Reuters/Chicago

Winfrey: knows when it’s time to say goodbye

Oprah Winfrey announced yesterday that she will end her popular TV show in 2011 because it “feels right in her bones” after 25 years, and urged viewers not to believe rumours of why she’s quitting.
“This show has been my life and I love it enough to know when it’s time to say goodbye. Twenty-five years feels right in my bones, and it feels right in my spirit. It’s the perfect number, the exact right time,” Winfrey said during yesterday’s show at her Chicago studio.
Winfrey, 55, did not divulge her future plans. But her production company Harpo Inc said in a statement that once production ends on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011, she “plans to appear and participate in new programming for OWN”, the Los Angeles-based cable TV venture she formed with Discovery Communications.
Harpo said the launch date for OWN, or the Oprah Winfrey Network, which will be seen in more than 70mn homes, was now set for January 2011.
“Over the next couple of days you may hear a lot of speculation in the press about why I am making this decision now, and that will mostly be conjecture,” she said.
Winfrey choked up once and wiped away a tear as she thanked viewers for having “graciously invited me into your living rooms, your kitchens and into your lives”.
“So here we are, halfway through the season 24. And it still means as much to me to spend an hour every day with you as it did back in 1986,” she said.
Her predominantly female audience gave her a standing ovation and then hugs when she stepped into the crowd.
The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago on ABC stations across the US and in more than 140 countries overseas, is one of the TV industry’s biggest money-makers. It is the top-rated US daytime talk show, averaging 7.1mn viewers this year.
It has helped Winfrey, born in 1954 to a single mother in rural Mississippi, amass a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $2.3bn and anchored an entertainment empire that produces television talk shows, movies, and the style magazine O, the Oprah Magazine.
Winfrey, who also earned an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in the 1985 film The Colour Purple, is considered a major opinion-maker in the US. Her backing of presidential candidate Barack Obama last year was a boost for the his campaign.
Her book and product choices have launched best-sellers and marketing bonanzas.