Apple signs streaming deal with Oprah Winfrey

Tech giants Apple has revealed that it had reached an overall agreement with Oprah Winfrey for the entertainment impresario to provide content to its streaming service.

Touting a “unique, multi-year content partnership,” the company said in a statement that Winfrey will “create original programs that embrace her incomparable ability to connect with audiences around the world.”

Apple hasn’t said what platform all of its original video programming will live on – shows could exist as a separate subscription service or be packaged with other Apple content, among other options.

Also unclear is how much Winfrey herself will appear in the shows, if at all. An Apple spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.

The deal provides luster for both Winfrey and Apple.
For Winfrey, it offers a toehold in a streaming world that she had previously stayed out of, and cements her status as an entertainment-business pioneer.

She helped revolutionized the business of syndicated talk shows in the 1980’s and 1990’s, overhauled the nature of product endorsement via that show and was among the first celebrities to launch and oversee an entire cable network.