The Queen of Daytime will be transitioning to primetime even before her 25 years of daytime TV are completed. Oprah Winfrey on Thursday announced five new series to debut in January 2011 on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, including her own new “Oprah’s Next Chapter.”
The new primetime cable show will not be like her current syndicated show, which wraps up in September 2011. Oprah’s Next Chapter will take her out of the studio to travel the world and interview interesting people in their own settings. “Oprah’s getting untethered from the chairs, opening up her world and taking you with her. From the Taj Mahal to her beloved oak tree, the Great Wall to her own teahouse, it’s a whole new kind of Oprah show. If she can dream it, she’ll do it!” the announcement declared. The one-hour regular series (but not daily) will be produced by Winfrey’s Harpo Studios.
“My vision for OWN is to create a network that inspires our viewers and makes them want to be who they are on their best day,” said Winfrey.
In addition to Oprah’s Next Chapter, the four other show announcements are: “Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind,” “Your OWN Show: Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star,” “Gayle King Live!” and “Why Not? with Shania Twain.” The will join 10 previously announced shows for the launch in January of OWN, which is a joint venture of Harpo and Discovery Communications.
Show descriptions:
In the new series Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind, the world’s top talent will take viewers inside their creative process, offering a rare opportunity to see how true masterminds bring their art to life. Academy Award-winning director James Cameron; Grammy Award-winning musician, artist, entrepreneur and pop culture icon Lady Gaga; internationally renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz, whose arresting work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and Vogue; Tom Ford, the fashion designer who breathed new energy into Gucci and is now enjoying newfound success as the director of the Academy Award-nominated film A Single Man; and will.i.am, founding member of The Black Eyed Peas, Emmy®-winning actor, entrepreneur and seven-time Grammy Award-winning artist, will all appear in this new one-hour weekly series. Radical Media will produce.
Oprah has brought you some of daytime’s biggest stars: Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, Dr. Oz, and will this fall with Nate Berkus. Now, it’s your turn. Do you have what it takes to have your own show? Oprah and the most successful reality producer in television, Mark Burnett, are joining forces on a nationwide search to discover television’s next big star in Your OWN Show: Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star (working title). Oprah will announce all the details on The Oprah Winfrey Show in May, and the search will begin. The series will be produced by Burnett’s production company.
Start your day with Oprah’s best friend and O, The Oprah Magazine’s Editor-at-Large Gayle King. Her hit radio show will come to OWN live daily in Gayle King Live! The people you want to talk to, the people you want to talk about, and everywhere you want to be will all be wrapped up in Gayle’s trademark no-nonsense style. This is a one-hour series.
By the age of 17, she had survived a childhood of poverty and the loss of both her parents in a devastating accident, but Shania Twain still went on to become the best-selling female artist in country music history. Then at the height of superstardom, she was blindsided by a double betrayal shattering her 14-year marriage. Now in Why Not? with Shania Twain, Shania opens up about her life-altering heartbreak and how she’s moving on. Follow her as she begins her climb back to the top, a personal journey filled with risk, revelations and unexpected adventures. The one-hour series will be produced by Gay Rosenthal Productions with Gay Rosenthal executive producing.
RBR-TVBR observation: No time off for Oprah. She is going to be busier than ever overseeing the launch of OWN, staring in this new show and taping the final months of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for broadcast television. And since she is known to be a hands-on CEO at Harpo, you can bet that she is going to be deeply involved in every important detail. Where does she get the energy?
