Seeing Progress, Gayle King Stresses Patience with OWN

Gayle King, Oprah Winfrey’s well-known best friend and gatekeeper for her multi-billion dollar media empire, stressed patience with OWN, which is finding its audience with new programming.

By Chris Windham
Human Nature magazine

So will it or won’t it be successful?

That is the $200 million question being debated by media pundits and fans when discussing Oprah Winfrey’s OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. Will it be successful like Winfrey’s daytime talk show, magazine and book recommendations? Or, will OWN be a rare disappointment in Winfrey’s empire, à la her movie Beloved?

Gayle King, Winfrey’s well-known best friend and gatekeeper for her multi-billion dollar media empire, stressed patience with the launch of the network, which aims to help viewers improve on certain parts of their lives.

“Well, a start up is very difficult and she [Oprah] knew that going in,” says King, 56, who has known Winfrey since 1976.

King pointed to Winfrey’s assumption of the Chief Creative Officer title, in addition to CEO, as a signal that the media mogul will be as hands on with OWN as she was during the successful 25-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Launched to much fanfare on Jan. 1 in 80 million homes as a partnership between Winfrey’s Harpo production company and cable programming giant Discovery Communications, OWN has struggled to find its audience.

Since the launch, OWN’s average prime-time audience has dropped 37% to 250,000 viewers in July, according to Nielsen. Average viewership is also down about 20% from what the Discovery Health channel, which was replaced by OWN, had typically drawn.

Nevertheless, the network is beefing up its programming and attracting new viewers with the launch of The Rosie Show, hosted by talk-show veteran Rosie O’Donnell, and Oprah’s Lifeclass, which features Winfrey sharing personal revelations and life lessons.

“With the magazine, our philosophy is live your best life,” King told Human Nature. “It’s the same thing about OWN. We’ll encourage people. It doesn’t matter who you are, everybody hopes to be better. Everybody is a work in progress. If you ask Oprah herself, she would say to you she still has things to learn.”

King, a seasoned broadcast journalist, is Editor-at-Large at O, the Oprah Magazine and host of a syndicated talk show on OWN called The Gayle King Show, which is also broadcast on Sirius XM satellite radio.

“We’re not trying to cater to any particular genre of women,” King says. “We like all women, and we like boys too. We would like anybody to watch who wants to live and improve their life.”

King says she is excited to be back on TV, a field she worked in for 18 years as a professional. “TV is my first love,” King says. “So for me it’s great to be back doing a television show.”

While King enjoys working in other forms of media, she says television is her first love. “I love all media,” she says. “I love television. I love the magazine. I love the radio. But I love, love, love TV!”

One part of media King says she will not be taking part in anytime soon: books. “Too many people write books who shouldn’t write books,” she says.