Oprah to launch her own TV channel

Orpah is to add her own television network to her list of media outlets. Oprah’s chat show, website, YouTube channel and her magazine have already proved hugely popular but it too much Oprah too much ?

The managing editor and the news editor have spent many a lunchtime watching Oprah. It was sort of their thing for a while. Before that it was Mythbusters and they’ve now moved on to a combination of Judge Judy and Maury.

Now we’re faced with the reality of world where Oprah is always just a click away.

In late 2009, Discovery Health will become The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Discovery Health already has over 70m subscribers, a number that will no doubt skyrocket once Oprah hits the screen.

Unfortunately, Oprah won’t be around on the Channel all that much as she’ll be quite the busy little bee filming her show. Oprah’s contract means that her show, The Oprah Winfrey Show cannot be aired on OWN until 2011 but Oprah hopes to "eventually" run her show on the channel.

She gave very little insight into what the programming would be like on OWN but Discovery CEO, David Zaslav, said that the channel will be primarily non-fiction.

Oprah said she hopes the network will allow her to do what she does everyday, 24/7.

"This is an evolution of what I’ve been able to do every day. I will now have the opportunity to do this 24 hours a day on a platform that goes on forever.”

Ooh err, imagine 24/7 Oprah. Our Oprah phase played itself out after a couple of months and that was only an hour each day. I’m not sure people can handle it 24 hours a day.