David Zaslav gets into the Oprah business

-BY SDH Former Jeff Zucker underling turned Discovery Communications ruler, David Zaslav continues to make the moves necessary to propel Discovery into the big media stratosphere. In his latest move Zaslav has entered a deal with talk show queen Oprah Winfrey to launch an all new network called OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network just a few months after his old boss Jeff Zucker paid close to $1billion for Oxygen Network which Oprah co-founded. Zaslav landing such a huge name like Oprah will only attract other big names to Discovery, which is exactly what Zaslav wants. Discovery owns 13 networks in the United States, including Discovery, TLC and Animal Planet. Discovery Health is one of the least successful, and company President and CEO David Zaslav was looking for ideas about what to do with it when his wife handed him a copy of Oprah's magazine. He approached Winfrey about a partnership, coincidentally shortly after she had come upon an entry for her diary dated May 24, 1992, when she wrote about her idea for creating her own network. Oprah Winfrey getting her own TV network [AP]