Oprah Apologizes For OWN Pitch

Oprah Winfrey encouraged people in homes with Nielsen meters to tune into her OWN network Sunday evening, a move that ran afoul of Nielsen, which will place an asterisk next to some OWN ratings. Winfrey’s encouragement was conveyed in a tweet and she apologized Monday, according to The New York Times.

As an episode of “Oprah’s Next Chapter” was about to be aired on OWN, Winfrey tweeted: “Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Neilsen box.”

The tweet was removed, and Winfrey issued a statement to the  New York Times saying she did so at “the request of Nielsen” and that “I intended no harm and apologize for the reference.”

A Nielsen representative told the New York Times an asterisk will be placed next to OWN’s ratings to account for ratings that could be impacted.

Winfrey has about 9.2 million followers on Twitter.

At one point Sunday, Winfrey did not mention Nielsen by name, but encouraged switchover to OWN during a commercial in the Grammy broadcast on CBS, the newspaper said.

OWN, half-owned by Winfrey's Harpo and Discovery, has not enjoyed the hot ratings start some analysts had projected.

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1 comment about "Oprah Apologizes For OWN Pitch".
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  1. John Grono from GAP Research, February 14, 2012 at 3:35 p.m.

    One word. Dumb.

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