CBS says it is hunting for someone to replace Oprah, if she quits her show in 2011 when her current contract is up.
“Whether Oprah stayed or doesn’t stay, it’s our obligation – if we are conducting our business properly – to identify people who identify with the viewer,” John Nogawski, head of the CBS subsidiary that syndicates her show, told the trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable.
“Hopefully, we . . . will come up with something that replaces that void,” he said in an interview released over the weekend.
Oprah will not even have to decide if she is keeping her current show until the very end.
“She doesn’t owe us any timing,” he said. “There’s nothing in any contract that says something has to be decided by a certain time.”
Nogawski said, however, that if she wants to do a show for the Oprah Winfrey cable channel that is about to begin, he’d even be open to carrying repeats of the show on broadcast TV.
“We’re not rushing her out the door,” he says. “If anything we want to motivate her to want to stay.”