Nate Berkus

When “The Nate Berkus Show” debuts this fall on WMAQ-Channel 5 and nine other NBC-owned stations, it’s likely to carry a “made in Chicago” designer label. And if it’s a hit, it could be one of the products that keeps Harpo Productions humming here long after Oprah Winfrey steps down from her own talk show.

No announcement has been made about where the new show will be produced, but eight job openings —  for production manager, post-production supervisor, supervising producer, producer, associate producer, field producer, talent booker and travel coordinator — were posted this week on indeed.com, leading to Harpo Productions in Chicago as the source, according to Ruth L Ratny’s ReelChicago.com. Added Ratny:

“Producing the daytime show in Chicago will be helpful in compensating for the incalculable millions the city will lose with Oprah’s departure in September of 2011, not to mention the big hole left with the move of the Jerry Springer and Steve Wilkos’ shows to Stamford, Conn.”

Replacing “The Bonnie Hunt Show” on Channel 5’s lineup at 2 p.m. weekdays, “The Nate Berkus Show” will star the Chicago interior designer who’s been “mesmerizing television audiences since 2001, when Oprah Winfrey invited him on her show for one of her makeovers, in this case a 400-square-foot apartment,” according to the New York Times. He’s been a regular on Oprah’s show ever since and also hosts his own program on her Sirius XM satellite radio channel. In 2008, Berkus hosted “Oprah’s Big Give” on ABC.

His new syndicated show, billed as a mix of “talk, lifestyle and “Ëœpersonal transformation’ segments,” will be a joint production of Harpo Productions and Sony Pictures Television. That’s the same partnership behind Mehmet Oz’s “The Dr. Oz Show,” another spinoff of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”