Oprah Winfrey's SiriusXM Channel Goes Off The Air

They’ve pulled the plug on Oprah’s bizarre but lucrative radio career.

SiriusXM satellite radio axed the Oprah Channel on Jan. 1, ending an expensive eight-year media marriage in which satellite operators coughed up staggering sums of money simply to cash in on Oprah Winfrey’s name.

“Harpo Radio and SiriusXM have announced that the production of Oprah Radio content on SiriusXM ended effective Jan. 1,” SiriusXM said in a statement. “Since its launch, the channel has provided informative and uplifting daily programming for SiriusXM listeners who are striving to live their best lives.”

Winfrey’s original deal, signed in February 2006, stunned the radio world. It paid her a whoppping $55 million over three years to put her name on a channel for which she would personally provide only about an hour of programming a week.

The rest of the channel consisted original shows, by Oprah pals like Gayle King, that repeated many times to fill the 24-hour format.

Oprah’s value to XM was largely strategic. At the time of the deal, XM and Sirius were fierce competitors, and there was concern over whether both services could survive.

Sirius had just scored a huge coup by signing Howard Stern. The deal with Oprah told the satellite-radio world that XM aimed to trump its rival with the woman who at the time was TV’s biggest brand.

Winfrey herself said at a lavish launch party in New York that she had always loved radio and felt it could be a critical media outlet for her.

She hired a program director and set up a studio in Chicago.

It isn’t known how popular Oprah’s radio channel had been, since SiriusXM doesn’t release audience figures. When the merged SiriusXM renewed Oprah’s contract in 2009, the name was changed from “Oprah and Friends” to “The Oprah Channel,” and the amount of money Winfrey received reportedly fell.

SOURCE