Over the weekend, Businessweek reported that Oprah’s highly talked about and much scrutinized network, OWN, is approaching a mega loss of $330M since its debut.
Despite a recent rise in ratings with shows Oprah’s Lifeclass and Oprah’s Next Chapter, it appears the network is teetering on the edge of failure. Discovery, which put in 50% of the start up money, equaling $600M, is said to be writing its losses.
One Wall Street analyst called the channel the most “successful failure in television today.”
Oprah told CBS last month, “If I were writing a book about it, I might call the book 101 Mistakes.” The struggle hasn’t been easy. In March, OWN laid off some 30 employees along with giving Rosie O’Donnell’s talk show the boot in an effort to get its financial house in order
To her credit, Oprah did say that OWN may not reach its full potential until 2014. “I feel like I can at least now see the summit. Nowhere near the summit,” she said at an upfront event. “But still in the climb.”
