A rep for Oprah Winfrey has said the TV queen will announce by year’s end if she will make a leap from her current daytime talk show to her previously announced cable channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), Access Hollywood has learned.
On Friday, a rep for HARPO told Access, “She has not made a decision yet. As she has previously stated, she’ll be making an announcement before the end of the year.”
The response was prompted following a report on Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily blog on Thursday morning claiming that Oprah and Discovery were planning to announce that OWN would finally launch in early 2011.
Finke also claimed Oprah is set to announce the end of her CBS Televsion Distribution syndicated talk show, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” in Chicago and relocate it to OWN and to Los Angeles in 2011 as a flagship show for the new network.
According to Reuters, OWN declined to comment on the latest rumors, while CBS said they would love to have “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on for as long as the host wants to continue doing the show.
“The decision is Oprah’s to make. As we have stated repeatedly, we love Oprah and if she wants to continue her show then we want to continue to be in business with her,” CBS said in a statement to the news network.
ABC, which airs the program in local networks, had no comment when contacted by Reuters.
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