*Since Oprah’s namesake show went off the air last September, her magazine’s newsstand sales have also faded from sight, reports. Adweek
Brass at Hearst, which publishes the 2.4 million circulated publication with Winfrey, had downplayed the impact of the show’s ending on the magazine, saying they expected fans to turn to it to get their Oprah fix.
Yet, O, The Oprah Magazine’s newsstand sales plunged 32 percent to 413,363 in the second half of last year (after an 8 percent falloff in the first half), according to just-released Audit Bureau of Circulations figures. By comparison, all measured consumer magazines’ single-copy sales dropped 10 percent.
O was able to limit total second-half circulation to a decline of just 5 percent, thanks to a 4 percent increase in subscriptions—although they bring in less money per sub than they used to (although an O rep said the price has gone up 5 percent in the past year).
The rep said that with the economy soft and the show ending, a dropoff in newsstand sales wasn’t a surprise and pointed out that newsstand sales of the January issue were up 28 percent to 825,000.
Meanwhile, the daytime talk queen is struggling to win viewers to her new Oprah Winfrey Network, a partnership with Discovery Communications, where her audience is a fraction of what it used to be. Amid low viewing figures, Rosie O’Donnell’s show on OWN has laid off 30, moved to a smaller studio and scaled back the program.
Oprah may have been good on her show, but she’s not very good at running a network. She has lost touch with what people want to see. That was evident when she announced that Rosie would have her own show. Oprah is too out of touch to realize that Rosie’s fan-base has completely diminished. No one is checking for Rosie! As soon as I saw the announcement for the show, I knew it was going to fail. I really think Oprah hired Rosie as a way to show that her power is on the level with Barbara Walters, who previously fired Rosie! Bad move Oprah…
Oprah. What channel you on?
I think the problem is running a show and various other entities does not compare to running a network. However, the issue may not be that she can’t run a network if the magazine isn’t doing well also. It’s the reverse J.Lo affect. J.Lo needed American Idol to keep from being completely written off. So, she has a built in viewership wit Idol and instant popularity. Oprah’s rise to fame was because of Oprah and the fact that she was seen five days a week. She became a household name because of the show. Being behind the scenes, her fan base or viewership base isn’t seeing her. The channel is being driven by personalities that aren’t Oprah. Rosie was a bad move. Perhaps if she were the same Rosie from the Rosie O’Donnell show, maybe. But she burned her bridges and never truly recovered.