Oprah Winfrey rues the day she ever launched the Oprah Winfrey Network -- claiming the entire operation was one giant mistake ... doomed from the get go.
The Big O appeared today on "CBS This Morning," confessing she might not have created OWN if she could do it all over again -- "The idea of creating a network was something that I wanted to do. Had I known that it was this difficult, I might have done something else."
She added, "If I knew then what I know now, I might have made different choices. If I were writing a book about it, I could call the book '101 Mistakes.'"
As we previously reported, OWN has been struggling BAD -- chopping a large chunk of network employees last month ... right after it was forced to cancel Rosie O'Donnell's show.