The Vacation Is Over: Oprah ‘All In’ on OWN

By Andrea Morabito -- Multichannel News, 6/20/2011 12:01:00 AM

Chicago — Appearing onstage at the Cable Show here last Thursday (June 16), Oprah Winfrey reassured those in attendance that she’s fully committed to her fledging network, OWN, which has had a rocky start since its launch in January.

Winfrey said Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav told her early on in their discussions that “we need you to be all in” or Discovery would walk. Now that her syndicated show has finished its 25-year run, Winfrey said she would be back at work in two weeks.

“The vacation that I thought I was going to have is kind of over,” she said.

When the panel’s interviewer, Investigation Discovery’s Paula Zahn, asked Winfrey where she would like her network to be in five years, Winfrey clarified that it would need to get there in three. “Patience is not a virtue of mine,” she said. (As evidenced by the dismissal of network CEO Christina Norman in May; Discovery COO Peter Liguori is now running the channel on an interim basis.)

Winfrey acknowledged the soft ratings of OWN’s early programming, saying it’s not as easy to know what will work on a show that’s not her own. “Yes it is more difficult,” she told Zahn. “It’s harder to make that judgment for what other shows can do.”

“I have committed everything I have to this cable network,” Winfrey said. “And I wouldn’t bet against me.”

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Andrea Morabito is a staff writer at Broadcasting & Cable.