(Newser)
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Oprah's new talk show debuted Sunday night, and just 1.1 million people watched. That may sound like a lot at first—and, in fact, it is the second largest audience for any show on the struggling Oprah Winfrey Network—but not when you consider Winfrey averaged 6.5 million viewers in the last season of her old daytime show, Piers Morgan premiered in Larry King's old slot to an audience of 2.1 million, and the History Channel's Pawn Stars averaged more than 5 million viewers last month.
OWN has long been struggling, leading Oprah to step in as chief executive. "With her coming on, now is the time they will really be judged," an analyst tells the Wall Street Journal. "This is where they will have to prove that an Oprah network is a feasible idea." The debut of Oprah's Next Chapter featured Steven Tyler; as will be typical for the new show, Oprah visited his lakefront house in New Hampshire rather than conducting the interview in a studio. In one particularly disturbing segment noted by WSJ, the pair talked about Tyler making babies. Oprah: "The seed was planted!"
