of that. >> and she was quite successful. so when you look at -- i don't know. back when you hired the younger oprah winfrey and when you look at the older, mature, very successful -- i mean, did she change? did you see that in her? did you ever believe she would become oprah? >> well, i had no doubt that she was going to be successful. i sat -- we brought her in for an audition on a saturday morning, labor day weekend, 1983. and as i sat there and watched that audition, i thought, oh, my goodness, dennis, you can't be this lucky. this is the answer to what we