CHICAGO (AP) — Having brought her wildly successful talk show to a close after 25 years, Oprah Winfrey said Thursday says she's ready to devote her full attention to nurturing the six-month-old cable TV network that bears her name.
The Oprah Winfrey Network launched on Jan. 1,
taking over what had been Discovery Health. As OWN was under development,
Winfrey said she was also trying to finish the last 130 episodes of her syndicated
TV talk show, the last episode of which aired on May 25.
With "The Oprah Winfrey Show" out of the
way, Winfrey said she can be "all in" at OWN.
"I now have the time to be committed to the
nurturing of this network," Winfrey said Thursday in an interview with
Paula Zahn at a cable industry trade show in Chicago. "The vacation I
thought I was going to have is kind of over ... at least for the time
being."
Rosie O'Donnell, Shania Twain, Sarah Ferguson and
Winfrey friend Gayle King have first-season shows on the commercially-supported
OWN, which offers a mix of talk and reality shows, films and original
documentaries.
Winfrey will appear in "Oprah's Next
Chapter," in which she travels the world in search of interesting stories,
and "Season 25: Oprah Behind the Scenes," a chronicle of her final
talk show year. She will also be seen in the series "Oprah Presents Master
Class" and "Your OWN Show: Oprah's Search for the Next TV Star."
Winfrey said there are two people she was never
able to get on her talk show she'd still like to interview — O.J. Simpson and
Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman convicted of drowning her two young sons.
She said she's been surprised by the "bumps
along the way" in launching her network, which has seen low initial
ratings and the abrupt exit of its top executive. But she said her focus has
always been on her audience, not numbers.
"I let other people worry about ratings,"
she said. "For me, it is always about service to the viewers. I have
committed everything I have to this cable venture. I wouldn't bet against
me."
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Paul Beaty)
