Should Oprah Winfrey Regret Striking Out on Her OWN?

Oprah Winfrey made a major faux pas during Sunday's Grammy Award broadcast on Sunday night by tweeting: “Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Neilsen box,” as OWN debuted the latest episode of Winfrey's flagship series, Oprah’s Next Chapter.

Not only did Oprah violate Nielsen rules, (and misspell its name as "Neilsen"), she surprised and offended many. In fact, social media experts like Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, Gary Vaynerchuk and New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter all questioned if the tweet really came from Oprah.

Indeed it did. She also defended the action after a Twitter follower called the request "desperate" by responding: "'desperate' not ever part of my vocab." Is this what Brand Oprah has come to?

Stelter at the New York Times commented on Winfrey's Grammys tweet: “The unusually blunt request, and the misspelling of the Nielsen company name, caused some Twitter users to doubt that Ms. Winfrey was the one actually doing the typing. But she was, said her executive producer, Sheri Salata, who was in the same room at the time. They were together at a hotel in Kingswood, Ga., that did not carry OWN — highlighting one of the problems for the channel, the fact that it is hard for some viewers to find. They were watching the Grammys as were tens of millions of others.

Five minutes after the tweet about Nielsen, Ms. Winfrey tweeted during a commercial break during the Grammy telecast: “Commercial Grammy people..u can turn to OWN.”  

When Nielsen notified Oprah of her violation, a spokesperson issued the following statement from Winfrey: "I removed the tweet at the request of Nielsen. I intended no harm and apologize for the reference. — Oprah Winfrey."

Oprah routinely uses Twitter to chat and remind her nine million fans to tune in to OWN, but she certainly stepped over a line on Sunday — and indicated that not all is happy at OWN, the channel she launched with Discovery Communications a year ago on Jan. 1st, following a 25-year reign as the queen of daytime TV. Nielsen samples 25,000 U.S. households for its ratings system which sets advertising rates and is cited as measuring the success or failure of television programming.

From this moment forward, history (as recorded by Nielsen) will show an asterisk next to OWN’s ratings Sunday night when Oprah tweeted, noting a “possible biasing effect.”

“TV types tell me that Nielsen makes its rated shows sign agreements that they won’t openly solicit Nielsen households. Especially during sweeps periods like now. So TV execs expect Nielsen not to issue a rating for last night’s OWN as a way of punishing Oprah going rogue. I think running OWN is punishment enough. It sucks,” wrote Deadline's Nikki Finke.

That may be just Finke's (harsh) assessment, but there's not question that the past year has not been fit for the former queen of daytime television. OWN has been filled with executive firings and low ratings against a backdrop of enormous expectation by all involved from Discovery Communications who gave her the media real estate by converting the Discovery Health Channel, a dozen advertisers who signed up for multiyear commitments before the channel’s launch, and hordes of adoring fans waiting for her next 24/7 incarnation.

The question remains, has Oprah irrevocably damaged her powerhouse personal brand by trying to parlay it into a failing 24/7 network, and is this latest very public act yet one more nail in her coffin? Or – given her moxie, track record, and loyal audience (who may still love her magazine and website if not TV channel) —will she rebound?

“Meanwhile, even without un-cool tweeting, AMC managed to attract more than 8 million people to its mid-season return of its zombie-dram, “The Walking Dead”  Sunday in the teeth of the Grammycast,” notes the Washington Post.

The ultimate irony is that her series, Oprah’s Next Chapter, is gaining traction, around 900,000 viewers on average…but Sunday’s episode will now, forever, carry that scarlet asterisk.

Let us know your thoughts on the health and well-being of the Oprah brand as she strikes out on her OWN, and if her next chapter is truly just now beginning.