Oprah Takes the Tube
It's not that Oprah Winfrey is getting bigger—it's the screen that's getting smaller.
The multimedia maven has added another medium to her résumé, this time her very own YouTube channel. She'll formally announce the new venture on Tuesday's episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, when her guests will include YouTube founders—and 30-something billionaires—Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.
Winfrey's new domain on the incredibly popular video-sharing site will feature previews and behind-the-scenes footage from her Chicago-based show (courtesy of the Oprah Cam), as well as her interviews with "YouTube celebrities" and, true to form, user-generated content.
(Comments will be posted "at the discretion of the channel manager," however.)
While Winfrey's empire currently includes her syndicated talk show, now in its 22nd season; a Sirius Satellite Radio channel; O magazine; and a dizzying array of production projects, this is her first Internet-only, next-generation-friendly addition to the zeitgeist.
The channel doesn't have an official name yet, but it's likely that a capital "O" will be involved.
"So we're just going to call it, 'Hey, what about Oprah's channel?'" Winfrey joked in a video message posted on the new site.
But although the YouTube channel will ideally be jam-packed with whatever an Oprah fan's heart could desire, Winfrey and her in-house production arm do not intend for it to replace her existing Website, which encompasses her radio and TV shows and her monthly mag and has featured Oprah archives since 1999.
"It provides another platform for people online to communicate with us and share in some of the one-of-a-kind experiences that occur behind the scenes at The Oprah Winfrey Show," said Harpo Productions president Tim Bennett.
Not since Oprah After the Show, the one-hour, never-before-seen-footage show that disappeared from the Oxygen network's schedule in 2006 after four unremarkable years, has Winfrey partnered with another media company to showcase Oprah-related content.
As of press time, the channel already had 12,006 subscribers and had been viewed 164,307 times.
News of Winfrey's latest project came just hours after she spoke at a press conference in Chicago regarding the sexual abuse scandal currently plaguing the school for underprivileged girls she opened in South Africa at the beginning of this year.
A dormitory matron pleaded not guilty Monday in Johannesburg to 13 counts of indecent assault, common assault, soliciting or enticing a minor through the commission of an indecent or immoral act and verbal abuse against seven victims, six of them students aged 13 and 14.
"A horrible situation has been uncovered and rooted out," Winfrey, who has said that she first learned of the abuse allegations on Oct. 6, told reporters in Chicago. "This is what leadership is all about—so that abuse will end and truth will prevail."
"I was, needless to say, devastated and shaken to the core," she added.
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