The announcement that Oprah will end her broadcast television show upon its 25th anniversary in 2011 has created quite a stir. Her category leading position for the past 20+ years has led to her show being a “must buy” for many advertisers trying to reach certain demographic groups. Consequently, local television stations have spent considerable sums to buy the local rights for this show and the cost of this licensing fee has placed Oprah on America’s top television stations.

Now that the show will no longer be available, how will these stations fare? First, the show will continue into 2011. Syndicators and local stations will have a substantial amount of time to plan and test alternatives. It may be one of the programs presently airing or some local programming yet to be developed. The time slot that Oprah has been occupying for many stations is one that is quite attractive, so investing in a new program is justified. Besides it’s own time period dominance, The Oprah Winfrey Show has added importance as it often leads into the stations’ local news programming. That’s helped to justify the fees charged to stations by CBS’ Syndication arm.

The considerable amounts that local stations have been spending for airing Oprah could easily be spent on alternative syndicated programming, or instead, on developing local programming. Profitability of this time slot might actually increase with these substitute programs.

Finally, while the size of the audiences that Oprah attracts are still very large, the ratings have been decreasing. The Oprah brand name on local stations is still very important and she’s helped launch other well known personalities such as Dr. Phil and Rachael Ray. For stations that carry Oprah, having this announcement happen in the middle of the all-important November sweeps might be a temporary boost to the ratings. However, given that the show won’t officially end until September 2011, those increases are likely to be temporary. The decrease in audiences may level off or continue downward over the remaining period of the show. Nevertheless, the impact in lost audiences is not as significant as it would have been several years ago. But, there’s no doubt that a badly battered industry certainly can’t relish the loss of one of its most widely popular personalities especially if it turns out that part of this exit is being driven by her desire to play a larger role in the development of her cable project (OWN) in partnership with Discovery.

The full economic impact of the Oprah show ending will not be known for a few years. Syndicators and local television stations will have an opportunity to be creative in the quest to find some programming that will distinguish itself in an ever increasing competitive marketplace. Let’s see what they create!

Though posted under Mark Fratrik, both Steve Passwaiter and Neal Polachek contributed to this post.

Tags: local television, Oprah, syndicated programming

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