Oprah Winfrey’s TV network plans $15m relaunch after struggling to get viewers

London: Chat queen Oprah Winfrey is apparently preparing a 15 million dollars relaunch for her struggling television network, just 10 months since its inception, after its prime-time viewership tumbled by more than one third.

The one-time queen of daytime television, who retired from ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ on CBS in May, after 25 years, is to launch an advertising blitz and take a bigger on-screen role in her new cable channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, in an attempt to win back lost ratings. She will be stepping up her role in ‘Oprah’s Lifeclass’, a nightly programme resurrecting old episodes of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’, in addition to pushing ahead with previous plans for hosting ‘Oprah’s Next Chapter’, a chat show set to air from January. She will also conduct online discussions with fans over the internet, in front of a live studio audience. The rescue package comes after officials at Discovery Network, OWN’s partner channel, expressed concern that viewers were tuning out because the star on whose name and image OWN is based and marketed fails to appear often enough. “With the numbers for OWN being so horrible, Discovery insisted that Ms Winfrey have more of a presence on the network. So they’re scrambling,” the Telegraph quoted a source as telling Fox News. ANI