Oprah Winfrey

While audience members treated to Winfrey’s annual and final “Favorite Things” episodes have a sweet holiday ahead of them, their daytime queen’s future is hanging on the January debut of her new network, OWN, a joint venture with Discovery. Now that her syndicated talk show is over, the signs are unclear. Three unscripted veterans (Rod Aissa, Michele Dix and Drew Tappon) came on board this year to oversee programming, and the programs themselves will be all-important — meaning shows with stalwart Winfrey talent Lisa Ling, Peter Walsh and Lisa Berman as well as the return of Rosie O’Donnell to daytime TV. Succeed or not, with a net worth of $2.7 billion, according to Forbes, 35 million monthly listeners on Sirius and a Twitter feed with nearly 4.5 million followers, Oprah has a sphere of influence that rivals even that of her pal Barack Obama.