Oprah Winfrey announced Tuesday that she has partnered with Discovery Communications to form her own cable television network. Her channel’s new name: OWN, which is an incredibly convenient abbreviation for Oprah Winfrey Network.
Oprah stated that her new channel will be set to premiere sometime in 2009. It will replace Discovery Health, the least successful of the corporation’s 13 cable networks, and be run in equal part by both Discovery and Oprah’s company Harpo, Inc.
Apparently, this deal was destined to be made. The San Francisco Gate reports that Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav contacted Oprah about starting such a project right after she had found a diary entry of hers dated May 24, 1992 where she explicitly wrote about wanting to create her own network in the future.
This is the latest development in the Winfrey Empire, which already includes a television show, satellite radio station, magazine, website and a production company that produces made-for-TV movies under Oprah’s moniker.
Starting one’s own network, however, comes with its own set of problems. Because of her deal regarding The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah is contracted to produce new episodes through 2011 and prohibited from rerunning those episodes elsewhere. So, while OWN will premiere in 2009, Oprah’s actual presence on her channel might be limited for its first couple years.
Many reports have surfaced that Oprah has already decided not to renew her contract after it runs out in 2011, but in reality she has until the fall to decide whether or not she will continue to televise The Oprah Winfrey Show via broadcast TV or solely through her cable network. Although it seems to make more sense to consolidate all Oprah-infused programs to one network, taking her talk show off broadcast television would severely diminish its number of viewers—thus making OWN far less valuable to Discovery and perhaps cursing the network before it even exists.
Image: Tech Shout
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