Week in Culture

Has it really only been a week since Oprah took to her talk show to announce that she would be leaving the network in 2011? Last Friday, the queen of daytime made official what many have been speculating all season—she is leaving ABC (and syndicator CBS) after 25 years on air to concentrate on her niche cable channel, Oprah Winfrey Network (a.k.a. OWN). Though OWN has been struggling to get off the ground in recent years, the fact that Oprah is focusing all of her energies on the project bodes well for the channel—and cable in general. Oprah’s ratings, while dropping due to the downturn, still made her the supreme leader in daytime right up until the end, allowing her to go out on top like so many other talk show greats before her. Read The Daily Beast’s many takes on the Oprah departure, from Kim Masters’ full postmortem, to Rebecca Dana’s chat with the country’s leading Oprah-ologist, to Lloyd Grove’s argument that the network diva made a huge mistake with her announcement. One thing’s for sure—Oprah won’t be bored. Besides running her magazine and the new network, O has signed on to produce a steamy new show for HBO, about a housewife’s exploration of L.A.’s seedy, sexual underground.