For twenty-five years, Oprah Winfrey ruled the airwaves with her TV show on kindness and hope, The Oprah Winfrey Show. Dubbed the ‘Queen of all media’, Winfrey went into acting, authoring, and many other ventures and became the richest African-American of the 20th Century.
However, the noted talk show host reportedly had one regret about her career trajectory. Speaking to TODAY’s Al Roker, Winfrey spoke about the dark times her network OWN faced initially and how she wanted to follow her own advice and take a break. The network’s initial failure reportedly even led her to a breaking point.
Oprah Winfrey Regrets Starting OWN Network Immediately After Ending Her Show
Starting in 1986, Oprah Winfrey delivered stories of resilience, hope, and grit to the American audience for twenty years. She became a household name and was dubbed the ‘Queen of all Media’ due to her popularity on the small and the big screen. She also ventured into acting with roles in The Color Purple and more.
After ending the show in 2011, the actress and host began her own network called the Oprah Winfrey Network, which was done in collaboration with Discovery. However, the OWN network found it hard to sustain with Winfrey even taking over as CEO in 2012 and laying off almost 30 employees (via The Wrap).
In a recent appearance on TODAY, where she spoke with host Al Roker, Winfrey opened up about her regrets in life and how she should have waited before starting the network immediately after the end of her talk show. She said,
I’d made my decision that it was time for the show to end, and I don’t regret that. What I do regret is trying to do multiple things at the same time. I would have done the thing that I tell everybody else to do: ‘When you don’t know what to do, do nothing. Get still with yourself and do nothing.’ I would have given myself that time.
She also mentioned that she went against her instinct (her “internal GPS system”) in starting the network immediately as many told her to keep the momentum going.
Oprah Winfrey Revealed She Had A Breakdown When OWN Was Failing
As of 2020, Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios became a minority stakeholder in the OWN network, with Discovery owning 95% of the company’s stocks. Winfrey remained as CEO and while the network seems to be in a better place now, the actress and talk show host mentioned that the initial days when it was failing were dark times.
Winfrey mentioned back in 2013 that she had a breakdown once while working on some shows, trying to hold the fort as the company was facing a collapse. She said (via Deadline),
I remember closing my eyes while I was reading. I thought, ‘I cannot have another thing enter my brain.’ I needed to pull back…[It] forced me not to just talk the talk. Failure is a great teacher. I knew this intellectually. But it’s another thing if you’re living it.
She also mentioned that nobody was more surprised than her when the network failed to get the required numbers to sustain initially.
