While Winfrey works on her new network, other up-and-coming money makers have a chance to push her off of her throne.
The books, newsletters, podcasts and advice columns that litter magazines, newspapers and the web are self-serving money makers for the authors and nothing more.
Warner Bros. points out that several other recent holiday films, including Elf and The Polar Express, opened poorly but went on to become big money makers.
But beyond that, not Pimco, not Invesco, and not Templeton commodity fund managers, and surely not oil, have been able to outperform the real money makers in 2011.
Since the beginning of the second quarter, U.S. Treasury bond funds have been money makers despite the fact that the underlying securities in the fund yield under 3% annually.
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Headlining the NFL dead money makers, of course, is New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, now spending the season rehabbing an injured knee after being knocked out of the season opener.
These well capitalized companies continue to face tremendous legal, medical, and regulatory challenges, but they continue to be steady and tremendous money makers in the face of such seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
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When alive they were rural money-makers: the source of mulberries, walnuts, juniper berries, apricots and pistachios.
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Executives deemed to be potential money-makers command conspicuous compensation and perquisites despite their recent and often glaring failures.
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The line between the two worlds of do-gooders and money-makers is blurring and companies are finding ways to make both goals definable and attainable.
Mr Ozzie argues there is no demand for a fully featured web-based version, (though, it has to be said, the old desktop-bound Office is one of Microsoft's biggest money-makers and one of the main reasons for people to use Windows).
Only enterprise products get to act this way to the people who give their makers money.
Meanwhile, government lenders, like the Japan Development Bank, are handing out cheap money to car makers, steel companies and supermarket chains, further easing fears about jobs.
Now, however, media moves the message in Twitterspeed, and legislation, public opinion, and awareness of diversity of opinion are not just newsmakers, they are money and reputation makers as well.
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With sales incentives offering interest rates all the way down to zero, the car companies eventually have to funnel money into their credit subsidiaries to balance the books, so loss-making consumer-goods makers are lending money to customers to buy their wares.
And government policy makers worry that money that arrives quickly can leave just as fast, destabilizing local banking, stock and currency markets.
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Tripeny notes that not many LCD panel makers are making money right now, which has led them to be more cautious on inventories.
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And Volkwagen AG, one of the last mass-market car makers still earning money in the region, warned of flat operating profit compared with 2012 on intense competition this year.
To imagine city governments taking on more tasks when they have less money hints that some policy makers might see America adopting a culture where we see city government as an omnipotent parent.
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Of course, policy makers hope loose-money-induced higher asset prices will lead to a wider recovery.
Since early 1996, most memory chip makers have been losing money and prices continue to fall.
Basse predicts the ethanol makers that were coining money last year are on track to start losing money by the end of this year.
Or something that is tying innovators big and small in knots and befits only mischief-makers bent on making money in the courts rather than in laboratories.
Yet DuPont points to the example of its car-paints business: because it makes money by painting cars for car makers, it shares their incentive to sell less paint.
In the past, game console makers spent lots of money developing the next piece of killer hardware, and even would lose money on each console unit sold, expecting to make it back up in sales of games and accessories.
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In the land of lifetime employment (at least for many workers in big companies), Mr Ghosn shocked Japan by announcing the closure of five factories employing over 16, 000 people in Japan alone, cutting capacity by 30% to bring it more into line with sales and boosting utilisation rates to around the 75-80% rates at which car makers begin to make money.
Indeed, without truck sales American car makers would still be losing money.
Yet they take up to 90% of sales away from the comparable brand-name drugs whose makers risked the time and money to bring breakthrough treatments to market.
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Patent lawsuits between bitterly competitive smartphone makers, though common, cost money and hurt publicity.
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