To the surprise of no one at all, Oprah Winfrey isn’t leaving television when her daily talk show ends next year.
Instead, she’ll be redirecting her efforts 100% towards her new cable channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, where she’ll produce and appear on a number of original shows. She’ll be hosting her own new OWN show, entitled Oprah’s Next Chapter, which finds her traveling around the world to faraway places like Egypt and China to have “more riveting conversations with the people we all want to hear from.” Next Chapter is expected to be an hour-long show, airing 2 or 3 times a week in prime time.
Oprah will also be a part of Your OWN Show: Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star, where she’ll serve as a judge on an American Idol-type search for the next great talk show host.
The rest of OWN’s roster is made up of shows seemingly tailored around Oprah’s personal friends and the top names on her rolodex, such as Gail King, Lisa Ling, Shania Twain, and more.
Anybody else remember that interview she did with Jay Leno after all the Leno/Conan hubbub, where he was certain she would keep doing a show of some kind, even after The Oprah Winfrey Show ends, and she swore up and down that she wasn’t doing another talk show? I’m not a big Leno fan, but it looks like he was spot-on about Oprah.