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Oprah Deals Blow to CBS, ABC, Cancels Daily Talker

Oprah Winfrey will step down from The Oprah Winfrey Show on Sept. 9, 2011, at the end of its 25th season, according to a letter sent by Tim Bennett, pres of Winfrey’s production company Harpo, to her 214 local TV stations.

Her decision to stop producing the show comes as she prepares to focus her time and energy on the new cable channel OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, that is a 50-50 joint venture with Discovery Communications.

While Winfrey will appear on the cable channel in some capacity, The Oprah Winfrey Show will no longer exist, reports The New York Times. Management of OWN have been creating a programming plan but have made no announcement of what role Winfrey will play on-air.

The network will premiere in January, 2011. Theoretically, that will give her time on her broadcast show to tout the new cable venture once OWN debuts and Winfrey is still doing her talker.

For CBS, which owns the syndication rights to the show, the decision will mean the loss of millions of dollars in revenue each year as it says good-bye to its signature program. ABC stations, which aired the show in syndication, will lose daytime’s most popular program, which regularly draws 7 million viewers that led into evening news programs.

For the new cable station, Winfrey’s decision to turn her back on broadcast to focus solely on cable could mean the channel’s ability to charge higher per-subscriber fees. Cable industry execs say the channel is selling itself at between 10 cents to 15 cents a subscriber - relatively high for a new channel, experts say, writes Broadcasting & Cable. The cable net gain larger ad commitments from marketers.

The Oprah Winfrey Show draws nearly twice as many as the next biggest daytime talk show, Dr. Phil.

OWN is expected to take the place of the Discovery Health Channel, currently seen in about 74 million homes. A statement released by Discovery and OWN said the channel will have 80 million subscribers. Helping get the service off the ground are two top Discovery executives, advertising chief Kathy Kayse and Science Channel general manager, Debbie Myers. Myers is now acting general manager at OWN.

The cable net’s launch date has been pushed back a few times since the partnership between Harpo and Discovery was announced in 2008, due to the advertising downturn and turnover in management. It was originally slated to begin late this year or in early 2010.