Saturday, March 31, 2012

Will Oprah's Television Succeed or Fail?

For now, Oprah's Television Network (OWN) is failing. Launched 15 months ago, OWN has already devoured $312 million and there is no end in sight. Based in Los Angeles and jointly owned by the Discovery network, OWN this last week ended Rosie O' Donnell's failing show and 20% of the OWN staff was laid off, to help keep OWN afloat. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-oprah-20120331,0,5382925.story

But I believe Oprah will eventually succeed with OWN if given enough time to build a strong management and programming team and to build her base of programming. In any new venture, stumbles are the norm as the participants learn from their experience and make appropriate adjustments and that is where OWN is now. Oprah has been a huge success as a talk-show host and now she has enormous new responsibilities on her shoulders, with no prior experience in how to deal with them. Oprah needs time and must focus her attention, cutting back her travels sharply to do so.

Dick

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