Entertainment

OPRAH LETS OZ STAY HOME

‘DR. OZ,” the new daytime medical show being launched next fall, will be the first Oprah Winfrey-produced show to call Manhattan home.

The show, hosted by renowned New York heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz – an “Oprah” regular – will be produced from an as-yet-undeteremined studio in NBC headquarters in Rockefeller Center.

For weeks, Harpo, Orpah’s production company, had been interviewing potential new staff members but had not been able to tell them where – or if – they’d have to move to work on the show.

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“We considered both Chicago and New York as a potential home for the ‘Dr. Oz’ show,” Harpo spokeswoman Lisa Halliday said.

The decision about where to make the show was important – not only for Oz, a heart surgeon who is on staff at New York Presbyterian Hospital – but for Harpo, which had never produced a show here.

The New York location puts the new show 700 miles away from Chicago and the heart of Winfrey’s TV operations.

“Dr. Oz’s heart is in New York, from his career as a surgeon to raising his family,” Halliday said, explaining why Harpo dropped plans to make the show in Oprah’s Chicago studio and allowed it to be done here.

Harpo started the “Dr. Phil” show in LA. While Oprah was instrumental in getting the New York-based “The Rachael Ray Show” on the air, her company co-produces it with CBS.