Oprah Winfrey's Long Goodbye

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: Queen of multimedia empire plans to end Chicago-based talk show in 2011 after quarter-century on national TV : Phil Rosenthal : Tribune Media : November 20, 2009 : : It's what made her rich, famous and, if not a kingmaker, then perhaps the maker of a U.S. president. : Now Oprah Winfrey has decided she's ready to move on from her top-rated daytime program. : Winfrey plans to tell viewers on Friday's show that she will retire the Chicago-based syndicated gabfest at the end of her current contract, which runs through the 2010-11 season, her 25th on national TV. It's going to be a long goodbye. : Harpo Inc., Winfrey's company, on Thursday confirmed her move to end the program that spawned a multimedia empire, making her one of the country's wealthiest and most influential people and giving rise to several best-selling authors and other daytime talk shows. : Winfrey had said she would decide the future of her show -- which airs in 145 countries and averages 7.1 million U.S. viewers, according to her syndicator -- by the end of 2009, which may explain the timing of her announcement. Friday's broadcast is her last live show of the calendar year, airing from her West Side Harpo Productions compound at 9 a.m. on WLS-Ch. 7, the station where her success as a local host set the stage for all that followed. : Forbes estimates Winfrey's worth at $2.7 billion, saying she's the No. 1 celebrity earner, at $275 million. : Maybe on the air Winfrey will answer questions such as whether, as rumored, she is going to leave Chicago, and if, as expected, she will do a program for her coming cable channel, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, once she is free of her commitment to syndicator CBS Television Distribution. : "We have the greatest respect for Oprah and wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors," CBS said. "We know that anything she turns her hand to will be a great success. We look forward to working with her for the next several years, and hopefully afterwards." : Ever since Winfrey and Discovery Networks announced plans to partner on OWN in January 2008, speculation has been rampant that Winfrey's days in syndicated daytime TV were numbered. OWN will take the place of what is now Discovery Health, available in 74 million homes. Yet even with all that exposure, a big hurdle for the new venture was that until Winfrey fulfilled her CBS deal, she would not be able to give the network her all. : The debut of OWN, meanwhile, originally set for this year, already has been delayed more than once. A new launch date is expected to be announced soon. : Winfrey's daytime TV success is a combination of the common and uncommon. Her life story includes triumph over adversity and imperfection, talent and the ambition to better one's self, shrewd business acumen and an uncanny knack for making millions of fans warm to her as a good friend with whom they might trade recipes or gossip. : Not coincidentally, those same things often would be go-to fodder for her show. : Winfrey broke into broadcasting as a teen in Nashville and anchored news in Baltimore before she was recruited to Chicago by then-WLS boss Dennis Swanson to take over "AM Chicago" in 1984. The challenge she posed to then-No. 1 talker Phil Donahue in his home market helped embolden Winfrey to enter syndication in 1986 at the suggestion of Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert. : Thus was born one of TV's most successful and dominant syndicated shows. : The program evolved from typically exploitative fare into something more spiritual and, lately, has seemed to find a ratings sweet spot in the middle ground. She might offer the Black Eyed Peas or the cast of the movie "Nine" one day, a young girl with a birth defect or a mauling victim another, and often she coaxed celebrities such as Whitney Houston or Mackenzie Phillips to use her show as a confessional. : Ratings this season bounced back from lows last season that some attributed to Winfrey's vocal support of Barack Obama's run for the White House, her first public political endorsement. The impact of backing Obama -- on his campaign and on her show -- remains difficult to measure. Even in the lean year, she remained No. 1 by a wide margin. : Winfrey's exit announcement comes the same week as an interview with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who ran as John McCain's running mate in 2008 against Obama and Joe Biden, gave "Oprah" its largest audience in two years. : Palin was promoting a new book, and Winfrey's show has become a coveted platform for authors and publishers because of its ability to vault even obscure works to best-seller status, particularly through its "Oprah's Book Club" segments. Similarly, a product mention on the show has been known to cause a run on marketers. : So concerned with her influence were Texas cattlemen that when Winfrey said she was scared off hamburger by mad cow disease, they sued her for defamation in 1998. Winfrey fought back and won. One of her trial consultants, Dr. Phil McGraw, later became a regular and got his own show. : Others she put in syndication include chef Rachael Ray and Dr. Mehmet Oz. It was reported earlier this week that Harpo was close to a deal with Sony Pictures Television to syndicate a program featuring Chicago designer Nate Berkus, a featured expert on her program for eight years. : From the talk show's success, Winfrey has been able to give millions to charity and build a media empire that has included O magazine, Oprah.com and a Sirius XM satellite pay radio channel, as well as movies and television shows. She also starred in films such as "Beloved," which got made only because she deemed it important, and Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple," which she later shepherded onto Broadway. : Winfrey has brought her worldwide viewers most weekdays to a studio in Chicago, the heart of the nation, for more than two decades. There is plenty of time between now and her final syndicated broadcast, Sept. 9, 2011, to assess the impact on them, the city and the host.

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