Oprah Winfrey and the Discovery Channel have put a reported $189 million into the 24 hours a day, 7 days a week channel, which will feature reruns of broadcast shows from Oprah endorsed stars like Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Suze Orman and Rachel Ray. Original programming slated to debut later in the year includes programming centered around Sarah Ferguson (Duchess of York, and the original Fergie), Wynonna Judd and Shania Twain.

Even for someone who has successfully launched a magazine with only one cover model (save the occasional shared cover with a certain First Lady), the prospect of launching an entire channel is challenging to say the least. “Eat your Wheaties. It is a haul. Itâ€s ambitious,” Winfrey advises others thinking of doing something similar. {NY Times}

OWN is a 50-50 joint venture with Discovery, which will provide the actual channel by pulling the plug on Discovery Health so that OWN programming can air in its place. If you’re searching for the OWN Network channel to see what the buzz is about, check your listings for Discovery Health and you’ll likely start to see Oprah-curated programming. While the power of Oprah has been a force capable of launching bestsellers, building tourism and creating careers, both Winfrey and Discovery Channel execs are cautiously optimistic about the future.

Part of the reason they aren’t expecting an overnight sensation is because there won’t be any Oprah fronted programming until at least September, when Winfrey will tape the final episode of her extremely popular, internationally syndicated broadcast show. Not only will Oprah go from being freely available (the executives are looking at OWN as a way to compete with on-demand internet video), but her commitment to the network requires only 2 to 3 weekly appearances versus the daily ones that some viewers might count on. Also, Oprah’s average viewer age is 50, which is well outside the 25-44 target that many advertisers aim for. {CBS News}

Somehow, we think that Oprah’s midas touch will be enough to clear those hurdles. O Magazine is successful, and that’s only available once a month. Plus, Dr.Phil and Rachel Ray’s Oprah backed shows have been successful even though Oprah can only be seen in the production credits. As far as those older viewers go? They seem to buy enough books, magazines and “favorite things” to warrant being considered a prime target market when it comes to advertising.

A social network, pop star and socialite top popularity lists. Stop us if you've heard this before.

YouTube, which rose from 7th most visited site in 2009 the 5th most visited in 2010, helps make up the 9.85% of all US internet visits that Google properties claim. While Facebook hasn’t surpassed total Google owned/controlled traffic yet, they aren’t too far off at 8.93%. Yahoo!, often seen as the big engine that couldn’t, still represents 8.12% of all US visits with their various properties including email, which is actually a more popular destination than the Yahoo! homepage.

What surprised us though, is actually the site that traded places with YouTube: MySpace. The site is down off of last year’s 5th place to number 7, but still ranking. Yes, we thought that everyone had abandoned the site with the strange new logo. Frankly, we were pretty sure the people running MySpace were abandoning ship when they seemingly threw in the towel and partnered with Facebook, but it looks like some of you just can’t say goodbye to sparkly glitter gifs and 2001-style clip art.

Speaking of sparkly, glittering things, silver covered magazine mover Kim Kardashian edged out Oprah (who does a pretty good job of moving magazines also) for the title of top searched personality. Rush Limbaugh, Miley Cyrus and Glenn Beck are numbers 3, 4, and 5 respectively. That sounds like the start of a party game where you have to put random words into a sentence that makes sense. We’ll let you know when we come up with one.

Moving on to musicians, butcher calendar girl Lady Gaga dominated searches and beat out the teenage endorsement dream that is Justin Bieber for number one music personality search. Eminem, Taylor Swift and late King of Pop Michael Jackson were 3, 4, and 5 respectively.