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Oprah Talks About the Struggles of OWN and Her Symptoms of a Nervous Breakdown

Aug 16, 2013  •  Post A Comment

Oprah Winfrey has "made several public revelations about OWN that could complicate Discovery chief David Zaslav’s current spin campaign that her cable channel is no longer a disaster," report Lisa De Moraes and Nikki Finke at Deadline.com..

The story continues, "First, Oprah told People magazine that last summer she suffered ‘the symptoms of a nervous breakdown’ and reached her ‘breaking point’ because her Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) was struggling very publicly. On Thursday night, Aug. 15, 2013, Winfrey told host Andy Cohen on Bravo’s ‘Watch What Happens Live’ that her biggest personal ‘aha’ moment would have to be last year when she was ‘getting all the schadenfreude from the media cause OWN wasn’t where I wanted it to be at the time.’ ”

The article also notes, "Zaslav’s joint venture with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Inc, OWN, had a wobbly 2011 start and weathered more problems in 2012 even though Discovery advanced it hundreds of millions of dollars. (Exactly $509M total as of June 30th of this year and, while Discovery isn’t required to lend any more, it might do so if needed, according to Zaslav.)"

Furthermore, according to the article, "Oprah revealed to People that during an interview she was conducting with anti-African child slavery activist Jason Russell (videomaker of ‘KONY 2012’), ‘Jason was talking about having a nervous breakdown and I was thinking, "I have those symptoms."’ A few days later she was preparing to record voice-overs for a couple of her shows on OWN when she hit a breaking point. ‘I remember closing my eyes while I was reading. I thought, "I cannot have another thing enter my brain." I needed to pull back.’ After years of advising viewers how to face a crisis head-on, ‘this forced me not to just talk the talk. Failure is a great teacher. I knew this intellectually. But it’s another thing if you’re living it.’"

4 Comments

  1. *very* first-world problems

  2. Agreed. I may not sleep tonight!

  3. Ms Winfrey has gone from the media mogul with a Midas touch to troubled entrepreneur who now must live in the Real world. When did this change occur? She got too full of her power as an opinion maker for suburban women and made the DECISION to try to sell them Barrack Obama. ” Jumping the Shark” is too tame a description of her instant fall from favor. She once transcended the race issue and spoke to all Americans (mostly women) . She has descended into involvement with the Race Industry and she is now nothing special in the entertainment.

  4. Oh, please. Connecting this story to Oprah’s support of Obama is quite a stretch. It never ceases to amaze me how on ANY Internet message board a right-leaning soul will try to link ANY story to Obama, be it a cast change on “The View” or a cut to a some government program somewhere in the country. What BS. Not surprised Oprah had personal issues trying to launch a 24 hour cable network. I’d say she knows how to survive in the “real world” and has the bank account to prove it.

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