DeVon Franklin, VP of production for Columbia/Sony Pictures, had a very big weekend. On Saturday, he tied the knot with Jumping the Broom actress Meagan Good,  and Sunday his hour-long interview with Oprah Winfrey aired on the OWN network’s Super Soul Sunday program.

But, before he was making all of these headlines, the preacher and author of Produced By Faith sat down with Mediabistro just over a year ago, as part of our Media Beat series. In the three-part interview, he discussed his impressive rise from intern to VP in the film industry, as well as how his faith has positively impacted his career and personal life. “My whole big idea for my life is to inspire and encourage, and God has called me to use film as part of a way to do that,” he said.

Watch the first part of our interview below and check out Parts 2 and 3 after the jump.

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Although Mike Fleming’s deadline.com duties keep him very busy, he still finds the time to continue one longstanding freelance tradition. The Playboy interview.

Beginning with Robert Downey Jr. in the 1990s, Fleming has contributed around two dozen centerpiece Q&As to the publication, chatting with everyone from Denzel Washington to Harrison Ford to Quentin Tarantino. For the June issue, the A-lister across the tape recorder is Tom Cruise. Towards the end of the conversation, Fleming asks Cruise what he learned from that whole Matt Lauer-Oprah Winfrey train wreck:

“When I go back and look at it, I find myself thinking, I don’t feel that way. I get how it came across, but I don’t feel that way, and I never have. Telling people how to live their lives? I saw how that came across and how pieces were edited.”

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Just when Oprah Winfrey perhaps needed him most, homeless LA resident “Eddie” has come to the public relations rescue of the embattled media mogul and her fellow OWN executives.

This recent encounter at Beverly Hills’ Montage Hotel could have so easily gone the other way. But instead, as reported by the New York Post’s Page Six, it has led to the best bit of feel-good OWN branding since the network’s lofty launch:

Oprah joined four OWN executives on the patio at chef Scott Conant’s Beverly Hills hot spot Scarpetta… Spies say a passerby then approached, pleading, “Oprah can you help a homeless guy get a bowl of soup, please?”

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The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) laid off 30 employees in Los Angeles and New York Monday as the network faces another round of restructuring. This time around, the suits from Discovery Communications are coming in to help oversee operations.

The Los Angeles Times has the details:

The move comes as OWN continues to struggle to find its voice. Launched in January 2011, OWN has already cost Discovery more than $300 million. The channel’s performance has been so weak that there has even been speculation, denied by insiders at the network’s parent companies, that if the situation doesn’t improve soon the plug could be pulled.

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Throughout his NBA and business career, Magic Johnson has always aspired to achieve great things. So it’s only logical that he would choose to call his new TV channel Aspire.

Per an LA Times article this morning by Meg James and Greg Braxton, Johnson’s channel is the first of several planned by Comcast TV as part of the company’s recent agreement with the FCC and Department of Justice to diversify. Aspire will offer a 24-hour mix of inspirational, family-friendly movies, comedy, music and more. From the article:

“This is so exciting for me, I’m pinching myself,” Johnson said in a phone interview. “This is big for myself, for the African-American community and the African-American creative community. I wanted a vehicle to show positive images and to have stories written, produced and directed by African-Americans for our community. Aspire — that’s how I’ve been leading my life.”

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For years now, the most entertaining part of the Oscars has been Jimmy Kimmel‘s post-Academy Awards special.

The ABC late night talk show host landed some serious star power for his seventh special Thursday when the network announced Oprah Winfrey would join Kimmel on Feb. 26.

This should be a change of pace for Winfrey, who is normally doing the interviewing.

Kimmel is the right man behind the desk to make the former talk show giant squirm just a little bit while she promotes her new weekly series on OWN, Oprah’s Next Chapter.

Billy Crystal, Meryl Streep, George Clooney and Martin Scorsese will also join Kimmel and Coldplay will close out the show.

The National Enquirer is certainly not alone in racing to put together a broadcast about the late Whitney Houston. For example, OWN has already announced a special two-hour block for Thursday, anchored around Oprah Winfrey‘s memorable September 2009 interview with the singer.

But the tone of the tabloid’s doc, the first product of a new multi-platform partnership between American Media and UK production house Zig Zag, is decidedly closer to the gutter. Per a report on realscreen.com:

The documentary promises to focus on details of the singer’s much-publicized battle with addiction and provide audiences with a “harrowing” account of her private life… The film is billed as featuring interviews with drug dealers and photos of the singer’s “drug den.”

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Looks like OWN isn’t the only Oprah Winfrey media property struggling since the talk goddess left her syndicated show. Adweek reports that O, The Oprah Magazine‘s newsstand sales were off by 32 percent in the second half of 2011. That came after an 8 percent dip in the first half of the year.

The mag did note that things weren’t all bad, however, as subscriptions to O were up four percent in 2011.

Oprah has said in the past if OWN doesn’t work out she’s going to quit TV and become an organic farmer in Hawaii. Sounds like a TV show to us.

January 1st marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of Oprah Winfrey‘s OWN channel. As you’ve probably heard, 2011 didn’t go so great for OWN. Its ratings routinely failed to top the meager showing of its predecessor Discovery Health. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that for most of the year, the woman whose name makes up two-thirds of the channel acronym wasn’t on her own channel. Not sure whose idea it was to launch OWN without actually having Oprah on the channel. But whoever it was is either really dumb or really cynical. People love Oprah because she gives them quality. You can’t just slap the Oprah brand on some crap and expect people to keep tuning in.

Seems like the OWN folks and Oprah herself, have figured that out. Winfrey just gave a lengthy interview to the AP talking about her network’s year-one struggles.

She attributes the channel’s rough start to a more basic error: The lack of a “library” of programming for the many hours of airtime not filled by original shows, compounded by overconfidence about her market value in general.

“I don’t understand what anybody was thinking. You’re going on the air, you’ve got four shows. What do you think you’re going to do by Tuesday? Did they think people were going to turn on the channel just because it had my name on it?” she said, sounding almost eager to cast doubt on her drawing power.

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AP Hollywood correspondent Sandy Cohen has scored a solid Oprah Winfrey interview after bypassing the usual PR channels:

Winfrey tells Cohen she was as surprised as anyone that she was selected to receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Not because she doesn’t think she is worthy, but rather because she recognizes that her body of big screen acting work is slim:

“”I understand people thinking, `Where’s her list of credentials for films?’” Winfrey said, “but I don’t think there’s room for criticism in the do-good department…”

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