LOS ANGELES —Oprah Winfrey is used to running the show, whether it was her hit daytime TV program or the fledgling cable channel named for her that she rules as chairman and chief executive.
But this week’s Oprah Winfrey Network shake-up, which included a 20 percent staff layoff, thrusts her into a new dynamic: power-sharing with a top executive from Discovery Communications, the company that’s bankrolled OWN with $300 million-plus.
There’s another bedrock question: Does a big enough audience exist for OWN, so antithetical to the blowzy charms of “Jersey Shore” and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”?
As important as control might be to Winfrey, she’s also a savvy businesswoman and has been willing to take advice before. “In the past, when she was becoming too ‘New Age’ or becoming too distant, which can come with celebrity and wealth, the folks at King World would do a survey” and pass the results to her, said Bill Carroll, an expert in the syndication market for media consulting firm Katz Media.
As a smart broadcaster, Winfrey heard the public “and adjusted to what they were saying,” Carroll said.
