Oprah network is banking on Rosie to pump it up

Rosie O'Donnell, her young neighbor Kyle and first guest Russell Brand on the "The Rosie Show. (" Provided by Oprah Winfrey Network )

Can "Rosie" save the struggling Oprah Winfrey Network?

Rosie O'Donnell's patented combination of razzle-dazzle and humble Everywoman last week goosed OWN's fun quotient, along with the ratings.

With familiar but not headline- making guests, stand-up patter, games and music and self-professed "sucking up" to critics the variety-chat show host got noticed. She even prompted viewers to find their way to the obscure channel (locally OWN is Channel 220 on Comcast, 189 and 885 on DishNet, 279 on DirecTV).

Make a big noise, ratings may follow.

But the Rosie-Oprah brands are wearing thin.

An axiom of the TV business is that a single hit can change the fortunes of an entire network. Many cable networks have languished in anonymity until a breakout show lifted them to prominence. Comedy Central didn't break out until "South Park" became a destination. Bravo was nowhere until "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" drew a crowd.

Might "The Rosie Show" come to OWN's rescue?

So far, "Rosie" feels less exciting, less fresh, less like a destination than, say, "Ellen." It looks very like what O'Donnell delivered in the old days which is not necessarily a compliment. She was great, but that was a long time ago.

Besides, while one hit can boost a whole network, that network has to have a store of other shows ready to score. OWN doesn't seem to have the bench strength.

Even if she pumps up the star wattage and lowers the average age of her guests, it's unclear whether Rosie can save Oprah.!

I t may stun Oprah fans that, after 10 months on the air, the highly promoted OWN is in need of saving.

Since January, it's turned in lousy ratings, with no standout show, executive changes and a general lack of traction. With Oprah's previously divided attention now firmly on the network, that will no longer serve as an excuse.

O'Donnell's first-week ratings were middling. The "Rosie" premiere drew 497,000 viewers, not great, but better than "Oprah's LifeClass" (reruns, which managed only 333,000).

O'Donnell is clearly comfortable in her own skin; watching her is a study in showmanship. But the audience may still be ambivalent about her after a rocky TV past.

Winfrey's collaborators at Discovery are doing everything they can to make sure "Rosie" is exposed to viewers: Her show has been airing on four other Discovery Communications networks TLC, Investigation Discovery, Discovery Fit & Health, and Planet Green at the same time as OWN. That was a sacrifice for TLC: By giving the slot to "Rosie," TLC took a hit in the ratings it normally draws for "Little People Big World."

Taken together, the five networks posted a 1.5 rating for "Rosie" among the target audience, women 25-54. Better for OWN, but not great.

OWN's new shows include "Welcome to Sweetie Pie's," a soft docu-reality show about a family restaurant run by the matriarch (a former Ikette with Ike and Tina Turner), "Our America With Lisa Ling" (the correspondent appears in easy-listening documentaries), and "Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind" (the best of the lot, with Tyler Perry talking about his work in the first installment).

"The audience is starving for positivity," Perry says in "Visionaires."

Positivity is nice, but TV likes it only in small doses.

"There may be bigger things afoot here," according to Robert Thompson, pop-culture guru at Syracuse University. "It may say something kind of sad about the human spirit." Namely, that educational and inspiring programming isn't as popu! lar with the American public as programs featuring a higher sleaze quotient.

By insisting on sticking to her brand of uplift and self-improvement, and eschewing raunchy and rowdy, "Oprah may have been asking too much," Thompson said. "Her brand may be too limiting for an entire channel."

The unthinkable may be coming to pass. After a quarter-century, we may be witnessing the end of The Age of Oprah.

Thompson thinks he can pinpoint the moment Oprah lost top billing in the public consciousness: last year, when she appeared on a huge screen above Jon Stewart's head in advance of his "Rally to Restore Sanity" in Washington, offering bus rides to his event and thereby hitching her star to Stewart's. "It was a complete shift in the ontology of American culture. The first time it wasn't everyone else riding Oprah's coattails."

Can Oprah now ride Rosie's well-worn coattails? The pressure is on.

"The referee is counting, and he's up to about seven," Thompson said.

OWN is down but not necessarily out.