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Showing posts with the label The Oprah Winfrey Network

Oprah Winfrey: An ego in Spanx

A few years ago, I would have jumped at the chance to see Oprah Winfrey in person. That’s because Oprah Winfrey had played a huge role in my life. She helped me build a relationship with my mother. From health care to wealth care, she gave me information I could take to the bank. She provided light in the afternoon for me as a stay-at-home mom, then a single mom. She gave me Dr. Phil when I was going through a messy divorce. And Dr. Oz who convinced me to get my blood pressure checked. Oprah got us through. But something changed, maybe five year or eight years ago. Oprah began to see herself as a prophet of some sort. “I believe I was born to greatness,” she told Barbara Walters. In other words, Oprah drank her own Kool Aid. Suddenly, she was smarter than the rest of us, an expert on religion, morality and politics. She force fed us new age nonsense, built an opulent school in South Africa to separate the smart girls from their po’ neighbors. She bought the Uni...

Can Oprah Save the OWN-tanic?

On April 16, Oprah Winfrey will be bringing her show, Oprah's Lifeclass to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto. For $435 a ticket, fans will be able to see Lady O, Tony Robbins and a gaggle of other new age thinkers. It will be like the American Idol tour without the music. Lucky us. It's all part of a whirlwind tour designed to shore up popularity for her flagging network, OWN, and its Canadian counterpart, OWN Canada. The place will be packed. It's a certainy. Oprah is a tremendous draw, personally. But will it be enough to save her network which is hemorrhaging much more than the $300 million originally invested by the Discovery Channel? The signs are everywhere that OWN is in free fall. - In spite of good ratings for her recent interview with Whitney Houston's daughter, all other programs are receiving tepid ratings. Even Oprah's Lifeclass , which was launched last fall, has averaged only 318,000 viewers and the webcast has done muc...

The Oprah army looks for a new general

Oprah Winfrey was in damage control mode yesterday. She took to the Doctor Oz Show to pimp her network and her new show, Oprah's New Chapter , in an attempt to remind viewers that she's still out there. The OWN Network has been in free fall despite Oprah's attempts to shore it up with her own five-week show, Oprah's Lifeclass as well as a flashy talk show hosted by Rosie O'Donnell. In January, Oprah's set to launch The Next Chapter which will take the superstar around the globe to interwiew stars and newsmakers in their own countries and in their own lavish homes. But Oprah's fairy dust doesn't seem to be working this time. She's chewed through at least three top executives, as well as any staff, according to insiders, who question her vision. She's added reruns of her 25th anniversary show in her old time slot competing against the anointed Doctor Oz to see if she can get any traction. And she's called on all her celebrity frien...