By now everyone is aware that Oprah Winfrey is in a fight to improve the ratings of her cable network OWN. But Sunday night during the Grammy Awards broadcast the queen of talk took her mission to Twitter, in an attempt to influence her more than 9 million fans to tune into OWN. Today Oprah is apologizing to her fans for many are calling a ‘desperate’ attempt to improve her network’s ratings.

“Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Nielsen box,” Oprah tweeted to her followers Sunday, just before her new show Oprah’s Next Chapter started.

Many of her fans thanked Oprah for her friendly reminder, while others found her tweet to be desperate and unethical.

The former talk show host immediately defended herself through a series of tweets, “The word ‘please’ is used as courtesy not a beg … ‘desperate’ not ever a part of my vocab … ‘unethical’ a little harsh don’t u think? Seemed like it made sense to me. Sorry if u’re offended.” She eventually removed the controversial tweet.

This morning Oprah released a statement detailing her decision to remove her tweet from Grammy night saying, “I removed the tweet at the request of Nielsen. I intended no harm and apologize for the reference.”

In Nielsen’s ratings system, an asterisk will be attached to OWN’s ratings at the time of day Ms. Winfrey’s message was sent, noting a “possible biasing effect,” a Nielsen spokesman said in a statement to the New York Times.

Follow Chris Witherspoon on Twitter at @WitherspoonC