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The injection of Winfrey on-screen, not just in the executive suite, is sorely needed, suggested one industry analyst. "The biggest mistake they made is, if it's the Oprah Winfrey Network, where's Oprah?" said Bill Carroll of media buying firm Katz Media. He compared OWN's Winfrey vacuum to programming the Court TV channel without courtroom shows or the Major League Baseball channel without games: "After a while, viewers stop going," Carroll said. OWN has averaged about 136,000 viewers a day, a drop of 8 percent from what Discovery Health drew in 2010, although it's up slightly in total viewers in prime time and has seen an 8 percent increase among women ages 25 to 54, part of the channel's hoped-for demographic. Popular shows include "The Judds," which ran for six episodes in April and May; "Our America With Lisa Ling"; and the reality series "Welcome to Sweetie Pie's," which attracted a strong African-American audience (prompting media reports that OWN intended to skew toward black viewers, an assertion that Discovery and Winfrey deny. "It doesn't mean we're going to turn into the
'Roots' channel," Winfrey said, wryly.) Winfrey also is on-air with "Oprah's Lifeclass," which draws on her talk-show archives, and "Oprah's Master Class," a series of high-achiever biography specials. But, she said, she never "was supposed to carry the channel on my back, and it never was supposed to be about me being on the air as much as possible." Instead, O magazine, with Winfrey as monthly cover girl and articles reflecting her better-life philosophy, is the intended model. She attributes the channel's rough start to a more basic error: The lack of a "library" of programming for the many hours of airtime not filled by original shows, compounded by overconfidence about her market value in general. "I don't understand what anybody was thinking. You're going on the air, you've got four shows. What do you think you're going to do by Tuesday? Did they think people were going to turn on the channel just because it had my name on it?" she said, sounding almost eager to cast doubt on her drawing power. "People didn't turn on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' because my name was on it. It was absolutely topic-driven every day," she said.
Such modest expressions aside, Winfrey's involvement clearly is key to the channel's success. She's glad to make the commitment, she said. As her longtime boyfriend Stedman Graham told her, she'd be bored silly today if she'd taken any lengthy break after ending her daytime show. Discovery is also in it for "the long term," said spokesman Leavy, citing the three to five years that other cable channels have needed to develop audience-grabbing hits and firmly establish themselves. He declined to specify what Discovery has spent so far on the venture, calling media estimates high. But he pointed to long-term advertising contracts with major companies including Procter & Gamble, and hopes of new carriage fees from cable providers that have been airing the channel for free. Viewership that has been lower than expected, however, has meant "make goods" in ad time for sponsors. Winfrey, who describes herself as obsessed by ratings for the first time in her career, said she's giving OWN "everything I've got. I've spent more energy doing this than anything I've ever done in my whole life." With good reason. "I walked in today (to OWN's offices) and felt uplifted to see my name on the door, Oprah Winfrey Network," she said. "Just to ... be able to sit in a room with a team of people presenting you with ideas
-- what a gift that is." It has also made OWN her ultimate responsibility. "Every third week, someone new was in charge, and now she's in charge. From where I sit, this is going to be her success or her failure," said analyst Carroll. Winfrey claims to have an unlikely sounding Plan B if the channel falls short. "If this doesn't work out, I'm going to go into organic farming in Maui. And I'm not kidding." ___ Online:
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