THE BUTLER DID IT — AGAIN

Three new films couldn’t crack $10 million at the box office over the weekend, allowing Lee Daniels’ The Butler to hold on as the No. 1 film for the second weekend in a row with an estimated $17 million. In fact, in its third weekend, the R-rated comedy We’re the Millers beat out the newcomers […]

OPRAH’S ARMSTRONG INTERVIEW A RATINGS DISAPPOINTMENT

In the end, the biggest “get” of the past year (or longer) didn’t get the massive audience that had been predicted for it. Pt. 1 of Oprah Winfrey’s much-hyped interview with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, which aired on Thursday night on OWN, attracted just 3.2 million viewers — far fewer than the 6 million she […]

WILL ARMSTRONG INTERVIEW SAVE OPRAH’S CHANNEL?

Analysts are speculating about the effect of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Lance Armstrong on lifting the public’s awareness of her OWN cable network. In today’s (Wednesday) New York Post, media writer Michael Starr commented that it “could go a long way toward putting her cable network, OWN, on the map after two mediocre, money-losing years.” […]

COURIC BEATS COMPETITION IN FIRST WEEK

Katie Couric’s first week on the job as an afternoon talk-show host looked mighty impressive. She managed to beat all of her competition on each of the five days of opening week and performed better than the three other debuting talk-show stars, Steve Harvey, Jeff Probst, and Ricki Lake. She also drew bigger audiences than […]

OPRAH TO LAUNCH “SECTION” ON HUFFINGTON POST

Oprah Winfrey is teaming up with The Huffington Post website to launch a new dedicated section of HuffPo in August featuring videos and articles about health, fashion and culture that have traditionally been the subjects of Oprah’s talk shows. In a statement, Winfrey and Ariana Huffington said that they plan to combine resources from Oprah.com […]

HOW LONG WILL DISCOVERY CONTINUE TO BACK OPRAH?

Supporting Oprah Winfrey’s struggling OWN cable network may be well and good for now, but a senior Bloomberg analyst wants to know how long Discovery Communications, which is half-owner of the network, intends to keep on doing so. “The company needs to provide investors with a road map for this business,” Paul Sweeney remarked on […]

AN UNEXPECTED WAKE-UP CALL IN MORNING TALK-SHOW BATTLE

All eyes on Monday were supposed to be on ABC’s Good Morning America, where Katie Couric was co-hosting for the week, or on the morning leader, NBC’s Today show. But, as it turned out, ratings for both shows were down from their season’s average. Could the reason have been that viewers were attracted by the […]

COMCAST GIVES OPRAH CHANNEL A NEEDED BOOST

Giving a much-needed boost to Oprah Winfrey’s struggling cable channel OWN, Comcast will expand the number of homes that it can be received in on its cable systems to 17 million, an increase of 21 percent, the Wall Street Journal reported today (Monday). That will put the channel into a total of 83 million homes, […]

ANALYST SAYS FAILURE OF OWN COULD COST DISCOVERY $143 MILLION

Unless it can engineer a massive turnaround of Oprah Winfrey’s OWN cable network, Discovery Communications could end the year reporting a $142.9-million loss, according to SNL Kagan analyst Derek Baine. Clearly Baine believes such a turnaround is unlikely and that Discovery will likely be forced to cut the license fee it charges cable operators to […]

“BLOODBATH” AT OPRAH’S NETWORK

On the heels of the announcement that Rosie O’Donnell’s talk show was being canceled after only five months, published reports said on Monday that OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, had fired 30 employees, including two high-level executives. The gossip website TMZ described it as a “bloodbath” and said that the fired personnel included the head […]

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