Oprah's lifestyle channel is still bleeding money.
What's in black and white and red all over? Try the numbers for Oprah Winfrey's struggling cable network, OWN. The channel's parent company, Discovery Communications, released its third quarter earnings report today, and the news is not good. Despite management changes that include Oprah herself stepping in as CEO, the lifestyle network built around the talk show queen's brand can't seem to find enough viewers.
So far OWN is in the hole by approximately $55.6 million, and the new shows added to the lineup — Rosie O’Donnell's talk show and Oprah’s Lifeclass — have had “sluggish starts.”
Discovery CEO David Zaslav is holding out hope that “OWN’s fortunes will improve now that Winfrey is serving as full-time CEO.”
He also added optimistically: “We are working hard to develop content that will appeal to her audience. We are building some meaningful audience growth and flow. Viewership is up from previous levels (and) there’s some nice momentum going into 2012. … We are starting to swing in a positive direction in terms of getting people to spend more time with us.”
(Photo: Courtesy OWN Network)
On Facebook
On Twitter
