The appointment of one of Oprah Winfrey’s most trusted producers to head the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), which is slated to hit the airwaves next year, has spawned speculation that the queen of confessional TV might be planning to give up her syndicated television show, Gawker reports. Lisa Erspamer, currently co-executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show, will move from Chicago to Los Angeles in January to become chief creative officer of OWN, a gig which includes bringing “an injection of Oprah’s DNA into OWN.” Whether Winfrey’s actual DNA will be part of the mix is the big question mark. She has said she’ll decide by year’s end whether to continue her syndicated talk show beyond next season, when her deal with CBS expires. But Erspamer’s move suggests Winfrey’s long-term game plan is to put most of her TV energies—including any type of regular Winfrey-hosted show—into OWN. Gawker asks the big questions: first, “whether OWN can succeed without The Oprah Winfrey Show, which has always anchored the disparate branches of her high-consumption universe” and secondly, “whether the Oprah Winfrey brand exists without Oprah’s physical presence—and whether she would want it to.”