OWN is ignoring one of the basic rules of television: Conflict sells.
And it plans to keep ignoring it.
OWN has had plenty of drama off-camera, to be sure, as it has burned through money and executives while earning fewer viewers than Discovery Health, the network it replaced at the start of the year.
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But as other female-skewing networks, from WEtv to Oxygen to Bravo, have cluttered their schedules with shows like "Bridezillas," "The Bad Girls Club" and "Real Housewives," OWN has carefully cultivated a zone of tranquility and self-improvement – even at the expense of other networks' quick-and-dirty ratings.
The network launched its first fall schedule Monday with two shows that failed to jolt it out of its ratings torpor: Rosie O'Donnell's "The Rosie Show" and Winfrey's own "Oprah's Lifeclass." Three more -- "Don't Tell the Bride," "Welcome to Sweetie Pie's" and "Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind" -- will debut Saturday.
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The network insists that it is on a long journey toward building a network around Winfrey's approach to programming – which is, as network co-president Erik Logan puts it, "bringing light into people's lives."
Logan, who shares the presidency with fellow former Harpo executive Sheri Salata, sounds almost Oprah-like as he describes OWN's day-by-day journey to self-improvement.
"The name of the game here is strength over time, and turning networks around clearly doesn’t happen overnight," he told TheWrap. "The goal is each and every day to improve in your time periods."
Time, he says, is on the network's side. The network started with 10 long-term deals with advertisers, and has since added more – most of them multi-year.
While Monday's numbers were unremarkable – O'Donnell had 497,000 total viewers at 7 p.m. followed by 333,000 for Winfrey at 8 – the shows did better than OWN has on a typical day.
From July through October, the network averaged 116,000 viewers throughout the day, down from Discovery Health's daily average of 147,000. OWN was also down from Discovery Health in primetime, and – more disturbingly – among women 25 to 54, its target demographic.
On any other network, that might be the cue for some tan, buxom bimbos to start throwing champagne bottles. But that won't happen on OWN.
Fox News quoted an unnamed person close to OWN this week who suggested that Winfrey's determination to avoid fighting or conflict has been an obstacle to success.
Winfrey has many stipulations on what could and could not be shown, the person said: "Everything had to be uplifting, and no negative stereotypes. Everything had to be approved by Oprah in order to get on the air. It wasn’t like she wasn’t looking at it or paying attention.”
The description of Winfrey's hands-on role dovetails with her own past descriptions of her involvement.
