Oprah Quits!
Oprah Whinfrey has finally revealed what has been rumoured for a long while now.
Whinfrey the reigning Queen of daytime Television will announce on her show today that after almost a quarter of a century, she is preparing to quit her show for good in September 2011.
Oprah syndication deals for The Oprah Winfrey Show reaches almost 7 million homes daily, and that’s just in the USA. Shown mostly on ABC stations, it is distributed by CBS Television Distribution. CBS said, ” We have the greatest respect for Oprah and wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavours.”
Winfrey, 55, will leave to focus mainly on a new channel she has been in preparation to launch. It will be the the Oprah Winfrey Network- OWN which is in development in partnership with Discovery Communications and will focus mainly on women’s issues.
Winfrey is an American media star, especially as she revolutionised the talk show. She has also been a television producer, literary critic, actress and magazine publisher. The Oprah Winfrey Show became the highest rated program of it’s kind in history.
Reaching the ranks of the richest African American of the 20th Century, and of whom was once the world’s only black billionaire.
Also rated as on of the most influential woman in the world. A far cry from her beginning, born into poverty in rural Mississippi to an single teen aged mother. She endured abuse and incredible hardship, becoming herself pregnant at the age of 14, her only child a son died in infancy.
She landed her first job in radio while living with the man who she was sent too who she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee. From there she was co-anchoring the local evening news while still at high school.
Her talent and open, honest personality and style eventually got her into the talk show arena launching the show to first place after only ever ranking third. From that she launched the production company known as HARPO and it soon became internationally syndicated.