Former teen star Tori Spelling will never know the success of 90210 again, but her Oxygen reality show with husband Dean McDermott, Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, is actually performing … well. Thanks to a careful manipulation of ratings numbers, Tori claims Oxygen's best Nielsens for the 18-49 female audience in the channel's history. In total, just under 1 million tuned in Tuesday night to see if blondes have more fun. [NYP]
"At Oxygen’s offices atop Chelsea Market in Manhattan last week, where NBC has plastered the channel’s new shade of yellow on the walls, Jason Klarman, general manager of Oxygen, talked of taking women’s programming out of the stereotypical 'pink pastel ghetto.'" [NYT] Oxygen will accomplish this through shows like Snapped, a true crime series about lady murderers. (Fun web feature: Each episode includes an online photo gallery of suspects!)
With so many lady properties, NBC Universal has decided to stick Oxygen, Bravo, and iVillage under a single umbrella, Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, or Women@NBCU for short/cuteness. Also in the mix: the "Green is Universal" campaign, the Today show, and specific shows like The Biggest Loser and Lipstick Jungle. Heading things up is none other than Lauren Zalaznick [MP], who took over Lisa Gersh's job when NBCU bought Oxygen last fall, someone who, unfortunately for the gossips, we actually hear nice things about.
Sad news for drunk frat boys needing a laugh in the middle of the night and prude housewives everywhere: Seventy-seven-year-old Sue Johanson is wrapping up her sixth and final season of Talk Sex on Oxygen this Sunday, quite possibly ending her 32-year television run.
Johanson insists she isn't being pushed out, but the sale of Oxygen from Oprah Winfrey & Co. to NBC Universal is plausibly at the root of things.
Fittingly, her final show will be a countdown of the year's top 10 sex toys. Below, a classic Sue clip. CONTINUED »
At Soho House yesterday, NBC Universal unveiled exactly what it means when word leaked they were rebranding the newly purchased $875 million Oxygen. Gone is the "Oh!" tagline; in is "Live Out Loud." They're going to focus on "Generation O," nomenclature that 1) doesn't exist; and 2) should've been trademarked by Oprah before she sold off the network. But what the hell is Generation O to begin with? CONTINUED »
Oh!, thank God! After snapping up television network Oxygen for $875 million in October, NBC promptly laid off 25 percent of its workforce. Turns out, there's more baggage, like that orgasm-sounding tagline "Oh!."
So it's gone. All part of a rebranding effort, NBC is ditching the pink slogan for "a purple hue with a more staid 'Oxygen' label." Except you can still find the old branding where it counts. CONTINUED »
After its $875 ($925?) million purchase of Oxygen Media, NBC Universal is laying off, oh, 25 percent of its staff. Or, as they say in spokesperson talk: "We have consolidated functions and operations, resulting in job impact." (Whatever will this mean for Lisa Gersh?) [Variety]
Bravo chief Lauren Zalaznick is adding a new title to her business card: head of Oxygen. With NBC Universal completing its $875 million purchase of the upstart cable network, it's posting one of its own on top, which means the sitting Oxygen head, the vivacious Lisa Gersh (seen here), will stick around for three months before, as Variety reports, she "take[s] a new position within NBC U." (The smoky-haired Zalaznick will continue as chief of Bravo and continue reporting to NBC Universal COO Jeff Gaspin.) At least that's the official story, though one NBC insider, who was on the periphery during the NBC-Oxygen buyout, suggests Gersh might already be exploring options back within Harpo – Oprah Winfrey's production unit that financed Oxygen – or they've been reaching out to her. Or maybe she's just keeping her options open?
What does a giant media conglomerate do when its $600 million web purchase aimed at women doesn't meet expectations? Spend nearly a billion bucks to snap up a TV outfit aimed at women.
That's NBC Universal's strategy with the just-announced deal to acquire Oprah's Oxygen network for $925 million, paid for by selling off "non-core assets," i.e. Spanish-language stations. Oxygen's acquisition, of course, comes after NBC snapped up online estrogen-fest iVillage.com, a purchase that, in hindsight (and with any foresight), was an egregiously overvalued property. It's also responsible for In The Loop With iVillage, so … enough said.
But: Is Oxygen just another pumped up dollar figure? It's available in 74 million American homes, sure. But Al Gore's Current TV is in 40 million, and anyone in M&A would be hard-pressed to value Mr. Planet's property at even half Oxygen's price.
And Oxygen gets cred for being built from the ground up by Oprah, Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner, and Caryn Mandabach — rad. But if you're best flagship programming amounts to Girls Behaving Badly and Oprah After the Show, aren't you basically on par with MyNetworkTV?
In case the launch of Kevin Federline's website didn't gross you out enough, we now have a reality show that will make you puke up your lunch faster than you can say "Nicole Richie."
Hot off the heels of VH1's Surreal Life and America's Next Top Model, Janice Dickinson is getting a TV show. Luckily, this time it's on the Oxygen Network, so it won't be taking away from any of the shows we actually want to watch. The show, tentatively called The Janice Dickinson Project, will follow Janice around as she transforms from top model to top model agency owner.
It sounds ok. But you know what the American people would really love? A show on washed-up ex-celebrities who star in a show about washed-up ex-celebrities and then re-launch their washed-up careers.
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