Politics 2000

Oprah Winfrey will announce Friday that she’ll quit her syndicated talk show after her current contract expires in 2011, according to published reports. Winfrey has been the number-one American talk-show host for two decades.

Winfrey has 22 months left on her contract with her syndicator, King-World. She has a deal with Discovery Networks to rebrand one of the Discovery cable channels into OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network.

No one is sure whether Winfrey will resume her show on OWN in fall 2011. Rumors abound that Discovery officials told her to either commit to launching the delayed network or risk the deal being lost.

Having the Oprah Show on OWN would certainly draw attention to the fledgling channel. However, ratings have declined over the past several years. The drop has been more precipitous in the wake of Winfrey’s endorsement of and campaigning for President Barack Obama.

Winfrey has drawn as many as 40 million viewers a week. The bulk of her audience is female and many of her fans enjoy buying the products she endorses. Her lucrative contracts with stations was likely to suffer upon the next round of negotiations.

Beside the ratings slip–even though she’s still atop daytime talk–local stations are struggling during the recession. Advertising dollars are more scarce.

Therefore, the standard rich deals that included 100 percent cash upfront weren’t expected to come this time. Station general managers were expected to offer barter deals: less (perhaps no, in some cases) cash in advance and giving Winfrey’s production company, Harpo Productions, the chance to sell some of the advertising minutes and keep the proceeds.

Winfrey would be able to reap more rewards potentially by moving the show to OWN. However, she stands to lose her position as the nation’s preeminent talker if she’s on a digital cable channel many viewers don’t have.

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