NATE Berkus is striking out on his own, but he isn’t straying far from the Oprah flock.
The interior designer, who’s been a frequent guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” since 2001, is on the verge of signing a deal with Winfrey’s Harpo Productions to star in his own syndicated daytime talk show. It’s scheduled to premiere next fall, reports Broadcasting & Cable.
This would make Berkus the fourth Winfrey regular — joining the ranks of Dr. Phil McGraw, Rachael Ray and Dr. Mehmet Oz — to break out with a Harpo-backed talk show, all but guaranteeing him instant ratings success.
“The Dr. Oz Show” debuted in September and is currently third in households, coming in behind “Dr. Phil” and “Oprah.” Meanwhile, the success of “Dr. Phil” has spawned “The Doctors,” and its producers are in development on a similar series, “The Lawyers.”
Berkus’ talk show is only one of many new projects that Winfrey has up in the air right now.
Jenny McCarthy — another frequent “Oprah” guest — signed a multi-year development deal with Harpo earlier this year to create projects for a variety of media platforms, including a syndicated talk show that McCarthy would host.
Winfrey’s own, long-delayed network, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, is likely to get underway in mid-2010. Original programs featured on the network include “Inside: Lisa Ling Investigates,” the hour-long “Dr. Laura Berman” talk show and a project with declutter expert Peter Walsh.
After a 15-year partnership with ABC ended, during which Winfrey had a hand in producing six made-for-TV movies including 2008’s “Oprah Winfrey Presents Mitch Albom’s For One More Day,” Harpo Films signed a deal with HBO in 2008.
While nothing has surfaced on the pay cable network yet, an HBO spokesperson says that the deal is “alive and well.” In the works is a miniseries, a movie and several potential TV series, the first of which is likely to debut in 2011.
Not everything that Winfrey touches turns to gold, though.
The 2007 ABC reality series “Oprah’s The Big Give” only made it through one season, while the proposed “Your Money or Your Life,” another ABC reality show, never made it to air.
Kirstie Alley’s development deal with Harpo Productions, announced in 2008, also failed to come to fruition. (She recently announced that she’ll be starring in an A&E docu-series.)
Another blot on Winfrey’s otherwise stellar record was her involvement with the early iteration of the Oxygen network, which she co-founded. To help the new network get underway, Winfrey created “Oprah After the Show,” an extension of her syndicated program, which lasted from 2003 to 2006.
The network struggled to find its identity and Winfrey cut back her commitment to it, before it was sold to NBC Universal in 2007. “It was an ego decision and not a spirit decision, which is how I make all my decisions,” she told Black Enterprise in 2008. “The only decisions that get me in trouble are ego decisions.”