One show for Oprah Winfrey isn't enough, now she'll be able to extend her brand through an entire cable channel, as she partners with Discovery Communications (DISCA) for The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).
The venture, which involves no cash, will be a 50-50 partnership with Discovery kicking in their Discovery Health Channel and enfolding it into, and rebranding it as OWN. It has the potentil to reach 70 million cable and satellite subscribers at this time.
Oprah will contribute her website, Oprah.com, which draws over 6 million unique monthly visitors and 80 million pageviews.
How that will work is it will be change from the existing use of rehashing topics raised on the Oprah Winfrey daily show, and migrate to a tool that works alongside programming on the OWN network.
According to Oprah, her vision for creating the network was to make one "that will inspire and entertain people around issues of money, weight, health, relationships, spirit, helping people to raise their children and give back, teaching people to be all that they can be in the world."
Speaking to how this would be different from the Oxygen network she helped found, she said, "That channel did not reflect my voice. Shortly after the deal I took myself off the board."
Winfrey says she wants the partnership to be similar to the one she has with Hearst in connection to "O", The Oprah Magazine.
She said concerning the relationship: "I am the voice of the magazine and the vision of the magazine, but I have people there who can execute that voice and vision."
Oprah will be chairman of the network, and will retain complete editorial control of the venture.
For Discovery Health the timing is good, as there's increasing pressure from cable and satellite companies to decrease fees paid to channels that attract only small audiences. Even though Discovery Health did enjoy its first profit ever this year, they draw less than 200,000 viewers in the prime time hours.
The agreement with Winfrey should help bring those numbers up. The rebranding of the Discovery Health channel will occur sometime late in 2009.
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Tracked on: January 15, 2008 4:29 PM | Permalink to Trackback