Oprah’s OWN network loses Jenny McCarthy, more ratings

Despite her goliath-like status in the world of talk-shows Oprah Winfrey’s foray into running a network is proving less than successful. And now Jenny McCarthy has quit what see clearly regards as a sinking ship.

In 2009 Jenny, 38, signed a development deal with Oprah and was creating a chat show for her mentor’s new network. But she became pretty peeved at how Oprah’s helpers regarded the show;

“Jenny wasn’t thrilled with the direction OWN producers were going,” says a source inside OWN. “She’d been working with them for over a year and finally decided to embrace Oprah’s philosophy to ‘Follow your bliss’…and she walked right off the project.”

It gets worse: She’s now taken the show to NBC – the same team Oprah quit to start her floundering network. But so far NBC denies any link;

“We do not comment on projects in development,” a sniffy NBC rep told reporters.

The two girls first made contact in 2007 when Oprah had Jenny as a guest on her show to talk about her son, Evan’s fight with autism. Jenny said she’d found a miracle cure and blogged about it on Oprah’s site, which is how the show idea started.

So what does Jenny’s departure leave Oprah to work with? Ryan and Tatum O’Neal in a ‘Reconciliation Reality’ show, two other reality outings starring Sarah Ferguson and Shania Twain, and sisters Naomi and Wynonna Judd will star in what OWN calls ‘a family drama,’ with the dazzlingly creative title of ‘The Judds.’

In brief: Lifeless, humorless, downbeat B-listers…And people wonder why the ratings are low.

To give you an idea how low, Shania’s first show pulled just 839,000 viewers. On a national cable channel. And that’s the best number OWN’s ever had.

Jenny’s rep is making no comment at present and NBC won’t say when – or if – the new show will begin. Ranged against an ego like Oprah’s this could so easily turn into a cat-fight. But who should win?…

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