The 5 Biggest Problems with Oprah's Network

The Oprah Winfrey Network is a sprawling entrepreneurial effort by a woman who some consider to be the greatest pop cuture icon of all time. That begs the question, "So why don't I ever care to watch it?" I'm not necessarily the biggest Oprah fan on the planet, but you'd think her enormous influence would coerce me into a couple of Lifeclasses. I'm gay and stuff. I could dig it, right?

That hasn't been the case. Recently, Opra admitted in an interview with CBS that if she wrote a book about the OWN Network, it'd be called 101 Mistakes. That's a little overzealous, I think. If you subtracted 96 mistakes from that book and highlighted the following five issues, you'd uncover the network's true woes.

1. Oprah should never reduce herself to the 50+ demographic.

And now, a comprehensive catalog of The Oprah Winfrey Network's offerings: hour-long Master Class monologues by orators ranging from Ted Turner to Goldie Hawn, behind-the-scenes looks at Oprah's old talk show, Oprah's pretty damn vague Lifeclass, a new Rosie O'Donnell gabfest, old TLC shows, movies like The Color Purple and An Officer and a Gentleman, and the occasional vehicle for Dr. Oz/Suze Orman types. Altogether, it's a bunch of material aimed squarely at viewers who are entering -- as Master Class guest-star Jane Fonda would put it -- "the third act" of their lives. If most of the! shows o n your network could be fully realized in audiobook form, as these can be, you might be skewing a little ancient -- especially for a cable channel, since I don't know many grandparents who'd understand how to scroll past 14 Cinemax channels all playing Kung Fu Panda 2 to get to a Goldie Hawn soliloquoy. The mix of OWN's older demographic and deep cable placement is a recipe for major viewer disconnect.

2. The programming on OWN proves that Oprah doesn't understand her own appeal

When Oprah pontificates about "egolessness" and living in the present as she did on Lifeclass, I endure the same abdominal pains as when Madonna writes preachy lyrics or duets desperately with Britney Spears or Nicki Minaj. Both Oprah and Madonna, in and of their entities, are luminous symbols of steely self-possession. But when they resort to grandstanding and speechifying, they undermine their own signature confidence, condescendingly ask for respect, and admit that they no longer have faith in their own fearsome symbology. Oprah used to be about vulnerability, candor, and fieriness in the late '80s, her true prime. The Oprah of today is more concerned with ditching her fieriness -- which is wrapped up in "ego" -- and explaining how to feel like Oprah. That's worth a book or two, but not an ongoing, unyielding channel.