The power and the glory that was Oprah is no more. Last year, the TV show screamer announced she was quitting her successful syndicated TV show, launched her own cable network, and sat back to watch the suckers tune in.
It hasn’t quite worked out quite the way she’d hoped. The Oprah Winfrey Network, better known as OWN, drew 1.2 million viewers on launch day, but it’s been all downhill since then.
The Telegraph UK reports that Oprah’s omniscience is over:
The OWN channel, which launched two months ago, is being watched by only 135,000 people at any one time.
The ratings are 10 per cent lower than for the cable channel it replaced which was called Discovery Health.
And only 45,000 of those watching are women aged 25 to 54, the audience the channel is being aimed at.
Miss Winfrey, 57, has urged patience and supporters say ratings will improve when the chat show host begins appearing more regularly herself towards the end of the year.
She will still be busy filming “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for the ABC network until September, but will then be able to devote more time to her own channel. That will include having her own show two or three nights a week.
Oprah is riding to the rescue. Hell, we’d tune in just to see how the horse handled that load.
Source: Telegraph UK