Oprahs Lifeclass to expand to 2 hours on Fridays

In an effort to gin up a bigger audience, the Oprah Winfrey Network announced Tuesday that it would expand its 8p.m. Oprahs Lifeclass to two hours on Fridays.

Oprahs Lifeclass (airing 8 to 9 p.m., after Rosie ODonnells talk show) will continue to be what OWN describes as Oprahs most personal revelations, new insights and life lessons gleaned from the 25-year history of The Oprah Winfrey Show or, as we like to call the new show, a clever Oprah clip job.

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Pulitzer Prize winner, Peabody recipient, Medal of Freedom honoree -- Lisa de Moraes is none of these, but she is an authority on the bad direction, over-acting, and muddled plot lines being played out in the TV industry's executive suites.

Starting this Friday, from 9 to 10 p.m., an expanded Oprahs Lifeclass will feature Actual Live Oprah in a smallish studio, taking questions about the repurposed Oprah footage from a smallish audience. Actual Live Oprah will also take questions tweeted and Skyped in from her millions of fans worldwide about what theyve just seen on the show.

The Friday Actual Live Oprah feature is an outgrowth of what OWN learned during the premiere week of Oprahs Lifeclass or, as we like to call it, last week.

During the premiere week, after each episode, Actual Live Oprah took questions about the episode in the form of an online chat. Imagine the surprise when the OWN show averaged 310,000 viewers and the online chat copped 1.6million streams.

Our first week of online discussions for Lifeclass generated an overwhelming response, OWN President Sheri Salata said in Tuesdays announcement. Now, Oprah fans from around the world will be able to continue these powerful conversations every Friday night.

But only four times. Because Oprahs Lifeclass has been ordered for only four more weeks, according to an OWN ! spokeswo man.

Back in July, when OWN unveiled Oprahs Lifeclass then titled OWN Your Life (The Oprah Class) Salata called it a signature series for the network, which is a joint venture of Oprahs Harpo company and Silver Spring-based Discovery Communications.

As recently as last month, one of Chicago-based Harpos home town newspapers, the Chicago Tribune, called Oprahs Lifeclass an eight-week prime-time strip. Strip means it airs every night, Monday through Friday. Five weeks is an unusually short run for a signature show. But its also unusual for a five-week show to have had three names before it launches.

Before Oprahs Lifeclass, this one was first called Oprahs Encores, then OWN Your Life (The Oprah Class).

But OWN has been a pretty unusual network from the get-go.

Talks book club

As Oprah tries to figure things out, others swoop in, in hopes of picking up some of the scraps of her daytime empire.

The CBS gabber The Talk, for instance, announced Tuesday that on Nov. 11, it would launch a new Book Buzz series, featuring a regular discussion of thought-provoking books, a la Oprahs book club.

Oprahs book club was so successful that it put moribund books on the bestseller list and made rock stars out of authors.

First up for Book Buzz: Iris Krasnows The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes to Stay Married.

This little gem features interviews that Krasnow conducted with more than 200 women whose marriages had lasted 15 to 70 years. Krasnow discovered, The Talk said, that all the women had taken bold sometimes surprising steps to maintain their marriages.

One month before on-air discussion of the book, Talk hosts will announce the Book Buzz selection so viewers can read up and be prepared to join the conversation. Readers can share their thoughts on Twitter or Face! book an d during the show, of course, if theyre lucky enough to be in the audience and if Sharon Osbourne doesnt fill all the available air time with useful tips on the bold steps shes taken to maintain her they-said-it-wouldnt-last marriage to Ozzy.

Shopping Sheen

Charlie Sheen and his new producers have been out shopping their new sitcom, Anger Management. Now, the trade site Deadline.com has a long piece on how its been going. Nothing much new but its Charlie Sheen, so even no news is must-know news, right?

On the other hand, youre busy people your time is valuable. So weve boiled down the report for you:

Everyone except CBS (duh) and TBS the corporate sibling of Two and a Half Men production company Warner Bros. TV appears to have taken meetings with the production company Debmar-Mercury/Lionsgate TV.

Broadcast networks are considered a long shot. Thats because the Debmar-Mercury model the one TBS agreed to in launching Debmar-Mercurys Tyler Perry franchises falls into the Broadcast TV Life Is Too Short category.

The Debmar-Mercury model (a.k.a. the 10-90 Model) goes like this: You, the network, agree to buy and telecast 10 episodes. Should those 10 hit an agreed-upon ratings threshold, youre on the hook for 90 episodes more. Period.

So broadcast networks are a long shot unless one could buy the show with the option of palming it off on a cable cousin should things not work out such as network/cable cousins NBC and USA, or Fox and FX, Deadline and others have speculated.