that's a shit ton of free publicity that OWN didn't have to spend ad dollars on. Oprah was on a couple of major shows talking about the interview, promoting it, and giving clues about what he said without revealing anything, making people want to watch.

You've got to promote a TV event in order to get people to watch it. No one watches OWN, so it's not like they have a built in audience that watches whatever is on, like a CBS or ESPN or Comedy Central. The *only* way to get people to care about an interview between Oprah and Lance Armstrong in 2013 is if you reveal that he's gonna admit he cheated.