By Nat Worden
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Oprah Winfrey has yet to decide whether she'll extend the life of her syndicated, daytime talk show on broadcast television, a spokesman for her production company said Thursday, in response to an Internet report saying her show would move to her new cable network in less than two years.
Winfrey's departure to cable would deal a blow to the broadcast television industry--already suffering audience declines and a migration of advertising to cable networks--as well as to CBS Corp's (CBS) syndication arm, which owns the rights to The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Walt Disney Co.'s (DIS) ABC Networks, which owns the group of stations that broadcast the show.
According to Hollywood entertainment blogger Nikke Finke, Winfrey will soon announce that she'll end the show when her existing syndication deal runs out in September 2011 to focus on the launch of OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, her long-delayed joint-venture on cable with Discovery Communications Inc. (DISCA) that's expected to launch in place of the Discovery Health Channel.
Finke said Thursday that "in the coming days," Winfrey and Discovery would issue a press release announcing the move. Finke said Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav had demanded that Winfrey move her show entirely to cable or risk losing OWN altogether.
Don Halcombe, spokesman for Winfrey's Harpo Productions, reiterated in an email that Winfrey would make an announcement about the future of her show before year-end.
Michelle Russo, a spokeswoman for Discovery, and ABC spokeswoman Julie Hoover declined to comment. CBS spokesman John Wentworth couldn't be reached.
Discovery recently announced that Lisa Erspamer, a producer at Harpo, will join OWN in January as chief creative executive. That announcement suggested that Winfrey is becoming more active in operations at OWN and possibly laying the groundwork to leave her syndicated show.
OWN said Erspamer will work to "create, shape and drive programming and ensure Oprah's unique editorial voice across all platforms."
-By Nat Worden, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2472; nat.worden@dowjones.com