Has Oprah Lost Her Luster?

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on May 8, 2012 6:30PM

Oprah Winfrey has had a rough row to hoe since she ended her highly popular, and profitable, talk show last year to take the reins of her Oprah Winfrey Network. the network's sluggish early performance hasn't been kind to Winfrey's partners at Discovery Communications, either.

Business Week has an article online that Discovery may have lost $330 million on OWN between 2008 and thee end of last year. Even if OWN turns a profit, as a source close to the situation suggested to Business Week, Discovery may have to write off some of its investment in Winfrey. Discovery has invested $585 million in OWN and, according to a 10 - K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, "'expects operating losses at OWN to exceed the balance of equity contributions recorded by OWN,' which included the channel and an 'equitable' contribution from Harpo Studios," Winfrey’s production company.

OWN is now available in 85 million households, ratings have improved since the debut of Oprah's Next Chapter, and marketing companies are still bullish on the Oprah brand. But all the drama at OWN—the cancellation of Rosie O'Donnell's talk show, the layoff of 20 percent of the network's workforce, e.g.—has made some wonder if Winfrey has lost some of her Midas touch. James Wolcott, writing in Vanity Fair, says Winfrey's stumbles of late are more pronounced because she is a brand. Wolcott mentions a tweet Winfrey sent out during the Grammys (later deleted) where she begged followers with Nielsen boxes to tune in to OWN's two-hour special on the death of Whitney Houston as an example of Winfrey's fall from grace.

"It was the desperate wave of a drowning diva. If some joker with his own half-hour at Comedy Central or Spike had tried this, it would have been shrugged off as the prankish ploy of an underdog, but for someone of Oprah’s once celestial stature, it was a mortifying comedown—a billionaire extending the begging bowl."

...

"(N)o one expected Act II to be a seamless move, Oprah’s massive audience migrating with her in a Moses exodus. But nor could anyone have foreseen the drop-off that would occur, her once multitudinous flock reduced to a trickle. She set out for the promised land only to find it parched and underpopulated, nobody here but us camels."

Wolcott seemed to suggest Winfrey could rebound, writing "the celebrity-as-brand has proven surprisingly resilient" and citing such examples as Martha Stewart, Britney Spears, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson as examples of celebrities with famous flameouts whose brands have recovered nicely.