The New York Times devoted a lengthy Sunday feature today to the upcoming January 1 launch of Oprah Winfrey‘s new cable TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Winfrey is the first ever talk show host to go on to launch her own network, and thus is attracting plenty of skepticism from critics about whether the network can be as successful as her long-running ABC talk show.

Though Oprah Winfrey is currently filming the final season of her syndicated talk show (she tapes the last episode, which will air on September 9, 2011, next May), the Queen of All Media will not go gentle into any good night. Her new TV network, OWN, is launching on January 1, 2011—and in addition to having complete creative control over the channel, Winfrey has committed to appearing on OWN for 70 hours each year.

This week, the news broke that one of the signature shows on Oprah Winfrey’s will be hosted by Rosie O’Donnell. On The Factor last night, Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg put on their prognosticator hats to try and determine whether this move will be a success or a disaster. First though, they had to try and wrap their heads around the shocking thought that some people actually find Rosie…*GASP*… likable.

Forbes released its annual list of the 100 most powerful celebrities today, and look! Some of your favorite media moguls, TV hosts, and radio personalities made the cut. Here at Mediaite, we rank these folks against each other on the regular with our trusty Power Grid. Granted, the numbers on the two lists differ with Forbes’ inclusion of other types of celebrities (like Britney Spears, coming in at #6 – nice comeback, girl!) but let’s take a look at how they compare, shall we?

A couple of weeks ago, Oprah Winfrey started a contest to give one of her viewers their very own show on her new network. One of the contestants, a hilarious young man with cerebral palsy named Zach Anner, was heralded by the influential websites 4chan and Reddit (as well as celebrities like John Mayer) and rose to a seemingly insurmountable lead…until it was surmounted. However, Geekosystem writer Jamie Block used some great investigative reporting to find seeming proof that someone (quite possibly directly from Team Oprah) had rigged the contest to knock Anner out of the top spot!

The New York Times is reporting that Oprah Winfrey will announce tomorrow that she is ending her syndicated talk show in 2011 at the end of her 25th season.

Earlier this month Nikki Finke reported that Oprah would close up shop and move to cable in early 2011. It looks like she knew what she was talking about.

Earlier this morning there was speculation that Glenn Beck was the new Oprah Winfrey of the book world, due to his ability to affect the sales of fiction thrillers. Well if Nikki Finke is right Winfrey may be contemplating a move into Glenn Beck territory, namely, cable TV.