Oprah fires OWN chief Christina Norman

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

In an admission of dissatisfaction with the ratings for the four-month-old OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, the head of that channel, Christina Norman, has been dismissed, the channel said Friday.

Effective immediately, Peter Liguori, the chief operating officer for Discovery Communications, will take over the channel on an interim basis, through the rest of the year, if not longer.

Discovery and Ms. Winfrey jointly own and operate OWN. The decision to dismiss Ms. Norman was made by the board that oversees OWN in the last few weeks, according to a person with direct knowledge of the decision.

The shake-up comes amid disappointment at Discovery and at OWN about low ratings for most of its programming. On a total day basis, OWN is barely outperforming the channel it replaced, Discovery Health, despite hundreds of million of dollars of investment.

Says Mr. Liguori about OWN’s new and improved programming style:

He said he would apply the lessons of the last four months to new programming. One lesson, he said, has been that straightforward how-to shows and darker subject matter don’t work as well as shows that are more clearly entertaining. “I think you’re going to see more joy on the network,” he said.

“Every single one of Oprah’s shows should be purposeful,” he emphasized. “But the price of entry for that purpose — that show’s intent, its message, its takeaway — is that you are entertained.”

Asked to elaborate, he said, “It’s going to be compelling characters, storytelling with stakes, and then at the end of the show, you realize you have learned either some moral or practical lesson.”

It’ll be interesting to see how this changing of the guard will affect the station and its audienced. Stay tuned…

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