By Mary Whitifll
Staff Writer
In 17 months, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” TVs highest rated talk show, will conclude after its 25th season.
After announcing the end of her beloved talk show in November, Winfrey continues to explain that her time on the air will be ending because she “loves it enough to know when it’s time to say good-bye.”
“It’s going to be like missing an old friend,” Spanish teacher Melinda Seger said.
“The Oprah Winfrey Show” averages 8.5 million views per original episode and 4.5 million for repeats. The final episode will air in September 2011 after debuting Sept. 8 1986. Winfrey has a plan to start up another talk show on her own television network, The Oprah Winfrey Network, set to launch in January 2011.
“It’s going to be great when she has her own TV channel,” Seger said. “It’ll be like watching her show all the time.”
The network will be owned by Discovery Communications, replacing the Discovery Health Channel on cable and satellite because of their low ratings. This will be Winfrey’s second foray into the world of cable television, after first co-owning the channel Oxygen until selling it to NBC Universal.
“It’s great that she is going to have her own network,” sophomore Sydney Salerno said. “Oprah influences a lot of today’s media.”
In addition to launching her own television network, Winfrey also already has a magazine, The Oprah Magazine, commonly referred to as O. The magazine, produced by Winfrey and the Hearst Corporation, is released monthly in grocery stores and newsstands across America.
The magazine was first published in April 2000 and, its paid circulation is over 2.7 million. Until this year, Winfrey appeared on the cover of every issue alone, but in April she shot a cover with First Lady Michelle Obama and her December issue features Ellen DeGeneres.
The ending of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” will mark the end of an era in talk show television. Apart from being included in Time magazine’s list of the best television shows of the 20th century in 1998 and being featured in TV Guide’s countdown of America’s greatest shows of all time in 2002, many famous moments in talk show history can be found in its repeats.
The first entry on the timeline of famous Oprah moments was made in 1986, when Liberance made his last public appearance on “Oprah,” dying from AIDS six weeks later. The highest rated single episode in TV history appeared in 1993 when Michael Jackson came on the show to dispel rumors about himself and confirm that he suffered from vitiligo, a skin-pigment disorder.
Later, the Tom Cruise “couch incident” was rated number one of 2005’s “Most Surprising Television Moments” in a countdown on E! The incident consisted of Cruise jumping up and down on Winfrey’s couch during an interview, proclaiming his love for new girlfriend, Katie Holmes.
The end of the show was first hinted during an appearance on “Good Morning America,” when Winfrey told Diane Sawyer she had to make a decision by the end of the year. The rumor was finalized in November when Harpo announced the show would end.
“It’s about time it ended on regular TV,” junior Lindley McCord. “It’s been everywhere for too long.”
