Business
The Oprah Winfrey Network lays off 30 employees
Another Discovery executive, Lee Bartlett, will have joint oversight of business and legal affairs with an OWN vice president, Tina Perry.
OWN started as an ambitious new platform for Winfrey after she stepped away from her long-running, top-rated daytime talk show, “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” But viewership for OWN shows have been largely unimpressive, with one example being a short-lived Rosie O’Donnell talk show that was cancelled last week.
OWN got a burst of viewer attention this month for Winfrey’s exclusive interview with Whitney Houston’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina, which drew 3.5 million viewers, the channel’s biggest audience to date.
From the start, OWN failed to improve on, or in some instances even match, the modest ratings and small audience earned by the low-profile Discovery Health channel it replaced.
As the new channel struggled for footing, Winfrey stepped in behind the scenes and became CEO and chief creative officer of OWN, bringing in her Harpo leadership team of Logan and Salata as presidents. She also increased her on-camera profile with “Oprah’s Next Chapter.”
“I would absolutely say it is and was not where I want it to be for year one,” Winfrey said in December. “My focus up until last May was doing what I do best, which is ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ and giving that my full attention” until its conclusion.
Since September, according to OWN, it’s seen a double-digit increase in ratings and a network high cumulative of 40 million viewers per month.
