Oprah Talks About Updating - or Shuttering - Her Once Popular Magazine

O Magazine

In a story in the New York Times on Monday, Oprah Winfrey admitted her empire is not what is used to be: particularly her once very-popular magazine for women, O Magazine. Since her daytime talk show ended a year and a half ago, O Magazine has declined in both newsstand sales and ad revenue.

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“Obviously, the show was helping in ways that you know I hadn’t accounted for,” Ms. Winfrey said. “I’m not interested, you know, in bleeding money."

Her staff did prepare her to expect a 25 percent decline in newsstand sales after the talk show ended -- and it has declined 22 percent, according to the paper. Oprah "acknowledged that she enjoyed 'holding the magazine in my hand,' [but] she was pragmatic about print’s future and said she would stop publishing a print magazine if it were not profitable," the Times wrote. 

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The median age for an O magazine reader is 49, whereas Vogue's median age reader is in their thirties. Oprah now wants to attract readers in their twenties and thirties, because, as she told the Times, "By the time you’re 40, 42, you should have kind of figured it out already."