"The Rosie Show" Moves to Smaller Studio and Cuts Staff

By Amy Cavanaugh in News on Feb 4, 2012 4:00PM

Rosie O'Donnell's talk show, "The Rosie Show," has changed its format to attract more viewers, and cut jobs in the process, Crain's reported yesterday.

The show… shed as many as 30 employees and contract workers over the past month as it shifted taping of the show to a smaller studio and eliminated some aspects of the program, such as a game show segment. It also has started taping more one-on-one conversations without an audience, said people familiar with the changes.

"With the new, more intimate studio, the show requires fewer staff to support the operation," said Chance Patterson, a spokesman in Chicago for Harpo Studios Inc., which produces the show.

Mr. Patterson declined to say how many staff members had been cut or how many remained.

The Sun-Times describes the new studio as "reminiscent of a living room," and tapings can only accommodate 70 people, whereas the old studio held hundreds.

"The Rosie Show," which is part of the Oprah Winfrey Network, debuted in October with 500,000 viewers. Crain's reported that viewership is now just over 200,000. Surely some of that has to do with the guests going on the show—many are Oprah Winfrey Network personalities like Suze Orman and Dr. Oz, or people like Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, and a handful of others we had to Google to figure out who they were.