Oprah Winfrey show is dead - long live Oprah

Oprah Winfrey. Photo / AP.

For 24 years and nearly 5000 shows it has been a gigantic part of America's TV landscape.

Watching the Oprah Winfrey Show has been a ritual for millions of Americans akin to going to church, involving many of the same ideas of paying homage and taking instruction on how to lead their lives.

It has established Winfrey as one of America's most prominent cultural figures. "She is possibly the most powerful woman in the world," said Alicia Quarles, Associated Press's global entertainment editor.

In the new year that era will begin to come to an end. On Sunday (NZ time) Winfrey launches her own TV channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and prepares to end the show that for almost a quarter of a century has kept her at the top of America's cut-throat show business hierarchy.

It is a huge gamble. When the Oprah Winfrey Show's last episode airs in the middle of next year, Oprah will be on her own. She has confessed in an interview with her own magazine that the risk is keeping her up at night. No doubt the prospect is giving many among her legions of fans sleepless nights too. Why the fuss? It is just a TV show. Right?

Not quite. There is little about Winfrey that does not invite hyperbole.

"Oprah Winfrey is a god. She is a force of nature," said Richard Laermer, a TV critic at the Huffington Post and author of the book 2011: Trendspotting.

With Winfrey, such statements do not seem a stretch of the imagination.

After all, this is a woman whose endorsement of Barack Obama in 2007 was considered vital to his run for the presidency.

Oprah is far more than a TV star. She has used her daytime talkshow as a hub for a huge media business that has made her a billionaire. Her production company, Harpo, is involved in many other TV programmes and films. Her magazine, O, is hugely influential for its readers and sells 2.4 million copies a month. She has a satellite radio company, a popular website and 4.6 million Twitter followers.

She is involved in charities all around the world for whom the mystical name Oprah brings in much-needed dollars. But the real impact of Oprah stretches far beyond the mundane operations of her business. It lies in the power of her brand and the loyalty of her followers. She has the power to bestow success on virtually anyone or anything. Like a fairy godmother waving a capitalist wand, she can create a best-selling book by a recommendation. Or see a product - such as a dress or kitchen gadget - immediately fly off the shelves if she names it on her favourite things segment.

So reliable and powerful has this ability become that it even has a name: the Oprah Effect. It has spawned a virtual industry of its own, as marketing executives, film producers and book publishers scramble to catch Oprah's eye or those of her top staff.

It is all a long way from Winfrey's humble beginnings. Her journey began in Kosciusko, Mississippi, where she was born into rural poverty. She then moved to inner-city Milwaukee where her struggles continued. She endured rape and the death of her baby when she got pregnant at 14. Yet somehow Winfrey thrived. She moved to Tennessee and landed a radio job. Soon she was presenting the local evening news and from there she eventually transferred to daytime TV in Chicago and began to conquer the world.

Her secret was relatively simple: a combination of astonishing hard work, an innate ability to seem genuine to her audience and huge amounts of charisma. Finally, there was also luck and perfect timing.

Winfrey's emergence coincided with a trend towards "confessional television" and also the coming of age in the 1980s of a demographic cohort of white suburban women open to having a friendly, charismatic black friend.

"It is being in the right place at the right time. She brought the black girlfriend experience to white Americans and they embraced it," said Dr Juliet Walker, a black history expert at the University of Texas at Austin, who has taught a course on Winfrey.

That touches on one of the great debates over Oprah: the effect of her race. Walker has postulated that Winfrey being black and so successful has not helped ease broader race relations. Others disagree. They say the hero worship around Winfrey is a powerful message for racial equality.

In truth, for the vast majority of Winfrey's fans, her race is irrelevant. They are instead attracted by her empathy and her ability to be open about her own foibles and problems.

"She constantly shows what appears to be real emotion," said Laermer. "When she cries, when she feels bad ... she reveals these things. People see real emotions."

As with most things Oprah, there is also a degree of savvy behind her public persona. Her open approach has allowed her to ride out the sort of scandals that beset any famous public figures.

Neither the speculation over her relationship with her best friend, Gayle King, nor her fights with authors such as Jonathan Franzen and James Frey, nor the sex scandals at her school in South Africa damaged the one thing Oprah values above all else: her brand.

This is holding true as Oprah prepares to go it alone. The run-up has been meticulous. Her magazine is carefully revealing her concerns and worries, but pitching it to reflect the worries about change that her female fans would also feel in their own lives.

She is also adopting a staggered approach. The Oprah Winfrey Network, with Oprah taking the top executive decisions, will launch while her TV show is still running. That is a wise move, allowing her new venture to feed off the publicity of the old. Few think she will lose her audience.

"She has spent so long on her loyal base, I don't see her losing her influence at all," said Eventoff. "They will follow her wherever she goes."

OPRAH - A LIFE

1954 Born in Mississippi to a coal miner and a housemaid.

1968 Runs away from home.

1971 Begins her broadcasting career as a local radio reporter.

1978 Becomes morning talk show host for WTVF-TV's People are Talking.

1983 Moves to Chicago to host the talk show AM Chicago, renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show.

1985 Earns an Oscar nomination for her role as Sofia in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple.

1986 The Oprah Winfrey Show enters national syndication, becoming the highest-rated talk show in history.

1988 Becomes the first woman to own and produce her own TV talk show.

1991 Initiates the National Child Protection Act.

1993 An interview with Michael Jackson reaches an audience of 100 million.

1995 Became the first woman and the only black person on the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans.

1996 Starts her on-air book club.

1998 Named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century by Time magazine.

2000 First issue of O.

2007 The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls opens in South Africa. Campaigns for Barack Obama.

2009 Announces that she will leave her chat show.

- Observer