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The Queen of All Media is having trouble conquering cable.
Just five months after her fledgling cable network launched to much fanfare, Oprah Winfrey and her financial backer, Discovery Communications, announced yesterday that they were shaking up management yet again.
The famed talker tossed Christina Norman, the second chief to run “OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network” since its inception, and parachuted in Discovery COO Peter Liguori as interim CEO to take charge of programming.
“[Norman] was more of an operations person, but the ratings are just not where we need them,” said one insider.
So far this year, OWN is averaging 148,000 viewers in total per day, according to Nielsen figures, barely above the channel it replaced, Discovery Health, and far below the goal targeted by network executives, who were hoping OWN would double the ratings of its predecessor.
While an average of 583,000 viewers tuned into OWN’s premiere week in January, the ratings fell back to Earth almost immediately.
In the kind of confession she expects from her guests, Winfrey, who is winding down her syndicated talk show after 25 years, admitted that she hasn’t devoted her full attention to the nascent network. But she signaled that she will be ready to address OWN’s problems head-on after her final episode airs this month.
“With the final taping of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ only a few weeks away, I will soon be able to devote my full energies to OWN,” she said in a statement. “This is a natural point of transition, and I am confident that Peter, as an integral part of the launch of OWN, will be a terrific partner for me going forward.”
Discovery, meanwhile, has committed $239 million, including $57 million in the first quarter alone, to the network in a sizable show of faith. Winfrey hasn’t put in any of her own money.
Moreover, advertisers such as Procter & Gamble and General Motors have committed close to $200 million as part of multi-year pacts with the network.
Discovery also negotiated significant rate increases from programming distributors such as cable-TV operators based on Winfrey’s brand.
Discovery CEO David Zaslav has little patience with executives who fail to hit their goals, and moved swiftly to bring in Liguori, who was entertainment chief at the Fox broadcast network before joining Discovery.
Liguori is described as a temporary solution until someone else can be found, but insiders said he’ll do the job for at least a year.
His immediate goals are to launch Winfrey’s flagship show, “Oprah’s Next Chapter,” which will now debut in January 2012 instead of this fall. He’s also focused on repackaging her syndicated show to create new content and getting Rosie O’Donnell’s new OWN talk show off to a solid start this fall. catkinson@nypost.com