Oprah Winfrey is bringing back a feature that was one of the mainstays of her long-running syndicated daytime talk show, the New York Post reports. Winfrey is reviving the Oprah Book Club.
The first book in what Winfrey is calling "Oprah Book Club 2.0" will be "Wild," by Chery Strayed, which is already a bestseller, according to the story. The Oprah Book Club will debut digital editions at noon today and will sell them through Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and other platforms.
The revival of the club, which will be promoted through social media, is part of a drive to promote Winfrey’s cable network OWN along with O, the Oprah Magazine, the story reports. Newsstand sales for the magazine fell by 30% during the second half of 2011, with an accompanying exodus by advertisers, the story reports.
The book club helped push novels into the bestseller range from its start in 1996 until it ended along with Winfrey’s syndicated show in May 2011, the piece notes. Winfrey has had a hard time generating buzz since then, with the talk show off the air and disappointing ratings for her cable network.
The story quotes a publishing executive saying: “It seems she had a lot of businesses that worked well when she was on TV every day, and now that she isn’t, they are not working.”
Oprah’s OWN cable network might have more viewers if her channel was available as a basic tier service, along with other local television service.
She could charge advertisers more–because she would have more viewers–that would make up for any lost revenue from the cable services currently broadcasting her channel on the more expensive tier.
Some people aren’t watching because they don’t have access to her channel, unless viewers subscribe to the more expensive cable tiers.
Oprah didn’t have this problem when her show was on broadcast tv.