Still plenty of Oprah without the show
Oprah Winfrey may be planning to leave her wildly successful daytime talk show in 2011, but she'll still be a media force with her new cable network. And she stands to make even more money. Jennifer Collins reports.
Oprah Winfrey (Kevin Winter/Getty Images for AFI)
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TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: Oprah is expected to announce today the Oprah Winfrey Show will end in 2011. The top-rated daytime show of the past two decades has delivered an audience to the evening news, sold books and made a guru out of its central character. Marketplace's Jennifer Collins looks at the winners and losers in this announcement.
Jennifer Collins: Fourty-two million viewers a week tune into Oprah's syndicated show each week. And she delivers with major television events -- like the Black Eyed Peas playing an outdoor show in Chicago and Tom Cruise's infamous incident:
Music: Jump off that sofa, keep watching O . . . I've got a feeling...
Oprah Winfrey: I'm having fun just thinking about it!
There have been rumors Oprah's has been thinking about moving on for a long time. She's expected to start up The Oprah Winfrey Network on cable in a couple of years.
David Zurawik: And she's given every indication that she's going to do a talkshow there.
Media critic David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun told WTOP that a new show on cable may increase Oprah's already sizeable fortune.
Zurawik: As incredibly lucrative as syndication is for Oprah Winfrey, she can even make more money if she owns the channel its on.
Whether she can get the audience to tune in to cable remains to be seen... But the industry is predicting this could mean a major loss for the show's distributor, CBS. Not to mention ABC, which also broadcasts Oprah on many of its big city stations.
I'm Jennifer Collins for Marketplace.
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