Discovery Puts Down $15 Million on OWN Advertisement Campaign

It is general knowledge that Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network has not being doing too well since it was launched in January. The network has spent a lot of money without getting enough viewers. Its ratings are presently lower than that of its forerunner, Discovery Health. However, the New York Post has reported that the executives of OWN network have decided to get things rolling again. They are ready to put down a lot of money to make it happen.

It is reported that Discovery Communications is making an investment running into millions of dollars in order to win more viewers by ensuring that the new programs on OWN are well promoted. In preparation for the October 10 premiers, Discovery will be running ads for two series produced by OWN. These are the self-help series, Oprah’s Lifeclass and Rosie O’Donnell’s new talk show, The Rosie Show. The ads will be shown on every one of its fourteen cable networks and rival channels. The ads will also be seen on weekly magazines and billboards.

Oprah’s Lifeclass is a significant arrival at the channel. This will mark the first time that material from the Oprah Winfrey Show will be used on the budding channel. The show features a repackaging of self help material from previous seasons with new introductions by Oprah. A follow along program can also be viewed at Oprah.com. This new show is going to compete with rival programs on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.

In order to ensure that viewers do not miss the debut episodes of these series, Discovery has decided to run them on several Discovery owned networks which include Discovery Fit + Health, Investigation Discovery, Planet Green and TLC.

The ad push is expected to cost $15 million. This is much bigger than the ten million dollars that Discovery spent when OWN was launched in January. This is in addition to the two hundred million dollars that Discovery has already spent in funding the channel. The success of OWN is important to Discovery. Apart from the money that has been invested it has also sold multiyear ad deals to major marketers like Procter $ Gamble.

In the meantime, OWN is emphasizing the fact that this recent promotion blitz is regarded has a new and more promising start for the network. O’Donnell told reporters that the network and Oprah starts on Monday. He says this is the real launch of OWN and that the January event was a soft affair. The network is truly beginning again. Change is not an infrequent thing at OWN network. There has been a lot of program revamping and management overhauling from its beginning. Oprah took charge this summer after David Zaslav, the CEO of discovery told her that her presence is required at OWN.