"I'm not interested in bleeding money."
WME has landed Oprah Winfrey. About a month after exiting her longtime agency CAA, WME’s Ari Emanuel has signed the OWN CEO, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
The news comes a week after Winfrey’s newsmaking interview with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, which was watched by 3.2 million viewers over two nights Jan. 17 and 18. The interview, which became the second-most watched OWN program after Winfrey’s exclusive sit-down with Whitney Houston‘s daughter Bobbi Kristina, brought copious media attention to Winfrey’s still-nascent channel and might have spurred potential new viewers to find it on their cable systems.
Winfrey also has a deal with Tyler Perry to create scripted series for OWN, a joint venture with Discovery Communications. She also has a TV movie deal with HBO. And Discovery CEO David Zaslav said he expects the channel to break even this year after years of losses since its rocky launch in 2008.
Harpo, Winfrey’s production company, also has signed with the agency.
