Rosie O’Donnell will join the new venture between Oprah Winfrey and Discovery Communications when she launches her new talk show on OWN next year.
The previously announced show was originally looking at broadcast syndication but will now be seen on the cable channel instead. The new daily one-hour strip will be shot in New York.
Entertainment Weekly’s Hollywood Insider blog says the shows will be limited to one topic with in-studio guests.
O’Donnell was last on daytime talk when she did a stint on The View; her own The Rosie O’Donnell Show — for which she won six consecutive Emmys — ran from 1996 to 2002.
O’Donnell will exec produce the show with former Warner Bros. syndication execs Dick Robertson and Scott Carlin. Carlin told The New York Times that the switch to cable rather than broadcast syndication had nothing to do with O’Donnell’s outspoken manner and said that she had “multiple options” on broadcast television, but that OWN turned out to be “the best business proposition” on the table.
OWN has been aggressively looking for talk content, having made an earlier offer to Warner Bros. to move The Ellen DeGeneres Show to the channel, notes Variety.
The network launches in January in 80 million homes.
