Will she or won’t she? Oprah’s not saying… on purpose

"I've got a secret..." (Image via Wikipedia)

Depending on who or what you read this morning, we could be facing the biggest news in the world of daytime television, cable television, talk shows and the syndication industry — or it just could be Friday.

Nikki Finke, creator of the Web site Deadline Hollywood, tells us Oprah Winfrey is getting ready to announce that she’s going to end her eponymous and legendary talk show when its current syndication deal runs out in 2011, pull up stakes in Chicago, move her Harpo Productions lock-stock-and-barrel to Los Angeles and relaunch the show on her own cable network, OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network), a joint venture between the Divine Miss O and Discovery Communications.

Sources for the breathlessly all-caps Finke are, of course, anonymous — and why wouldn’t they be? Harpo’s publicists hold secret, explosive information like this closer to the vest than a North Korean dictator.

The staid folks at The New York Times are a bit more circumspect: their sources say no decision has been made — only that a decision is expected by the end of the year, which everyone already knew.

So what to believe?

It couldn’t be that Oprah, who’s no slouch in the business department, is angling for a better syndication deal, could it? Just because, in the past, she’s dropped hints about ending her show — which is the goose that continually lays diamond-encrusted golden eggs for the ABC stations that buy it and the CBS syndication arm that distributes it — only to re-up for an ever larger cut of the gate receipts doesn’t mean she’s going to do that dance again, right?

And just because she’s co-owner in a new cable network that’s supposed to be available in 70 million homes, but whose launch has been continually delayed, doesn’t mean she’d dangle the possibility of her moving her show to that network just to whet the appetites of cable operators getting tired of waiting, does it?

Because there’s no way Oprah can run her new network AND run her daily talk show, right? Just because her Harpo company produces her show and three other talk shows, various television movies and specials, theatrical films, a radio show and a Broadway musical doesn’t mean she could possibly multitask anymore, right?

No… Oprah would never use information and promotions and hype to advance her brand… She’s built her empire on a nice wardrobe and common sense cooking tips — not savvy business sense and shrewd negotiating tactics.

Duh…