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In addition to the nice things he had to say about President Obama, the New Jersey Governor, he also told Oprah that he would be better prepared to run for president in 2016 “Is that compass telling you that you may be ready four years from now?” Winfrey questioned.

“Who knows? It depends on who wins. Is the president re-elected? Does a Republican win? I don’t know,” Christie said. “But in terms of me, I’ll be much more ready four years from now than I am now.”

Watch Christie’s surprisingly upbeat appraisal of President Obama below:

(h/t Politico)

Those familiar with Beck’s Fox News show will recognize certain features, like the chalkboard that has become nearly synonymous with the controversial host and author’s special brand of infotainment and activism. And, as the The Wall Street Journal notes, the new show and burgeoning network could translate into even more dollar signs for Beck as he continues to delight and ignite his audience:

Because Mr. Beck owns the show and the network, he could make substantially more than the $2.5 million salary he got each year at Fox. GBTV is on track to take in more than $20 million in revenue in its debut year, according to a person close to the company.

Already, GBTV already has over 230,000 paying subscribers — that’s more people paying to watch an online channel than tuned in to watch Oprah Winfrey‘s troubled OWN Network in June. And that’s exactly as Beck predicted. He turned to the web, he says, because that is where younger audiences turn to consume their news and entertainment. And he’s not kidding when he’s talking about “younger audiences,” either: His network is planning to launch a block of children’s programming in last September.

While Beck’s online venture is still relatively new, it’ll continue to be interesting to observe the different trajectories GBTV and OWN take as they forge their way. Here are two networks, albeit on different platforms, begun by two individuals who are themselves highly recognizable mega-brands. One is gradually building an audience as another is still hoping to find its place on television, and both depend highly on the trust viewers place on their respective founding personalities. Could you imagine what an episode devoted to Beck’s “favorite things” might pan out? Sales of chalk could go through the roof.

So. Will you be logging on to watch Beck’s show tonight?

h/t WSJ

Ries agreed with O’Reilly assessment that O’Donnell is a risky choice for the network given she has “staked a claim in far-left territory” throughout her career, but that it’s a risk the flagging network has to take in the hopes of injecting some sort of interest into its programming. Daly weighed in, opining that the network would have to keep “a tight rein” on the actress, which was met with more than a smidge of skepticism by O’Reilly.

The panel also expressed doubt about whether O’Donnell would be able to recapture the viewers and success she enjoyed back in the 90s as host of her very popular daytime talk show. You know, when she was more “Tom Cruise is a cutie patootie” and less “9/11 was an inside job.” And then there’s the issue of whether advertisers are open to being associated with someone as polarizing and potentially controversial as O’Donnell. O’Reilly noted that “if she gets eyeballs, she gets advertisers,” noting that controversy could very well work in O’Donnell’s favor as long as it translates into viewers. And, obviously, he’s pretty shrewd when it comes to analyzing media trends:

But remember though, she did well in The View in the sense that she increased viewership there, but part of it was sensationalism. And then NBC tried to hire her — Remember this? — and they gave her a variety show which lasts, what, twelve minutes? I don’t even think it got through the hour. She brought on these communist jugglers and that was it, they had to pull the plug. That was a joke; they didn’t really have communist jugglers.

…But they might have.

Please, please invite Bill onto your show, Rosie! And, heck, a communist juggler or two.

(Also: please don’t miss O’Reilly clever self-promotion when he lists examples of his show: “No Rizzoli and Isles, no Jersey Shore. No O’Reilly Factor.”)

Have a look at the segment, via Fox News:

In The New York Times, Brian Stelter envisions Beck following the Oprah Winfrey model, beginning his own OWN:

Mr. Beck has been contemplating a cable channel of his own for more than a year, according to the people who have spoken with him about it, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. Beck may not be able to actively pursue such an arrangement until his Fox contract is up.

Presuming he leaves, Mr. Beck could follow a road paved by Oprah Winfrey when she started OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network in January. He could schedule his own talk show and the shows of others on one of the many cable channels seeking a ratings jolt. Or, following Martha Stewart’s road to the Hallmark Channel, he could start smaller, taking over a few hours of a channel’s schedule.

What question could have possibly conjured up such a monstrous answer? Did someone ask her for a plausible way to bring about world peace? Did a critic want her to list and spell the names of every person who’s ever worked on her talk show? What was it?! Hitfix’s Alan Sepinwall has a hilarious account of the excruciating panel in which he gives the details:

“The question was a deceptively simple one: ‘What were your dreams when you were a kid? What did you aspire to be? And it seems like you won every lottery in the country. What were your hopes, and what were your dreams?’

Oprah smiled broadly at this and said, ‘God, that’s such a wonderful question. Nobody has ever asked me that. That’s a lovely question. I have to think about it.’

So she thought about it for a moment. And then she began to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk…

… for the next 18 minutes and 15 seconds, uninterrupted by the audience save for a moment where she needed us to help her remember the name of Joan Lunden.

It was an extraordinary piece of filibustering, in that Oprah answered the actual question fairly quickly, and just… kept… going. She talked about her childhood in Mississippi. She talked about Michel Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ album. She talked about ratings. She talked about many things. Mainly, she talked.”

Yikes. Critics had no choice but to just sit and listen. Oh, and tweet. My God, did they tweet. The website News for TV Majors has collected all of the agonized tweets from the captive audience all in one page and it’s probably the funniest thing you’ll read today. Here are a few choice examples:

BastardMachine – Oprah just allowed another question. I just used my Oprah pen to stab myself in the ear.

HitFixDaniel – Oprah just made a reference to a gynecologist appointment. Yes. Yes she did. Yes. Yes. She did. #broken

EricIGN – Oprah is talking about how “self-awareness” and how that doesn’t mean she’s in love with herself. Self-aware… like Skynet. #TCA

tvoti – Wife suggests over IM that if I take off my shirt, Oprah will stop talking. I’m gonna need at least $250. #tca

As amazing as those reading those are, the truly incredible thing is that all Press Tour panels are transcribed. Yep, you know what that means. Some poor stenographer had to type down every word. Sepinwall has pasted Oprah’s answer to the longest question in his write up. It’s 2,938 words long.

So, now, here’s a fun activity. Get a friend, sit down in front of them, and have them read the answer to you in its entirety. Now write up a review of the new season of American Idol and, congrats! You now know what it’s like to be a professional TV critic!

Was anything else on? The debut of Oprah Winfrey‘s new Oprah Winfrey Network–OWN–was the curiosity of the New Year’s weekend, attracting respectable ratings, but making monster increases versus the cable channel OWN replaced, Discovery Health.

The welcome ratings news comes after plenty of criticism and some predictions that OWN would ultimately succeed.

When OWN launched at noon on New Year’s Day, a preview show posted a .7 household rating, according to Nielsen figures reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

As THR‘s Marisa Guthrie notes, that relatively small number hides a major industry success story:

That may not sound like much, but considering that it’s a 555% gain compared to the same time period four weeks ago and 1100% gain year-to-year, Winfrey and her team are probably breathing their first sigh of relief.

By the time OWN got to its first foray into primetime programming, ratings climbed to a 1.0 at 8 p.m., for increases of about 500 percent versus four weeks earlier and year to year. In prime, OWN did well among key demographics–the numbers most important to advertisers–with half a million viewers 25-54.

That was far better than Discovery Health’s year-ago averages for the night; 92,000 in 18-49 and 118,000 in 25-54. Among OWN’s target demographic of women 25-54, the network averaged a .9 rating (with 1 million total viewers) in primetime on Jan. 1. That helped propel OWN to the third most-watched cable network for the night (behind ESPN and USA) in the 8 and 9 p.m. hours. But by Sunday, OWN’s household number was down 33% in primetime.

Now that we are just one day removed from the much buzzed about debut of Oprah Winfrey‘s new network OWN, it’s time for the critical reviews to start rolling in. Already one critique is that the network is a “missed opportunity”, but some other early reviews are much more positive:

“OWN is a place where cynicism takes a holiday and mockery hasn’t yet been invented. . . . OWN isn’t for everyone . . . [b]ut it lives up to the Oprah Winfrey ethos — a ‘meaningful, mindful’ cable network that seeks its own truth and tries to be its own best self.” – Alessandra Stanley, The New York Times

“One of the more disquieting aspects of [OWN] is the pervasive sense (inevitable, I suppose) that this cable network is not just a programming venture and a brand extension, but a living monument to its creator’s power — and a celebration of her willingness to use that power as a force for good. We won’t just watch OWN; we will gaze upon it with awe and affection, and marvel at the sweet magnificence of its founder.” -Matt Zoller Seitz, Salon.com

“Beneath the inspirational advice that often sounds like hot air, and the clean-up-your-room mom’s voice, Oprah has a bedrock belief in reason, intelligence and education. That’s what makes her so valuable and OWN so promising to the non-banshees among us.” – Caryn James, Indiewire.com

Were you there for Oprah’s big celebration, and if so what were your thoughts?

Amid the football and hangovers of New Year’s Day comes a bit of television history: the launch of Oprah Winfrey’s brand new network, OWN, which began operations today.

Writing on The Root, Jennifer Mabry sums up her feelings about the Oprah Winfrey Network in one word: “disappointed.”

Mabry writes that she’d hoped to see Oprah enter the programming space and reinvent it–as she did when she began her talk show–”by being ambitious, adventurous and creative” instead of opting to “be part of its further degeneration by adding to an already glutted market of voyeuristic dreck.”

After a few hours of OWN, Mabry describes the driving philosophy behind the network as simple: “Find anyone with a heartbeat and a willingness to have cameras follow them during their ordinary day-to-day life, and voilà — we’ve got ourselves a TV show!”

Ouch.

Beyond the simple problem of being uninventive and boring, Mabry knocks Oprah for failing to bring diversity to her network:

Of course, Winfrey is free to choose how she spends her millions. But it’s disconcerting, to say the least, that of the breakout syndicated personalities she has helped to launch during her reign as the queen of media — Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Nate Berkus and Rachael Ray — none is a black male or female, sans (Gayle) King.

OWN is a missed opportunity for Winfrey to create cable television that’s truly FUBU: For Us, By Us.

The Oprah Winfrey Network debuts January 1 amid great secrecy–and some reports of last-minute shakeups behind the scenes–and the first big project is a series of “Ask Oprah’s All Stars” specials, beginning January 2 at 8 p.m. The specials, moderated by Meade and Oprah BFF Gayle King, will serve to introduce OWN’s roster of stars:

For the first time, Oprah’s All Stars – Dr. Phil, Suze Orman, and Dr. Oz – will appear on one stage to answer viewers’ pressing questions about health, wealth, and mental well-being. Shot before a studio audience, this four-part special offers unprecedented access to Oprah Winfrey’s go-to group of masters as they share their wisdom and help viewers jumpstart their best year ever.

Why Meade, who’s running up great ratings with her HLN morning show Morning Express? Lisa Erspamer, OWN’s chief creative officer, said Meade’s an “excellent broadcaster” and, along with King, the “perfect personality” to kick off the new network.

Ms. Winfrey’s move from broadcast to cable is a transformative moment for the television business, marking the first time a talk-show host has taken over an entire channel. The stakes couldn’t be higher for Ms. Winfrey and the coterie of television veterans that has assembled around her. For someone who has enjoyed outsize victories in almost every venture she has pursued, OWN will be the ultimate test of her power.

“I’m prepared for all the critics, I’m prepared for all the naysayers and the ya-da-ya’s,” Ms. Winfrey says by telephone from Sydney. “The real truth is this: Everything I’ve ever done has prepared me for this moment, for this launch.”

“I look at this launch as the birthing of a baby, not the raising of a child,” she continues, managing expectations about the sure-to-be-low-rated early days of OWN. Child-rearing will mostly have to wait until after she tapes her final episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in May.

“It’s a long-term process,” she says, “and I have the vision to see what this network can be in 3 years, in 5 years, in 10 years, as an institution of hope and inspiration.”

At its core, OWN will try to embody Ms. Winfrey’s “live your best life” philosophy, and it will aim at the same audience as her current show — women from the ages of 25 to 54, says Christina Norman, the channel’s chief executive.

But OWN’s three-year gestation has been unusually arduous. Early on, Ms. Winfrey’s partner in the joint venture, Discovery Communications, grew frustrated, and as boardroom tensions boiled over early last year she considered backing out altogether. The relationship has improved markedly since then. But as recently as late November, some producers working with OWN still doubted that the channel would actually come to life in January.

Now, without a doubt, it’s coming. But it brings clear risks for Ms. Winfrey. She is swapping her broadcast stage — where nearly seven million fans watch her every day — for a cable platform that will be, at least at first, much smaller. For a time, she says, she lived in fear about the channel, even though she had fostered the idea for OWN for the better part of 20 years. And questions linger among some observers — like OWN’s future competitors at Bravo, Lifetime, WE tv and elsewhere — about her level of commitment to the channel.

Ms. Winfrey says she’s worried only about how well OWN is doing in “letting people know where the channel is.” (This month, Oprah.com features an OWN countdown clock and a channel-finder tool.)

Read the full story here.

“[OWN will be] fun and entertaining without tearing people down and calling them bitches. Imagine that. Imagine…Growing up, I could never find my name on any of those license plates or lunchboxes,” she said. “Now, I know what it was for — to start my own network. A whole network, a whole channel that we’re designing to carry the Oprah Winfrey message.

“I know that as I start out on this next chapter, there’s going to be some mistakes. I know there’s going to be some stumbles. I know I’m a work in process and progress. I know nothing new is perfect, but I’m not scared. I’m not afraid.”

Actually I don’t think it’s that hard to imagine. This is Oprah, the woman who said no to politics on her show in 2008 and no to Jerry Springer antics back in the nineties, if she wants to say no to bitching I think she’ll manage.

The mogul recently sat down with Fortune‘s Patricia Sellers to discuss the evolution of OWN and how exactly she’ll be making the transition from running her talk show in Chicago to running her network in Los Angeles. It’s going to be a big job—albeit one that’s, at least potentially, going to be incredibly lucrative:

By populating and evangelizing on OWN 24/7 — a daunting 1,200 hours of programming a year — Oprah realized that she had the opportunity to increase her impact on the world and make some nice money along the way. Bank of America Merrill Lynch media analyst Jessica Reif Cohen thinks that OWN will attract more than $145 million in ad revenue in its first year of operation. (That would put OWN in the league of such cable networks as The Weather Channel and Animal Planet, according to SNL Kagan.) Depending on ratings, it could turn a profit of $100 million in year three and grow significantly from there — making it one of the most successful media launches this past decade, rivaling the introduction of O, The Oprah Magazine, a partnership of Harpo and Hearst, in 2000.

Not that any of this matters to “authentic” Oprah, who insists she cares more than anything about being true to her viewers. “My fear about ‘Will the people really follow me?’ — I’m past that,” says Oprah. This past summer, she says, she was reading a magazine article about Michael Jackson and was riveted by a quote from a former colleague of the late superstar. The friend said that after Jackson released Thriller in 1982 and it became the all-time best-selling album, he was paralyzed by the notion that he could never top that. “All the bells went off,” says Oprah. “This is why I lived in fear about this network. I kept thinking I have to repeat the 25-year phenomenon of the Oprah show.” She adds: “I don’t want to be Michael Jackson.”

Later, Sellers writes that OWN might be worth a staggering $3 billion “in a few years,” which would make it a match for Winfrey’s own $3 billion net worth.

The interview isn’t all about money. Winfrey also reveals what sorts of programs will appear on OWN. Unsurprisingly, the slate is filled mostly with uplifting reality shows and showcases for Winfrey herself. It includes Kidnapped by the Kids, a series in which “the children of work addicts literally capture their parents and take away their e-mail access and office time until they change their ways;” a six-part docuseries starring Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, as she adjusts to life without her fortune; a new talk show hosted by Rosie O’Donnell; and Oprah’s Next Chapter, a follow-up to Winfrey’s talk show that will “show her running around the globe, exploring places she’s never been, like the Sahara desert, and interviewing locals.”

There will also be a reality competition series called Your Own Show, in which wannabe Winfreys will battle to win their own talk show on OWN.

You can read the Fortune cover story in full here.

Oprah will inevitably be remembered in totality and not for specific highlights — she is so far reaching, and now so much a part of the American psyche, that it’s hard to think of a place she hasn’t had some sort of ripple effect on (though perhaps at this moment in time it will be book publishing that will miss her presence most). With that said, here’s a look at the top ten Oprah moments of the last 23 years, which were harder to come by than you might think mostly due to the fact YouTube has only been around for the last four of those years. Nevertheless! Here are some outstanding highlights.

NEXT>>> The Oprah Fat Wagon

The media mogul Oprah Winfrey will end her iconic daytime talk show, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” in 2011 as she prepares to start a cable channel of her own.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Winfrey’s production company confirmed Thursday evening that Ms. Winfrey will make the announcement on her program on Friday. The plans were first reported by WABC, the ABC affiliate in New York City.

“The sun will set on the Oprah show as its 25th season draws to a close on September 9, 2011,” WABC said.

The industry has been betting that the daytime diva would extend The Oprah Winfrey Show for at least another year or two because of the huge cash license fees which stations have long paid her. But people around Oprah are telling me that won’t happen. They say that Discovery Communications chief David Zaslav has demanded that Oprah “move it or lose it” — move her talk show to OWN, or risk losing the Oprah Winfrey Network altogether. I’ve learned that in coming days Winfrey and Discovery will issue a press release announcing OWN’s on-air launch for the start of 2011. And, in several weeks, Oprah will tell the public that she’s ending her syndicated Chicago-based daytime talk show when her current deal runs out and moving it to OWN headquarters in Los Angeles probably as soon as mid-2011.

Finke’s report was preceded by news that Lisa Erspamer, a co-executive producer of Winfrey’s daytime talk show, is leaving the show to join OWN to “create, shape and drive programming and ensure Oprah’s unique editorial voice across all platforms.”

A side note: If you haven’t yet read Tad Friend’s profile of Finke, it’s worth your time.