TVSquad

Does it seem like somebody lit a fire under Oprah Winfrey? It seems like it to me. Her new season commenced this week with the Whitney Houston two-parter, she's off to Central Park for tomorrow show which will relaunch Oprah's Book Club, and on Monday Oprah's doing a flashback to the 1960's with Mad Men's Jon Hamm and January Jones as guests.

A year ago at this time, who would have guessed that Jay Leno would be leaving late night and NBC would be handing him five hours of prime time instead? Who would have predicted CBS continuing to dominate in the ratings or that ABC's sophomore series like Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies would stumble and fall so completely after being off the air all last spring? Predictors from last January were on target about there being a writers' strike; that did happen and it was definitely not a good thing.

Fortunately, I don't see a SAG strike in the future. However, here are ten things I'm betting will happen by the time the ball drops on December 31st.

1. Martin Scorsese will be the next big thing on HBO. He's producing a drama based on the book Boardwalk Empire. HBO is overdue to launch another big series in The Sopranos tradition. Boardwalk Empire seems to have all the right elements: violence, sex, gambling, and Oscar-winning, iconic director Martin Scorsese.

Recently, TV columnist Aaron Barnhart took note of the fact that Oprah Winfrey's show is sinking in the ratings. Her talk show, which is the centerpiece of her multimedia success -- a success that has made her the richest woman in show business -- has been losing ratings consistently for the last six months. At first blush, the politically minded of you might think it's because she endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, but I think it's more than that. After all, if anything, the vast amount of grassroots support that the Senator from Illinois has engendered might be a plus for Oprah rather than a minus.

Therefore, there have to be other factors to explain why Oprah's landmark TV talk show has lost its luster -- at least ratings-wise. I've come up with six possible reasons.