Oprah Winfrey Network Losses Approach $330 Million

Oprah is reportedly facing some steep financial headwinds as she tries to turn her struggling cable network around.

The woes that have befallen the Oprah Winfrey Network are by now the stuff of legend: the low ratings. The staff losses. The high-profile bombs like "The Rosie Show." Appearing on CBS News in April, Oprah herself seemed to sum up the dispiriting atmosphere at OWN.


"If I were writing a book about it, I might call the book '101 Mistakes,'" she said.
One of those mistakes might be the apparently vast sums of money that OWN has bled through since its inception. Bloomberg Businessweek reported last week that the network may have lost a whopping $330 million since it began in 2008. An analyst told the magazine that it was the most "successful failure in television today."

While Oprah does not have a personal financial stake in the company, it is still undoubtedly a black eye for her.

However, there may be some bright news on the horizon. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that ratings for the network have ticked up recently. Part of that is due to "Oprah's Next Chapter," the new show that has seen Oprah nab major exclusives, like her sit-down with Whitney Houston's family. (The success of
that show bolsters critics who said that Oprah's relative absence from OWN during its first year was a major error.)
Moreover, the network will get millions of dollars in new revenues from cable operators.

As she has many, many times before, Oprah stressed that she was playing a long game. She told the Journal that it might not be until late 2013 that OWN, in her words, "finds a vein."