Oprah is not going away, never to be heard from again, as Johnny Carson did. She is merely changing addresses. Sometime in 2011 or shortly thereafter, it is all but certain that a new Oprah Winfrey Show will be launched on the cable Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

  As dominant a TV personality as Oprah is, she is at least that good a business woman. She probably makes more money each year than any woman whose birth surname is not Walton (Walmart). Her empire includes other syndicated TV shows, magazines and the soon-to-be OWN, in which she holds a 50 percent interest.

  The debut of OWN has been delayed several times for no apparent reason. Failure to get satisfactory clearances from cable operators is a sound guess.

  Figures are being released that OWN will premiere in 80 million homes. This means it won't be in more than 20 million homes. A new Oprah Winfrey talk show figures to close that gap. Cable systems don't want to have their switchboards blown out by angry fans demanding to know, "Why can't I get Oprah?"

  The 80 million figure could be somewhat misleading, too. In cable speak, being in a home means that a household has the ability to get a network. It doesn't mean they actually get it. It is one thing to be on a basic tier with the other high profile cable networks. However, a lot of the niche networks wind up exiled to the most expensive tiers, which are passed on by many subscribers.

  An Oprah Winfrey Network sans Oprah is likely to be relegated to one of these big ticket tiers. An OWN with a new Orpah talk show has a much better shot to be found on the same tier with ESPN, CNN, TNT and USA

   The more homes you are actually in, the bigger the audience, the more you can charge for commercials. More significantly, the more in demand a cable network is, the larger  monthly subscription fee it can command from cable systems.

  Without an Oprah Winfrey program, OWN is the new kid on the block where Lifetime, WE and Oxygen (which also was once partly owned by Oprah) already live. Without an Oprah Winfrey program, there is a strong likelihood the network never gets off the ground.

  With Oprah, OWN probably jumps ahead of all but Lifetime.

  What Oprah announced Friday is different than NBC shifting Jay Leno to prime time only in the sense that Leno remains on the same network.

  But Oprah makes a network, a network doesn't make Oprah.

  Speculating who Oprah's final guest will be is a fun sport. (It has to be President Obama, No one is bigger than the leader of the free world and he owes her.) 

 As long as you're at it, you might as well also guess who her first guest will be on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

    Q. I am so tired of the scrolling words at the bottom of the screen during TV shows. My latest gripe is with NBC-6. During the late afternoon shows and after the midday news they have been running a constant scroll about phone lines open and food banks, etc. I have no problem with charity and fundraising if they do it during the newscast. It is such a distraction watching a program with this constantly running across the screen, Not to mention that since I have closed-captioning on, it makes it even worse. Who do I complain to? Because everyone sues everyone for every silly thing, I am starting to think that might be the only way to stop it. It's giving me a scrolling headache. K.M., Tamarac

  A. I hope typing your rant soothed you because it's the only satisfaction you are going to get. This is not to say I am not sympathetic or don't agree with you. It drives me nuts when ESPN uses its scoreboard scroll to plug sitcoms on ABC or to take credit for breaking a story that was in the morning paper. But it's not going to change. In fact it's getting worse. The cable news networks have about half the screen covered with extraneous information. As wacky as some lawsuits are, you don't have a legal leg to stand on. TV stations and networks have an absolute First Amendment right to do whatever they want, as long as it's not obscene.

Lost will return for its final season on Feb. 2, then will air regularly on Tuesday nights at 9. This means there will be weeks when Lost and American Idol go head to head.

   An hour-long recap at 8 p.m. will lead into Lost's new season, which will launch with a two-hour episode from 9-11.

  Tuesday at 9 p.m. is the time slot where the Dancing With the Stars results show normally airs, so it will probably move up to 8 p.m. to give Lost as much forward momentum as possible.

  This means ABC is willing to test the DWTS results show against American Idol every week. For at least the first few weeks of Idol, when it generally expands to two hours, both the results show and Lost will have to buck TV's most popular show.

  Will this create tough viewing choices for you?.

  The state, which pioneered "paper or plastic?"; "plastic, no paper" and now "neither" and soon will allow eco-nuts to go after toilet paper, has gone to war with big screen TVs.

  The California Energy Commission has passed an edict that new TVs up to 58 inches meet stringent energy use requirements. Industry representatives say this will mean sets with poorer pictures and fewer features. It also is expected to drive up the cost.

  TV energy usage accounts for a whole 3 percent of California's needs, so this clearly is a crisis, more urgent than what to do about the state going bankrupt with its nanny state policies.

  This wouldn't be an issue if California would allow the construction of the new power plants the state desperately needs and which  would create tens of thousands of jobs, first in construction then in management of the facilities. But the environmental movement will not have that and it rules California.

  Showing the great foresight California has demonstrated in other attempts at social engineering, the new rules apply only to sets sold in California. Anyone who wants can simply drive to a neighboring state and get whatever set he wants. Sets also could be ordered on the intent.

  So all the new rules will accomplish is to make it more difficult and expensive for most Californians to buy the TV they want.

  It is now effectively easier to get marijuana in California than the TV set of your choice.

  Just as well. You need a good buzz to tolerate the insanity.

  For those who don't recognize the name, Kroc was the founder of McDonald's. He didn't invent the hamburger. He devised a better way to market it.

  NBC is preparing a new reality series, United Plates of America, whose grand prize will be the opportunity to open a chain of restaurants across the nation.

  The series is still in the developmental stage so details are sketchy. The overall concept is would-be entrepeneurs will pitch their restaurant ideas to a panel of potential investors. The one selected as most viable will be bankrolled sufficiently to open at least four stores.

  Something like Lilly's Liver or Brussels Fried Sprouts.

  Given the high failure rate of restaurants, maybe they should call the series Chain of Fools.

  What's your best idea (unless you want to save it for the show)?

  HBO has picked up an eighth season of Maher's weekly late night commentary series, Real Time, according to Variety.

  Maher arguably is the most successful of the left wing commentators. His programs averages about 1.2 million viewers for its first run, which is right in the ballpark of the audience for Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow even though MSNBC is in almost three times as many homes as HBO.

 Sarah Palin had to be careful sitting opposite Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters. On Wednesday night's (Sean) Hannity on the Fox News Channel (which was pre-taped) she opened up with how she really feels.

   The former vice presidential candidate said she expects liberal heads "to be spinning" (as if she cares) after hearing her views on the Fort Hood massacre. "I think that there were massive warning flags that were missed all over the place and I think that it was quite unfortunate that, to me, it was a fear of being politically incorrect to not--I am going to use the word--profile this guy, profile in the sense of finding out what his radical beliefs were."

  She said she expects "to get clobbered tomorrow morning" for advocating profiling. "They're going to say she is radical. She is extreme. But I say profiling in the context of doing whatever we can to save innocent American lives, I'm all for it."

  Palin still played it coy when it came to her political plans but she dropped humorous hints that America has not seen her name on a ballot for the last time.

  "You're going to hear a lot from me...The haters are going to have a whole lot of material. Tina Fey, she may have a whole lot of material coming up."

   Her appearance on Oprah Monday produced the show's biggest ratings in two years. The same is likely to happen when her session with Barbara Walters fills the 20/20 hour Friday.

  Don't look for her to help out David Letterman, however. She's still miffed, as any mother would be, at the cheap, tasteless shots the CBS comic took at her daughter and said she has no interest in appearing on his show.

  "I'm not out for vindication. But I'm thinking practically, economically, in terms of David Letterman  that I don't want to boost his ratings."

   She finally provided specific answers to what she reads, a question she stumbled over in the infamous Katie Couric interview. "I read Newsmax and the Frontiersman and Wall Street Journal and everything online. I absorb the news via many, many sources.

  She even had something positive to say about President Obama. "As a person, I think he's very charismatic, quite articulate, very, very talented as a politician."

  Then came the qualifier. "I'd like to see him put all those God-given talents that he's so full of to better use for America."

  She didn't call Obama a radical, as Hannity often does, but she didn't say he wasn't, either. "I will not hesitate to say that his associates have been extremely radical and we see that in some of the appointments he has made."

  The entire inteview airs Wednesday at 9 p.m. and midnight on Fox News Channel.

  Palin's extensively publicized appearance on Oprah Monday drew the biggest audience for the daytime talk show since 2007.

  Oprah pulled a preminary 8.7 Nielsen rating, which translates to about 10 million households.

  The former American Idol contestant, who won an Academy Award for Dreamgirls, is going to play Winnie Mandela in a film tentatively titled Winnie, according to Variety.

  This is not to be confused with Invictus, the film about Nelson Mandela.

  Winnie Mandela, in addition to being the spouse of the symbol of resistance to South Africa's policy of apartheid, had an interesting, controversial life of her own. Her bodyguard killed a teenage informant and she was convicted of fraud.

   In other ex-Idol news, 2008 runnerup Adam Lambert will perform live on the Nov. 25 edition of Good Morning America.

  Lambert's debut album, For Your Entertainment,  drops Nov. 23.

  A. The proposed merger could be announced at any minute, but that has been the case for weeks. Reports I have seen in trade publications indicate that if the deal goes through, Comcast intends to keep NBC-U boss Jeff Zucker as chief executive. If this is the case, nothing is likely to change, since Zucker is, in my opinion, largely responsible for the sorry state of NBC. He was a disaster as the Entertainment President. His legacy is Fear Factor and super-sized Friends. Somehow he managed to get kicked upstairs, where he has made some of the worst hires in the history of the medium, party animal Ben Silverman as programming chief being a glaring example. He also fired Kevin Reilly, a truly gifted programmer, to get Silverman. Reilly was quickly hired by Fox, now the No. 1 network, while NBC fights to hold off the CW. Even after the deal is announced, it is likely to be a year at least, probably significantly longer, before it gains government approval.