If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired of the old, misused and abused reality TV storyline that revolves around the ex-girlfriends and wives of famous celeb men, then the Oprah Winfrey Network’s latest reality television project, starring comedian and actress Kym Whitley may be the show for you.

According to OWN’s website, Raising Whitley will document the life of actress Kym Whitley and her group of hilarious friends – whom she refers to as “The Village” in their attempt to raise baby Joshua, the adorable child whom Kym was unexpectedly granted custody of. Joshua was left to Whitley after a troubled young woman, whom she mentored for 15 years, fled the hospital immediately after giving birth, leaving behind only Kym’s contact information.

“I got a call like, ‘Hello, this is the hospital. We have your baby ready,’ and I’m like ‘I didn’t order a baby. Oh, there has to be a mistake,’ ” Kym said as she recounted the day she received the shocking phone call.

“She wanted him to have a better life than what she could’ve given him,” she went on to say about her mentee’s decision to leave Joshua behind.

During the show’s trailer, Kym revealed that she only had one hour to decide whether she would accept responsibility as Joshua’s legal guardian or allow him to be put into the foster care system. She decided to step in as Joshua’s mother and the rest was history.

“I had no idea how to take care of a baby. He was a gift that I never asked for,” the actress gushed.

Unfortunately, Kym’s world was shaken when her mother passed away, only months following Joshua’s adoption. But she revealed that the tragedy only pushed her to be the best mother that she could possibly be.

“Once my mother passed, I decided that I might not have my family here in Los Angeles, but I’m going to build Joshua a village. I am going to rally up the good people in my life and we are going to make sure he is loved, just like my parents did for me,” she said.

“I’m learning as I go, but I love being Joshua’s mom. I might be raising Joshua, but he might end up raising me,” she jokingly continued.

Raising Whitley premieres April 20th at 10/9c on OWN.

Uh, where’s the award for for Most Adorable And Heartwarming Reality Show Plot Ever? I nominate Raising Whitley!

Skip to the next page for a sneak peek. Will you be tuning in to Raising Whitley when it airs?

Image: Zap2It.com

Iyanla Vanzant seemed to have disappeared for the past few years. Back in the early 2000s she was all the rage; the advice she gave to millions of views via her self-help books, TV appearances and Inner Visions Worldwide Institute were golden. Then she had, self-admittedly, fallen off. She lost her husband, her home, her fortune. But now, she’s back. Vanzant’s new TV show, Iyanla: Fix My Life, is debuting on September 15 on OWN with much anticipation.

But can the average Jane take a break from her career and come back bigger and better? Personal and business coach Troy Davis, of Davis Consulting Group, says it can be done with a little planning and perseverance. He tells us via an online chat, that you must focus and mentally plan. “Recollection and transformation of one’s mindset from the past back into the present can lead to the future,” he advises. “Take time to gain knowledge and perspective of the new, if any, players or game changes that [have] come to surface.”

But don’t forget your old contacts, adds Al Gary of crisis management and consultancy firm Ag Industries. “Use all of your contacts. Network, network, network,” he said in a text message. “You have to make yourself visible again.” But before you reenter the scene, Gary says “make sure you have the skills still.” Davis agrees and points out you need to make your own mission statement. “Redefine your goals and create a new mission statement with objectives as well as your overall strategy.”

Now, you’re ready for your second act.

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From my non-certified pop physiologist perspective, I have noticed that there is a difference between what people say they want and what they actually really want.

For instance, politicians always list education as one of the most important issues of our day, however, education funding is always the first program to get cut from budgets. And we say we want healthier food items on restaurant menus but the most popular items on any fast food restaurant remains the fat greasy stuff that will probably make us fat and ultimately kill us all.  And while we say that we want to see more positive images on television, the reality is that upbeat television programming are rating killers as they never really seem to capture our attention the way that trash-TV does.

And that is the big fat elephant in the room when it comes to the OWN channel.

According to published reports, the Discovery Channel, which had partnered with Oprah Winfrey for her new cable network is going to spend $15 million more to promote the Oprah Winfrey Network in hopes of exposing the fledging network to new viewership.  That’s right, after a cosmic (1-1-11) introduction and support from America’s favorite best friend Gayle King; the channel has been struggling to maintain a devoted audience. Even after firing a bunch of people including the former CEO Christina Norman and appointing herself as the head honchtress in charge, Oprah and her network continue to struggle not only for for viewers but also for content as at least one of the original shows have decided to take a walk.  According to the published reports, OWN will use the extra cash to promote the relaunch of the network, which officially began on Monday night.

Among the new shows, which have premiered includes the “The Rosie Show,” a messy variety-esque talk show featuring Rosie O’Donnell.  Also, Oprah has once again taken to the stage with Oprah Presents’ “Lifeclass,” which is basically the Queen of Talk sitting in a chair, rehashing “pivotal” personal moments in her life as well as offering viewers a look back at the “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” On Monday’s premier episode, Oprah discussed, again for the thousand time, her weight issues, including the infamous “fat wagon” and her relationship with long-time boyfriend Stedman Graham.  Last night, she followed up with a discussion on letting go of anger and a look back at the Terry McMillan and her gay ex-husband and …

…Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

Seriously, I can appreciate a good life lesson every now and then, especially when it comes from one of the most successful black women of our generation. But I don’t really want to hear this self-help Isht 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I’m just not that depressed. If I wanted to watch old clips from the Oprah Winfrey Show, well than I’ll just buy the box set of the Oprah Winfrey Show.  And If I wanted to be lectured to about the direction my life was/is taking, well I would go see my grandma more often. Judging by the weak ratings, many folks feel the same as I do.

For those, who believe that I am being too hard on Oprah, just think for a second about the popularity of reality and trash-talk shows.  After having watched hundreds of hours of these programs, for research purposes of course, I have found that the denizen of trailer park and ghettos, crying and screaming about who stole who’s boyfriend and who said what behind whose backs typically speaks more of the real, day-to-day appetite of the average Joes and Janes than the cult of the professional experts, who usually appear on the OWN network.  And you can debate with me if you must but we all know that people didn’t tune in to The Oprah Show just because she had the “secret” to a more balanced life or tips to better manage our money.  No, most of us tuned in to see Terry McMillan go at it with her gay husband, or to see the world exclusive interview with the woman, whose face got bitten off by the monkey and to watch Tom Cruise lose his damn mind and stomp around on the couch for 5 minutes.

Why? Well, because the key to any and every good story is conflict and the problem with the OWN channel is that it has no divergence to help illicit the maximum emotional impact, which is needed to connect with the audience. In other words, if there is nothing to solve at the end of a 30 to 60 minutes show and everything is all rose petals, what really is keeping people from using their remotes and watching a family of racist midgets strippers argue over who left the toilet seat up?  Worse yet, if I were truly interested in being educated about money-matter issues or spirituality, why would I be watching television? Why wouldn’t I be reading a book?

Listen there is no other non-family/close friend person I love more than the mighty O. And I truly want her channel to succeed just because her name is attached to it.  But if she is expecting this channel to rise above the ratings basement of CSPAN 3 and the Golf Network, than she is going to have to hype it up more.  I’m not saying go all-Bad Girls Club or Jerry Springer or even B.E.T on us. But at the very least, try to entertain us.  Because after a long day slaving away at a job that we sometimes care about, the last thing any of us want to do is come home and be lectured by the likes of Ryan & Tatum O’Neal, Shania Twain, The Judds, and Sarah Ferguson. I mean, what “I Love The 80s” did this lineup fall out of?

Charing Ball is the author of the blog People, Places & Things.

Oprah has decided to take matters into her own hands at her cable network OWN. After firing CEO Christina Norman in May, Winfrey has extended her role as Chairman and Chief Creative Officer to include the title of CEO. Since its debut in February, the network has suffered from dismal ratings. At a few points, its ratings fell lower than the Discovery Health channel it replaced according to the Wall Street Journal. Executives cited lackluster programming, which veered towards more serious and sober topics, and the lack of entertaining show for the low viewership.

As much as Winfrey is grounded in the spiritual upliftment of her audience, it’s obvious that she is highly concerned with her brand as a top seller and doesn’t want to waste any time in having her channel become a premier network amongst women.

(AOL Black Voices) — It has been less than a month since the last episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show aired and already the Queen is back on her grind, this time to rejuvenate her somewhat ailing television network.  After sprinting to the starting line and bursting through the gates, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network has since watched its ratings tumble. But with her long-running talk show now a teary-eyed memory – dab-dab, sniff-sniff – Winfrey has committed herself to building the brand and bolstering her network’s ratings.  ”The vacation that I thought that I was going to have is over,”Oprah Winfrey told more than 1,000 people attending theNational Cable & Telecommunications Assn. convention in Chicago, according to a story in the ’Los Angeles Times’ this morning. “I need to be there. I need to be engaged and be involved,” Winfrey said.  That means a move from her beloved Chicago to Los Angeles.

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(Eurweb) —  has promised to bring documentary movies into homes across the United States on her new OWN television network in an effort she likened to her hugely successful book club.  At a Saturday launch party at the Sundance Film Festival, which has long championed documentary movies, Winfrey told a crowd that outspoken celebrity Rosie O’Donnell will be OWN’s “curator” of non-fiction films. O’Donnell will host specials in which the films’ makers and subjects are featured when the OWN Documentary Film Club launches this spring.  “It is my intention to do for documentaries what we have been able to do for books,” Winfrey said, according to the AP. “My goal, my dream, my intention is to bring documentaries into the mainstream, to have them stimulate new ways of thinking.”

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As OWN enters into its second week on the air, we’ve gotten a chance to reflect on what it means to have a 24-hour a day channel owned by Oprah Winfrey.  And while we’ve only begun to explore what will be a media venture for years to come, scratching the surface we are getting to peek into what has helped make the great one so great.

For many of us, our journey to adulthood has gone parallel with Oprah’s rise to nearly omnipresent success. And while the old footage of her first ever national show seems dated, relatively speaking the empire Oprah has built has grown at an exponential rate.  From the early years of flipped out hair and garish blush choices to dominance in the American culture, here are some of the reasons Oprah stays winning.

(New York Times) — With the collective attention of the television industry centered this week on the launch of OWN, Oprah Winfrey’s new cable channel, the Chicago television station where it all started was preoccupied with the question raised many months ago: how to replace Ms. Winfrey when her daily show ends in September?  In the hope that lightning can strike twice, Emily Barr, president and general manager of the ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7, decided to take the risk of developing a new local program instead of the cheaper route of buying a syndicated show.

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