US media mogul Oprah Winfrey has sold the majority of her shares in the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) to Discovery Communications Group, owners of the Discovery Channel.

According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Oprah Winfrey a star of the movie The Color Purple and one of America’s foremost talk show hosts registered 670,477 of the 1.34 million shares for sale.

Discovery now holds 95 per cent of OWN, with Oprah now down to just 5 per cent after selling a further 20.5 per cent of her holdings in a fire sale netting her just US$36.5 million.

As part of the deal, Oprah will receive 1.34 million shares of Disney stock and will remain as OWN’s CEO and Chief Creative Officer.

Oprah Winfrey launched OWN ten years ago in a 50/50 partnership with Discovery. Discovery put up most of the funding and Oprah and her team ran the company and leveraged her global brand. In its first year, it had a viewership of 1 million people and in 2013 the company made a profit.

In 2017 OWN had an estimated value of US$285 million but that has now significantly dropped by over US$100 million. The year 2017 also saw Oprah selling a 24.5 per cent of her shares in OWN to Discovery for US$70 million.

OWN targeted a black audience and found favour with black women aged between 25 and 54. Content is king as they say and OWN in recent years has put out a number of shows including Greenleaf, Queen Sugar and the Haves and the Have Nots.  OWN commissioned Tyler Perry, Ava Du Verney and Will Parker to create content for the platform.

By 2018, OWN’s viewership was down to 465,000 and now it hovers around 250,000. This is largely due to people turning away from cable television to streaming services like Netflix, Disney +, Hulu, Amazon Prime and HBO Max.

Also having to continually come up with new content and the grind of running a network is tiresome and draining.

At 66, and now worth an estimated US$2.6 billion according to Forbes, does Oprah need the stress and hassle of running a media operation?

“In hindsight perhaps it was a mistake to build a network entirely around Oprah and what she is about. It left little room for adjusting to changing dynamics and audience predilections. People under thirty now see her as a grandma figure. Shows like Greenleaf capture a very narrow demographic and we know what that is but for OWN to grow it will have to go beyond its narrow confines,” said Jeff Daniels of Colorado’s “Square Box”.

Shows that cut across racial boundaries and demographics like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, and The Crown attract huge audiences.  Is Oprah content to remain in her Afro-American lane or does Discovery look to capture that niche rather than go head to head with the big streaming players?

Oprah gave insight into making the transition from running her own talk show to anchoring a network and what it requires when she said: “ When I was doing the “Oprah” show all those years, I was basically doing shows for myself and my producers; whatever was going on in our lives, we would sit around and talk about what we thought was important.

“What I realized is when you doing a whole network, you need to speak to whoever is willing to listen.”

There are those who are nostalgic for the good old days of her talk shows which at its height saw 7 million viewers a day. It does Oprah a disservice to expect her to do this decade after decade. She is a creative force and should pursue other challenges.

Running OWN was a declaration of intent and a noble one at that. Oprah Winfrey’s greatest calling card is that she is beloved the world over and she is unique in that she can parlay that into any project she sets her mind to. She is a fantastic actress and that part of her craft goes largely unappreciated. She may now be able to make time to turn attention in that direction.

She has always displayed tenacity and that will always serve her well. On starting the OWN project, she declared, “It is a long-term process and I have the vision to see what this network can be in three years, in five years in ten years, as an institution of hope and inspiration.”

How prophetic those words turned out to be!

Oprah Winfrey has created jobs and careers for many black people who otherwise would struggle to make their way in the mainstream American entertainment industry. The likes of Tyler Perry, Shondra Rhimes, Will Packer and Ava DuVernay owe her a debt of gratitude and she has paved the way for others who now can step from in front of the camera to owning the enterprise and running it with a team of their choosing.

There is still a lot for Oprah to do.  “O” Magazine has run its course after twenty years with its last edition going out in December.  She is looking to pivot to a digital offering and has said that this is the way to go for publishing in the twenty-first century.  Magazines like Playboy bear this out. Fans of the magazine will be happy to hear that four editions of the magazine will be printed yearly, one per season perhaps.

She will still run OWN but will not be bogged down by the minutiae of corporate administration or major shareholder responsibilities, leaving her free to oversee content creation and execution. She can still command lucrative deals on the many digital media platforms springing up and her back catalogue will be media gold for years to come.

Looking through that crystal ball, Oprah will no doubt be owning many projects in the coming years. Who knows, in four years’ time she may even make a presidential run – now that would make an incredible story!