Rose's Cantina

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...

I have a dirty little secret that I'm hiding from my family. It's a new obsession, and I'm just waiting for someone to tell me "I told you so". So here is my confessional. Ever since Oprah Winfrey left her daytime show, I have been haughtily dismissing her determination to start her new network, OWN. I didn't want it to work. I was angry. I wanted her to fail. That's because when Oprah left, she changed my world. Every day for the past many years, I had tuned into her 4 p.m. show. It was part of my daily routine, like walking the dogs and helping the kids with their homework. After she left, I felt the vacuum. Kids grown, husband at work, I felt lonely. I am a homeworker, and all day long I have no one to talk to but the dogs. Sure, there were other shows to watch -- Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Anderson Cooper -- and I do watch them. But it hasn't been the same. About two weeks ago, I tuned into Oprah's Lifeclass ready to hate it. I r...