OWN

NEW YORK (AP) — The Oprah Winfrey Network says it plans to produce a documentary series following the life of Michael Sam, the first openly gay player drafted by an […]

OWN is in the black for the first time since its rocky start two-and-a-half years ago. More than 30 new advertisers are joining original heavyweight sponsors Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and are paying higher rates as the channel has found its programming and distribution footing. Headlines about profitability and audience growth have replaced the drumbeat of speculation that her ambitious venture with Discovery Communications might end up a costly flop and an uncharacteristic failure for her.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The upcoming Lindsay Lohan series on OWN will be more documentary than reality show. OWN and Harpo Studios Presidents Erik Logan and Sheri Salata told journalists […]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When Lindsay Lohan gets out of rehab this summer, Oprah Winfrey will be waiting to talk to her. Winfrey’s cable channel, OWN, said Friday that Winfrey […]

For Better or Worse, about three couples dealing with the challenges of dating and married life, will move from TBS to OWN for its third season, starting this fall.

Don Seaman, TVB’s manager, marketing communications, says that while it made sense for Lance Armstrong to choose TV as the place to do damage control and brand rebuilding, why on cable? “It’s almost as if you wanted to keep people from seeing you talk about this. Your bombshell mea culpa held so much national interest that an episode of Moonshiners on Discovery had a higher A25-54 rating that week. Comparing your appearance to broadcast would be even less fair than your competing against all of those other unwitting cyclists.”

Millions of people are expected to watch Lance Armstrong confess to using performance-enhancing drugs in a two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey beginning this evening, likely giving her OWN cable network its largest audience ever. The challenge for OWN will be convincing those who tune in for the Armstrong interview to come back to the network afterwards.

Improved ratings at OWN has Sanford C. Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger bullish on Discovery Communications, which co-owns the cable channel with Oprah Winfrey. In a Monday report, Juenger raised his target price for Discovery shares to $76 and pointed to OWN and smaller Discovery networks including Animal Planet, ID and Science as key reasons. Ratings for those networks are up.

Although the goals were set independently, David Zaslav says that his joint venture with Oprah Winfrey is growing fast enough that it doesn’t have to expand to 85 million homes — from 80 million now — to fulfill his prediction that it will break even in the second half of 2013.

After a rocky start marked by low ratings, executive shakeups, and layoffs, Oprah Winfrey’s network is getting some good news. Its latest quarter, from July to September, was its biggest in ratings growth. And this week, the network announced it will air two shows next year from Tyler Perry, who has a special talent for tapping into once-overlooked audiences. The shows will be the first scripted programs for the network.

Tyler Perry’s new exclusive deal to create programming for Oprah Winfrey’s OWN means he is shelving his ambitions to launch his own cable network, Tyler TV.

Starting next Monday at 9 a.m. ET, the Oprah Winfrey Network will broadcast two episodes of each show back-to-back.

Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s optimistic forecast to analysts this morning is a slight improvement from three months ago when he said that his joint venture with Oprah Winfrey would merely begin to break even by late next year.

Faced with the potential failure of her money-pit cable network OWN, Winfrey is working the phones hard to secure big-name interviews for her show, Oprah’s Next Chapter. The open question is whether she can have the same cultural impact on a smaller stage.

From its 2008 inception through Dec. 31, 2011, OWN may have lost as much as $330 million, based on Discovery’s annual 10-K filing with the SEC. Even if OWN makes money in 2013, as predicted by a person with knowledge of the operation who was not authorized to speak publicly, it has saddled Discovery with such high costs that analysts say the company may eventually be forced to write off some of its current $420 million investment.

Oprah Winfrey admitted on Monday that she had made mistakes while creating her cable channel but promised the fledging OWN television network would still succeed with a new strategy. The talk show host, who recently laid off 30 staffers at the 15-month-old network after poor ratings, told CBS This Morning that she had been ill-prepared for the venture.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Oprah Winfrey’s cable channel has struck a distribution deal with Comcast Corp., lifting the number of homes in which the network can be seen, according to people familiar with the situation. Wall Street Journal subscribers can read the story here.

Oprah Winfrey’s fledgling OWN cable channel saw a 21% rise in total daily viewers in the first quarter of 2012, as the talk show queen’s decision to put more of herself on the network began to pay off.

The Oprah Winfrey Network could lose an estimated $142.9 million this year, which could prompt co-owner Discovery to pull the plug on the venture, research and investment firm SNL Kagan said Wednesday.

Winfrey said in a statement Monday that the decision is a “tough” one. She says the economics of a startup cable network didn’t fit with OWN’s cost structure.

The Rosie Show has been canceled by OWN, with the final show to tape on March 20 and air on March 30 at 7 p.m., the network said late Friday. The show, a production of Winfrey’s Harpo Studios, O’Donnell’s KidRo Productions, Inc., and SantaBu Productions, premiered Oct. 10, 2011.