Oprah's 'No-Cynicism Zone'

Looking for more niceness on TV? Oprah’s new network contains not “a snicker of malice or a hint of raillery,” according to The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley—“a place where cynicism takes a holiday and mockery hasn’t yet been invented.” This doesn’t exactly sound like a formula for success: “Many of the OWN programs are Oprah-fied versions of existing cable programs, without the freak shows or histrionics.” Still, Stanley says, “it lives up to the Oprah Winfrey ethos—a “meaningful, mindful” cable network that seeks its own truth and tries to be its own best self.”