Dr. Oz's next big project—Him: On a Talk Show.
Like another TV doc before him, the man dubbed "America's Doctor" by no less an authority than Oprah Winfrey is following the yellow-brick road from the daytime diva's airwaves to his own chatfest.
According to Broadcasting and Cable, Winfrey's Harpo Productions is in the process of developing a show for Dr. Mehmet Oz, with an expected launch date of fall 2009.
While Winfrey and her golden-touch production team, which has spawned the likes of Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray and soon a Kirstie Alley program, already met with potential distributors in Chicago last month, it's unclear what format the new show will take or what will make up the bulk of its content, though it's safe to assume health and medicine will take center stage.
The 47-year-old Oz is professionally and publicly credentialed, serving as the vice chair and professor of surgery at Columbia University and director of the Cardiovascular Institute at New York Presbyterian Hospital, as well as cowriting the bestselling tomes You: An Owner's Manual, You: On a Diet and You: Staying Strong.
Word of the new show is hardly shocking news, as Oz has long been seemingly groomed by Winfrey for a platform of his own.
Last year, in a highly touted Oprah Winfrey Show first, Winfrey handed over the talk-show reins to Oz, leaving him to host an episode on his own with an audience full of men asking their most pressing, and TV-appropriate-embarrassing, medical questions.
In addition to his increasingly frequent appearances on Winfrey's show, Oz also regularly turns up on Oprah and Friends, the boss lady's XM Satellite Radio channel. He also hosts the Discovery Health program Second Opinion with Dr. Oz, a relationship that may already have lent itself nicely to his new gig.
Earlier this year, it was announced that Harpo and Discovery Health had teamed up to relaunch the cable network as OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network in 2009.