"Oprah Winfrey Show" May Leave ABC, Broadcast Syndication In 2011

Update: Harpo states that Oprah has yet to decide whether she will end her show after the 2011 season:

In a statement issued this afternoon, however, Harpo responded: "While David Zaslav's comments are true that Oprah's current contract to produce The Oprah Winfrey Show will expire in 2011, she has not made a final decision as to whether she will continue her show in syndication beyond that," says Lisa Halliday, chief spokesperson for Harpo Productions, Inc.

In fact, a clause existed in her current contract that would have let the talk-show queen end the show in 2010, but she recently chose to extend the show's run through the contract's full term.

Original Post: Oprah Winfrey will take her blockbuster talk show out of broadcast syndication and move it to her own cable channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, by 2011, it was revealed in the Discovery Channel's earnings call Friday morning.

Broadcasting & Cable's Paige Albiniak reports that Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced the impending switch Friday morning, which is news inasmuch as Winfrey had previously announced she would be ending the show when its syndication deal ran out:

"The current expectation is that after fall 2011 her show will go off of ... syndication, and she will come to OWN," the cable network that Winfrey's production company, Harpo, is creating in conjunction with Discovery.

"We are talking right now about what that presence would be and what programming she would be involved in directly, but this is her chapter two, and building the OWN brand online and on-air is something and she and I are working on together. It is a core mission for her," Zaslav said.

Winfrey's distribution deal, which she re-signed with King World's late Roger King in August 2004, expires in fall 2011. That marks the end of Oprah's 25th season.

At that year's gathering of the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) in Las Vegas, Winfrey told a gathering "I really do think that's going to be it."

If Winfrey were any other TV talent, the news that she would be departing daytime when her contract expired would be a non-issue, but Winfrey has previously said she was ending the show.

In January, Oprah and the Discovery Channel announced that they were teaming up to launch the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2009 OWN will replace Discovery Health, which will place it in 70 million homes nationwide.

Comments

[josephebacon]

Wait a second, I thought King World syndicated Oprah!

[lynjs]

I am a black girl and I must say that I am proud of her accomplishments, but she wouldn't give me the time of day.

I'm also glad of her support of Senator Obama. But other than that, she can GO AWAY!!! She's not and never has been relavant in my life. She's upper class and what she has on show doesn't appeal to me or enrich my life in anyway because she is targeting those whom have MONEY!!!

[toocoldout]

So what if she targets her show at those with money. Sounds like a savvy business woman to me. Just because she's black doesn't mean she's not allowed to compete for the rich suburban audience. This is a racially integrated country you know. Blacks have the right to compete in all markets.

[MysticInd]

I must be miss dimwitted

But what does ABC have to do with it?

Another wrong headline...

[SColbert]

Yea! Isnt she on CBS?

[FrankDiddy]

She is on ABC

[bbbbmer]

I'm glad for Oprah's support of Barack Obama in this election. But I am glad she's finally leaving the public cosmology. For far too long she's been an overrated deity among soccer moms and other sycophants weighing on every word she utters. Her shows just seem to have devolved into Oprahworship sessions sans substance, with forced joviality and attempts at wit weighed by a quite deliberate and cultivated intimidation factor with no particular 'there' there. Contrary to her fans' deification of her, she's merely a lucky TV star whose success is based on doing the same thing over and over and over again until somebody caught notice and gathered an audience of paying customers.

[toocoldout]

I think she's quite underrated actually. You try talking for an hour a day, five days a weeks, and making it so fresh, so spontanieous, so amusing that millions upon millions of people hang on your every word to the point that you're one of the richest & most influential people on the planet. Most of us can't even keep a stranger at a party entertained for more than 5 minutes; Oprah's kept the world entertained for more than two decades. It's not easy to dominate a field as competitive & improvisational as TV talk shows for a quarter century. Lots of extremelyt bright & extremely talented people have tried & failed. And then on top of that she has the media savvy to build an empire & the political savvy to put a black man in the white house. The woman is pure genius.

[pupbayer]

Boy, that would be a real blow to American culture and society. LOL!!!!

[lisangela]

What is it about Oprah that pisses people off so much? She embodies the American dream. She built an empire out of nothing and gives back to charity. She cared enough about her country to take a stand but did so as a private citizen. What exactly is so awful about any of that? It's the brain-dead public that turned her into a pseudo-deity, as they do with anyone they admire. Americans always have to go to extremes. I don't like her show much, but a lot of people do. To each their own. Why does she evoke such over the top emotion from people? I don't get it.

[Strappo]

Me either. I don't watch daytime TV, ever, but I think she's been a force for good. She's used her influence and wealth for the greater good (enlightened self-interest). I respect her. I just wish she and Steadman would emerge from their respective closets.

[Dannydel]

Oprah is a living example of why 'less is more'. Anyone who has a magazine named after herself, with herself on the cover every week, clearly has a mild touch of narcissism. It seems that Oprah would go to the opening of a screen door if there was a camera there. It annoys me that she pushes certain authors and books and when one of them turned out to be a tad more fiction than fact, she lured the author onto her pedestal under false pretences so that she could humiliate him. No discussion, no taking any blame for her staffs faulty research before she pushed the book , no asking whether it was all true, no, throw the guy under the bus. I'm sick of her up and down weight, her 'diets', which obviously leave something to be desired, of her 'relationship' with her boyfriend, of her 'gal pal' Gail. What really put me over the edge though was when she insinuated herself into the Obama campaign. How pathetic must this womans life be, to have to be in on EVERYTHING. Yes, I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed the HuffPo wastes space on people like her and Candy Spelling. Grow up!

[toocoldout]

I seriously doubt Oprah's in any closet. No one once claimed she was gay until she played the therapist on Ellen's coming out show. And she has an extensive history of heterosexual relations with men inlcuding a guy who tried to write a tell-all book about their drug use, a married man she tried to kill herself over & a baby she had at 14. If Oprah were gay the tabloids would know by now as they've investigated her non-stop for a quarter century.

[QueenOfViolets]

I agree she's done more good than harm in the long run.

But she turned herself into a pseudo-deity, and she did it partly by treating human spirituality like finger sandwiches and tea. She also did it by worshipping other celebrities as if they were fellow deities on her A-List Mt. Olympus.

Finger sandwich spirituality and fawning celebrity worship -- it makes me gag.

I'm not saying she's a bad person. I'm saying she's a good person who makes me gag.

And besides, she's had so many big emotions and revelations in public -- which ones are we to believe by now?

She's a wonderful person, whose public emotions I don't believe in for a second.

[sufi66]

Good news! This lady is worthless and owes the American people an apolgy.

[toocoldout]

On the contrary, she overcame poverty, racism, sexism, weightism, illegitimacy, & teen pregnancy to completely dominate the most competetive & improvisational field there is for a quarter century, and has given over $300 million of her own hard earned money to charity in the process. That you would call the most philanthropic African American of all time worthless tells me more about you than it does about her.

[sufi66]

If you want to tolerate chronic and ghastly self-promotion, it's a free country. She's a clueless huckster and a snake oil saleswoman as far as I can see.

[CalliDem]

She will never be forgiven. I had NO problem with her supporting Obama but she did NOTHING to confront the horrific sexism leveled aganist HRC ... nothing

I haven't watched since ...see ya

[toocoldout]

What did Hillary do to confornt the horrific racism & Islamophobia leveled against Obama?

[Strappo]

Touche'. In fact, Hillary stoked the racism, or rather, her surrogates did that she might have clean hands.

She deserves no sympathy. None.

[worldview47]

SNAAAP!!!!!!!!!

[MrHonesty]

Nothing. "As far as I know".

[ReallyMe]

Here we go again... more bored, hateful Rupublicans than we can count.

[chi01]

This is not media. this is crap. do we care about crap? why do you bother? slow news day? how about, the Congo, Haiti, Cuba, Russia, California tax plan, Tibet, Palestine, Mormons and the seperation of church and state. There is news out there.

Beware of Hero Worship!

[toocoldout]

The only crap I see is your post.

[chi01]

you are pathetic.

[Strappo]

It is media, obviously. Moe-ron.

[chi01]

you are uneducated.

[backroads]

WGAS?

[dajay]

WHO THE HECK CARES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BroMan]

People who are intersted in media. This is the MEDIA page.

[ladyv]

It is so bizarre to me when people post to insist that because they claim to be tired of or lack interest in some subject, no one should be interested in that subject.

I mean, I don't wander around fetish sites demanding that people stop having their adult baby fetish or whatever. If you're not interested in something, go the f*ck away and leave the discussion to people who are.

You're welcome to any opinion on a subject other than the opinion that no one should have an opinion on the subject.

[toocoldout]

Obviously you do since you bothered to post. Obviously Huffington Post does since this is their top media story for the day. Obviously the dozens of people who have posted here care.

[sklfcats]

Good
Go
Can't stand her anymore

[AurigaRa]

oh goodm, another Oprah network,
Wish she'd take on election reform and do some more real good for America

[yankee452]

Governor Winfrey?

Oh brother !!