Oprah Winfrey Opens Up About OWN At TCAs: I Want To ‘Bring Good Energy’

It’s been a huge week for Oprah Winfrey, who on January 1 launched her newest venture, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) on cable TV.

“This has been a revelatory week for me,” Oprah told reporters at the Television Critics Association Winter 2011 Session in Pasadena, Calif., thinking back over the last few days.

“[I was thinking] how absolutely extraordinary it is that I can sit in this place with my name on a network coming from a little town in Mississippi that people still can’t pronounce [the name of].”

In the first few days since the network launched, Oprah revealed she’s been paying attention to TV more than she ever has, even commenting to best friend Gayle King about her shock at seeing that commercials were running on her station.

“I didn’t know I loved Febreze so much,” Oprah laughed about what she told Gayle on a recent phone call after the two exchanged shocked remarks after noticing that OWN actually had commercials. “Thank you Chevrolet. Thanks Nissan… It’s a different way of looking at television [for me].”

Oprah, who said she plans to fill her channel full of what she’s dubbed “mindful television,” told reporters that she wants to make sure OWN is a spot on the dial at which people can feel comfortable stopping.

“As we continue to build the channel and the message — I am the messenger — the message [is] that here is a place where you can come and you can leave this television on … all day long and there is not going to be one thing that causes you not to sleep at night.”

Oprah added that she wants to use her network to “bring good energy,” and help people live with an “open heart.”

While Oprah has her own ideas for her network, she says that she won’t be leaving her loyal followers’ ideas and comments on the table. She revealed to critics that out of 800 pages of message board postings that have cropped up, she’s gone through at least 200 since the New Year started.

“I want to remain connected to the audience,” she said.

Oprah said she hopes to use her experience to help OWN thrive.

“I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes and being on the air for the past 25 years, I’ve learned about myself… [in] our jobs you learn from what worked and what didn’t work,” she said.

Oprah said she expects her team to encounter some rocky times, but they plan to push forward to keep people motivated and entertained enough to keep tuning in.

It’s a long way from the hopes Oprah’s grandmother had for her when she was a little girl growing up in Mississippi.

“The only dream my grandmother had for me… she used to say I hope you grow up and get some white folks,” Oprah said, referring to the white family for which her grandmother worked.

“Her dream for me was that I would be able to have a family like she had that would look after me like she was [looked after]. As I stood at the opening of OWN on Saturday morning looking into the eyes of [Discovery CEO] David Zaslav, that’s what I thought about. She would not even know, not only how this happened. She wouldn’t even know what this is,” Oprah added.