Oprah bids farewell in final show - CNN.com Oprah bids farewell in final show By the CNN Wire Staff Oprah Winfrey signs off Wednesday after 25 years. STORY HIGHLIGHTS NEW: "You all have been a safe harbor for me," Winfrey says She offers e-mail address by which her fans might contact her Fans say Winfrey inspired them to do better in life (CNN) -- Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey took her final bow in a taped episode that aired Wednesday, marking the end of her 25-year daytime talk show with a tearful goodbye. "You all have been a safe harbor for me," Winfrey told her audience. "My hope is that you will be that safe harbor for someone else." The media mogul signed off by walking through her audience and offering an e-mail address -- oprah@oprah.com -- by which her many fans may contact her. "I want you to know that what you have to say matters to me," she said, pledging to read as many e-mails as possible. Minute-by-minute blog of Wednesday's show The final "Oprah Winfrey Show" audience included her boyfriend, Stedman Graham, filmmaker Tyler Perry and her fourth-grade teacher, a woman she called Mrs. Duncan.

Winfrey said she has no regrets, though wished she could have done more to combat sexual predators of children. She then turned to Perry, who sat beside 200 other men in the audience who were once victims of sexual abuse as children. "They are standing together to lift the veil of shame," she said. Each man carried a photo of himself as a child. In the end, Winfrey said her departure isn't bittersweet, but rather "all sweet and no bitter." Gayle King on Oprah's mood post-finale Oprah Winfrey's big sendoff Talk Shows "Every single day I came down from my makeup room, I'd offer a prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to have done this work. To be embraced by all of you, it's one of the greatest honors a human being can have," she said. "Many of us have been together for 25 years. ... So I thank you all for your support and trust in me. I thank you for tuning in every day. ... I won't say good-bye, I'll just say, until we meet again." Beyond her studio audience, people like Funda Ray also reminisced about how Winfrey turned her daytime talk show into a televised forum for self-help.

When Ray arrived on these shores two decades ago from her native Turkey, she hardly spoke English. But she learned, went to school and even college. Today, she works as a financial adviser's assistant. And she said it's all because of Oprah. "She inspired me so much," said Ray, 44, of Hibbing, Minnesota. "If it wasn't for her, I would have sat at home." Ray was recording the last episode of Oprah Winfrey's show Wednesday -- she couldn't be home in time to watch. "I'm going to miss her so much," she said. The talk show queen capped three days of farewell broadcasts that included appearances by Hollywood's top celebrities. Winfrey announced in 2009 that she was leaving the show that catapulted her into a household name and made her a part of American culture and a worldwide celebrity. Even Ray's mother, who arrived from Istanbul for a U.S. visit last week, got off the plane and asked her daughter: "Do you know Oprah is retiring?" Winfrey's popularity and credibility go hand in hand: If she gushed about a book, it became an instant best-seller. An appearance on her show was almost always followed by a rise in profile for the guest.

Paula Pervall, 44, administrative assistant at the Elmhurst House of Friendship, an assisted living home in Wheeling, West Virginia, is among millions of Oprah fans. Oprah fans hold viewing parties "I think that it's sad that the up-and-coming generation is not going to be able to experience what she offered my generation -- the self-help, the inspiration to do better," Pervall said. "She was very inspiring to people. She taught a lot of lessons." The most important lesson? "To be the best me that I can be," she said. Oprah has had many great people on the show, Pervall said. She remembers the woman who had the face transplant; she was from West Virginia -- "that one jumps out at me." Another show featured someone kicked out of a West Virginia town because of HIV. Winfrey taped the teary finale last week that included surprise tributes from superstars including Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jordan, Will Smith and Madonna. The finale aired in three parts starting Monday and featured -- one by one -- dozens of Winfrey's famous friends taking to the stage to pay tribute to the talk show host at Chicago's United Center.

Show producers kept her out of the loop about the guests. iReporters weigh in on Oprah's impact and legacy Winfrey, who has in the past made it clear that she does not like surprises, gasped as her celebrity friends made appearances to thunderous applause, sometimes after a clue phrase. "Pulling off this surprise has been mission impossible," Hanks said Monday, a nod to the famous movie starring Cruise, who walked on stage right after. Winfrey took in the scene in an arena filled with giant photographs of memorable show moments and thousands of adoring admirers. Winfrey had kept mum about plans for the final show, leaving her fans with one last surprise. Kathy Pittman, 55, of Columbus, Ohio, won't find out until Saturday. She'll be watching it with her daughter then, after the work week is over. For Pittman, who is African-American, Winfrey transcended racial barriers with her talk show. She first connected with Winfrey just months after the debut of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" when the host visited Forsyth County, Georgia, a hotbed of racial tensions at the time.

Pittman was intrigued by Winfrey's courage and her confidence to put herself in the middle of a volatile situation. Opinion: There will never be another Oprah "No one sees her as a black woman," Pittman said. "She appeals to everyone. She showed us ... that you can do whatever you want to, that the sky's the limit." It was refreshing to see an African-American woman rise to such enormous power and then use it to help heal the world, said Sondra Miller, 33, vice president of community engagement for Cleveland's rape crisis center. "I think Oprah has built credibility over the years," said Miller, a subscriber to Winfrey's magazine and viewer of her show from childhood. "She takes topics with an extreme amount of stigma, like sexual abuse, and makes people OK to talk about it." Male survivors of sexual abuse was one such topic, Miller said. Winfrey interviewed actor, director and producer Tyler Perry about his own experience and had an audience filled with such survivors. Miller thought that was remarkable. "I don't think we ever could have imagined that happening 10 years ago," she said. Miller was drawn to Winfrey's knack for approaching intimidating topics in a sensitive and empowering manner.

For many of her fans, Winfrey's last show was history in the making. Her show will end, they said, but her legacy is lasting. Part of it will live on through runner Raymond Britt, 50, who first saw Winfrey at the Chicago Marathon in 1994. He had never run a race before, let alone a marathon. There was so much behind him but so far to go still -- five miles to the finish line. At mile 21, he caught a glimpse of Winfrey, who had just run the Marine Corps Marathon, cheering on the runners. She stood alone, without an entourage, simply encouraging everyone to keep going. "If she could do it, then I could do it," thought Britt, of Winnetka, Illinois. He finished that day and went on to run 125 more races, including 85 marathons. "It's possible I wouldn't have finished that first one without Oprah at the 21," he said. "She inspires the human race." And part of it will live on through Britney Deatherage, 26, of Lexington, Kentucky, who watched the shows with her mother and became a fan.

The topics were more than current events, said Deatherage, a hairdresser. They focused on "people's real lives and what they experienced." "She's just kind of like an idol to every woman," she said, illustrating that "women can be what they want to be." Winfrey is one of the most recognizable talk show hosts and has built a media empire, including launching her own cable television network, OWN. "My vision for OWN is to create a network that inspires our viewers and makes them want to be who they are on their best day," Winfrey said. As Winfrey devotees mourn the end of her 25-year run, some speculate who -- if anyone -- can fill her void. Some already have a leg up on the competition. "I've spent seven to eight years training at Oprah University," joked Mehmet "Dr. Oz" Oz, a Winfrey protege whose show will upgrade to 83 time slots and stations where "The Oprah Winfrey Show" had aired. Oz added that he is grateful for the opportunity to take over the time slot, which is among the most sought-after in TV land.

Winfrey's show made people like Dominique Taylor, 23, of Brooklyn reorient their lives. Taylor rescheduled her cheerleading practice, her voice lessons, everything around 4 p.m. so that she could be home in front of the television. Winfrey made the young woman laugh, made her cry. Today, Taylor sees herself as an embodiment of Winfrey's show, another part of her legacy. She's a young filmmaker who hopes to involve Winfrey's production company in her project. "Her show was a platform for so many people to tell their story, for them to know they weren't alone," Taylor said. At 4 p.m. every day, Taylor, like millions of others, felt that she mattered. CNN's Moni Basu and Joe Sterling contributed to this report. Share this on: The Oprah Winfrey Show - Show News, Reviews, Recaps and Photos - TV.com The Oprah Winfrey Show EDIT The Oprah Winfrey Show has featured many celebrities over the years, but that´s only one side of it. There´s also Oprah´s eternal quest to better herself, and to make the viewers change themselves.

Oprah has started several organizations: Oprah´s angel network, Oprah´s book club, and O Magazine. For a couple of years now, the show frequently ends with a "Remember your spirit" segment. The show is produced by Oprah´s own company, Harpo (which spells Oprah backwards). The Oprah Winfrey show ended after its 25th year of production. Fresh Off the Boat Clean Slate NEW Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Decline and Fall NEW More Info About This Show Categories Themes long running show, Advice, social commentary, social issues, for the aarp crowd Important: You must only upload images which you have created yourself or that you are expressly authorised or licensed to upload. By clicking "Publish", you are confirming that the image fully complies with TV.com’s Terms of Use and that you own all rights to the image or have authorization to upload it. Please read the following before uploading Do not upload anything which you do not own or are fully licensed to upload. The images should not contain any sexually explicit content, race hatred material or other offensive symbols or images. Remember: Abuse of the TV.com image system may result in you being banned from uploading images or from the entire site – so, play nice and respect the rules!

Choose background: Countdown to the last 'Oprah Winfrey Show': The next-to-last episode! May 24, 2011 | 5:46 pm Three-quarters of the way through the penultimate episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” after Oprah was honored by men she’s put through Morehouse College on scholarship and the poet Maya Angelou read an original work dedicated to Winfrey, but before Aretha Franklin sang “Amazing Grace” and Usher performed the pop-gospel “Oh Happy Day,” Oprah’s longtime boyfriend Steadman Graham took the stage to speak about his partner. A speaking role for Steadman — usually a silent, often forgotten prop on Winfrey’s stage — was so startling that Winfrey herself hollered “What in the name of Jesus!?” when he appeared. Addressing Winfrey, seated next to her best friend, Gayle King, in the crowd, Steadman spoke about her specialness and her humility. Then he said, “I cannot, honey, believe that a colored girl from the backwoods of Mississippi has done all that you have done.” Graham’s statement was arresting, and not just for its dated locution.

Along with much of Tuesday’s A-list talent show in honor of Winfrey, it was a reminder of how truly extraordinary Winfrey’s rise has been, how her influential grip on the country and its culture is still an exception, an anomaly that, like Steadman himself, has always been there, even though we’ve often forgotten about it. In a country that still sets often insurmountable hurdles for African-American women, and especially for those born into poverty, the unlikelihood of Winfrey’s mega-success is worth remembering, as is exactly what we’re going to lose when Winfrey disappears from our daily media. For the most part, Tuesday’s show followed Monday's template: big-name stars and some cringey musical tributes were interwoven with authentically moving stories of the effect Winfrey has had on people’s lives.

Tuesday saw Michael Jordan proclaiming that “men also love 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' ” just before Jamie Foxx launched into a rendition of “Isn’t She Lovely”; he was joined by Stevie Wonder himself, who rose out of the floor playing the piano, singing tweaked lyrics, like “I can’t believe/ How much you’ve done/ Since the first day your show begun/ Miss Oprah Win-frey/ Made of love.” Jerry Seinfeld showed up to do a brief bit about Oprah and marriage. Simon Cowell made an appearance, and the show hit a surrealist pinnacle with Rosie O’Donnell’s introduction of Winfrey’s coterie of gurus to the tune of “Fever” ( “Sitting on my couch for hours/ With only time to kill/ You saved me from depression/ When you gave us Dr. Phil”). The regulars, including Nate Berkus and Dr. Mehmet Oz, all gamely parodied their own catch phrases, the highlight of which was Dr. Oz saying “Always remember: the S-shaped poop!” But there were a handful of powerful moments Tuesday.

Carrie, a high school teacher from Broken Arrow, Okla., explained how she’d used the 1996 Oprah episode in which she interviewed seven of the nine students who integrated Little Rock’s school district in 1957 to teach about the civil rights movement; one of her students, a 17-year-old named Christian, appeared to say that after watching the Little Rock episode, he understood that “I have a better future because of them, that I have to be a bigger man and forgive people.” The tribute from her 415 Morehouse scholarship graduates, who paraded onto the stage holding candles, was preceded by a segment about Oprah’s larger commitment to education. Gayle King and Maria Shriver — billed as “two of Oprah’s best girlfriends” — introduced videos of some of the 64,688 kids from around the world that Winfrey has reportedly educated, all saying “Because of Oprah I went to school”; “Because of Oprah, I went to school”; “Because of Oprah, I went to school.” The effect was hypnotically stirring. There was also Shriver, who’s spent the past two weeks knee deep in scandalous headlines about her husband’s love child with a former household employee.

As she said her written line to Oprah — “For more than 30 years, you have bestowed the most amazing friendship on me, love, support, wisdom” — she paused to dramatically emphasize “and most of all, the truth.” Oprah looked at Shriver with all the pain of a born interrogator dying to spirit this woman back to the Harpo studios and administer an hourlong interview. Instead, all she could do was clasp Shriver’s hand, thrust their fists in the air and shout “Here’s to the truth!” There it was, the ghost of the interview that will never be and that secretly lots of us would kill to watch. This is the practical part of what it means to lose Oprah. But here’s the other part: When we lose Oprah from daytime network TV, we lose a figure who has been bringing issues of race, gender, body image, power and class to the American people daily for 25 years. And I wish that that were more commonplace, but it just isn’t.

Angelou’s verse about Winfrey began, in part, “… in the poverty-stricken southern state of Mississippi/ Imagine a newborn, big-eyed, black baby girl waiting to see her world.” The poem as a whole was bizarre, but OK, imagine that girl. And imagine how unlikely it was, at her birth, that that girl would be enjoying eleventeen hours of nationally televised celebrations of her power. When we lose a powerful black female presence from a landscape that, however much progress has been made, is still far too white (see: Congress, the Supreme Court, the Oscars, the news media, law firms and science departments, etc.) and too male (see: Congress, the Supreme Court, the Oscars, the news media, law firms and science departments, etc.) it’s not like we get 20 more — or even two more, or, uh, one more — to take her place. Don’t believe me? Last week, a media publication ran a story about a new generation of magazine editors, all white men. Katie Couric stepped down from her history-making spot at the CBS anchor’s desk and was replaced by Scott Pelley, a white man.

This week, the New York Times, which has just lost its only African-American columnist, Bob Herbert, announced that the newest addition to the op-ed pages is the white, male (though openly gay — a first for the Times) Frank Bruni. And when the smoke clears from the current destruction of television’s longtime Oprah-and-soap-operas daytime lineup, we know we will have at least two shows hosted by famous white men Mario Batali and Tim Gunn. Don’t get me wrong: I love white men, and many of the above white men especially. They all are well qualified to hold their jobs. But we forget how standard a white male media universe is, and we forget how extraordinary it was to have had one ruled by Oprah Winfrey. Which is not to say that Winfrey’s relationship to race and representation has been perfect. As with any individual, she has been unable to be all things that all people need her to be. Critics can jaw for another 25 years about how she did and did not serve the black community. What is indisputable is that Winfrey is a testament to what kind of an effect it has when people who are usually not offered a seat at the table finally gain a perch there.

It’s not just that Oprah herself has entered American living rooms every day, it’s that she’s brought other people, other perspectives, other stories with her. Oprah has made blackness more visible, has helped familiarize a country’s daytime audiences — not always the most politically progressive — with people they might otherwise not have known. Thanks to her, viewers know Steadman and Gayle, Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. Her book club members have read "Song of Solomon," "Sula," and three books by Faulkner with race at their core. She has talked audiences through the O.J. Simpson trial, the Rodney King riots and Hurricane Katrina; she has interviewed skinheads and then had them return, as they did a couple of weeks ago, to explain how their thoughts on race have changed. She has interviewed the Little Rock Nine, has brought together Thomas Jefferson's white descendants with the black descendants of his union with Sally Hemmings, and has argued with Jay-Z about his use of the n-word. She also familiarized America with a presidential candidate named Barack Obama; her campaigning for him helped him win the Iowa caucus, a victory without which he would likely not have secured the Democratic nomination.

Has she always been the teacher or historian or political commentator we might have chosen? No, of course not. But what seems important to acknowledge right now is that whatever we think of the pyrotechnic hokum and easily parodied self-regard of her blowout goodbye, whatever valid complaints we have about her mixed messages, her gurus, her wavy-gravy philosophies, when Oprah leaves our network airwaves after tomorrow, a chapter will close on one of American history’s most remarkable figures. Thanks, Steadman, whom we so often forget, for not letting us forget. RELATED: Oprah Winfrey on Closing Harpo Studios, OWN Expansion, Broadway Plans (Exclusive) | Hollywood Reporter Oprah Winfrey on Closing Harpo Studios, OWN Expansion, Broadway Plans (Exclusive) 8:15 AM PST 3/3/2015 by Lacey Rose Courtesy of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network; AP Images/Invision OWN's new West Hollywood headquarters The mogul reveals plans for international speaking engagements, more scripted shows and why she's passing on Broadway production ' 'night, Mother.' Oprah Winfrey and her collection of shows are settling in Hollywood.

By year’s end, Winfrey’s Chicago-based Harpo Studios will close its doors, with the 26-year-old company's productions transitioning to OWN headquarters in Los Angeles. The news, which Winfrey delivered in person to her Harpo staff on Tuesday morning, comes two months after her burgeoning cable network moved into a new space in West Hollywood. Though the Chicago lease continues through April 2016, Winfrey and her key executives intend to stop the back-and-forth routine they've been balancing for nearly half a decade sooner than that. In a phone interview from the Harpo offices in Chicago, Winfrey acknowledges a mix of excitement and nostalgia. "[Chicago has] been everything for me. I've spent more hours in this building than I have any other building on Earth. ... We were here when there was nothing but hoes and rats on the street, and now it's one of the hottest neighborhoods [in Chicago]," she says, noting that OWN will stop shooting shows there as of Tuesday. "The time had come to downsize this part of the business and to move forward.

It will be sad to say goodbye, but I look ahead with such a knowing that what the future holds is even more than I can see." Read More Oprah Winfrey on Forgoing Motherhood, Being 'Counted Out' and the Meeting That Turned OWN Around Winfrey, 61, along with OWN and Harpo presidents Sheri Salata and Erik Logan, emphasize the significance of having their team all under one roof, particularly when the 4-year-old network is still in an early growth stage, expanding both its offerings and its reach. Though it's narrower than many top cable offerings, OWN, co-owned by Winfrey and Discovery Communications, has posted three consecutive years of growth and, in February, ranked as the No. 20 ad-supported cable network among women. It fares even better among its African-American core audience, with ratings up 12 percent year-over-year in that demo. The closure of Harpo, which had produced more than 800 hours of original programming exclusively for OWN, will impact roughly 200 employees, who will remain employed through December.

While running OWN will remain a primary focus for Winfrey going forward, she has and will continue to pursue interests outside of the executive suite, too, including a cadre of film projects (she acted in Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Selma, which she also produced) and this past fall’s eight-city "Oprah's The Life You Want" arena tour. More recently, Winfrey announced that she'd be moving in front of the camera at her eponymous network, with a recurring role in Queen Sugar, from Selma’s Ava DuVernay. “That’s been my goal,” she says of making her OWN acting debut, calling the drama opportunity a “seminal moment.” See more The Resurgence of Oprah Winfrey In fact, the high-end DuVernay drama, inspired by Natalie Baszile's acclaimed novel of the same name, is key to Winfrey's ongoing scripted push at OWN. DuVernay is set to deliver a pilot draft script to Winfrey in the coming days, having spent her post-Oscar week at Winfrey’s Maui writers’ cottage pulling it together.

The drama will chronicle a spirited woman who leaves her upscale Los Angeles lifestyle behind to claim an inheritance from her recently departed father — an 800-acre sugarcane farm in the heart of Louisiana. Once a shooting schedule for Queen is set, Winfrey will be able to figure out what more she can — and cannot — do as an actor. Despite recent reports of her circling the upcoming Broadway revival of 'night, Mother, in which she would have played a mother struggling to prevent her daughter from killing herself, she says she has opted against it. “I just didn’t want to be in the space of suicide every night for six months,” she explains, adding: “I’d like something with a happier ending.” Without rattling off titles, Winfrey reveals that she will be heading to New York in the next couple of weeks to take a closer look at two other potential plays. Additionally, she’s set to reunite with Daniels for his upcoming biopic, Pryor, in which she’ll portray Richard Pryor’s grandmother Marie Carter.

(Her own Los Angeles-based Harpo Films will remain active, too, with a development slate that includes Henrietta Lacks at HBO and Oprah's Book Club 2.0 picks Ruby and The Invention of Wings.) And though she says she has "no plans" to embark on another weekend fan experience tour — an experience she calls "spectacularly rewarding" — she does intend to do international speaking engagements. See more Hollywood's 100 Favorite Films Among the other things still on her to-do list: more scripted programming at the network. “For all of those years on the Oprah Show, we were able to encapsulate the stories that connected to our audience in a way that nobody else could,” says Winfrey. “I love telling the real stories of peoples’ lives, and now we get to create them, make them up, and I get to be part of them as an actor and producer.” At OWN, Queen Sugar will join a quartet of Tyler Perry-scripted series — all of which recently secured additional episode orders — as well as the upcoming two-night Octavia Spencer-led miniseries, Tulsa, already in development. The latter, the network's first in the genre, centers on the story of the largest race riot in U.S.

history, in which more than 300 people are believed to have been murdered. OWN will continue to develop projects in other areas, too, including a seven-part event series, Belief, which will explore humankind’s ongoing search to connect with something greater than ourselves when it bows this fall. The remainder of Winfrey's lineup, including Master Class and Iyanla Fix My Life, will now be produced within Los Angeles-based OWN. The Harpo move comes nearly a year after real estate developer Sterling Bay Cos. closed a deal for the production company's four building facility, reportedly paying a combined $30.5 million. At that time, Sterling agreed to lease the space back to Harpo for two years. "We have been fortunate to have this spectacular city of Chicago as our home for over 25 years," said Logan and Salata in a joint statement, "and are thankful to everybody who has been a part of this great company.” A small group of the Chicago-based Harpo staffers will join the approximately 140 OWN employees who have moved into the network's newly constructed three-floor space at West Hollywood's The Lot.

The latter not only offers sound-stages and post-production studios, which OWN's previous Miracle Mile location did not, but also a rich Hollywood history: “The idea of being on the lot where Natalie Wood filmed West Side Story or Marilyn Monroe did Some Like it Hot,” says Winfrey, “you automatically feel like you’re part of a community that’s larger than you.” ''Oprah Winfrey Show'' end date announced ''Oprah Winfrey Show'' end date announced Oprah Winfrey's production company has announced the airdate of the final episode of her chatshow. Chicago-based Harpo Productions revealed that the final installment of The Oprah Winfrey Show will air on May 25, reports The AP. Winfrey's syndicated daytime chatshow premiered in 1986. It currently airs in 145 countries worldwide. The TV host explained last month that she feels "energised" as she approaches the end of her talkshow's final season. The 57-year-old is expected to turn her full attention to her OWN Network after The Oprah Winfrey Show ends.

by Peggy Bundy reply 29 03/27/2011 I first read "chatshow" as "chatsow" and now I want to call her that forever and ever. by Peggy Bundy Does anyone care? I don't. by Peggy Bundy reply 3 03/26/2011 I wonder if her ego will be able to stand not being on TV every day. by Peggy Bundy reply 4 03/26/2011 I care , sorry to see it end. I wish she would air some of her old shows on her network instead of all the Dr. Phil reruns. by Peggy Bundy reply 5 03/26/2011 Thanks, OP. My book club was wondering when we when to carry out our suicide pact. by Peggy Bundy What's going to happen to her studio and employees in Chicago? by Peggy Bundy Obama's reelection campaign committee, r7. by Peggy Bundy reply 8 03/26/2011 Oprah is in for a rude awakening when her fame and power take a nosedive after her talk show ends. Rosie tried to warn her when she was a guest on her show.

by Peggy Bundy reply 9 03/26/2011 The Dollarama era of TV talk shows comes to an end. Oprah is already irrelevant, she lost her female following when she supported a man over a women for President. by Peggy Bundy reply 10 03/26/2011 How's her OWN network doing? I occasionally will watch Oprah, but I've never tuned into the OWN network. Is there anything worth watching on it? Seems like her minions are all over network tv already (Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Nate Berkus, Suze Orman).%0D %0D I don't at all enjoy watching her travel or doing roadtrips with Gayle. I tried watching her Australia special this week b/c I would have liked to have seen Australia, but just couldn't enjoy it - her bigger than life personality can get in the way. by Peggy Bundy reply 11 03/26/2011 So far, the OWN network has been a disappointment, ratings wise. I've watched a few shows, and they've all seemed low energy and cheaply made.

The end of her talk show probably won't help matters. I suspect her O magazine circulation will suffer, too. by Peggy Bundy She missed the chance to retire on a high note. by Peggy Bundy reply 13 03/26/2011 I think she is retiring the Oprah Show on a high note. This season has been the best in recent years. I dont think Oprah herself will be putting her feet up anytime soon though. by Peggy Bundy reply 14 03/26/2011 I'm curious if she's going to take care of her employees who will now be out of work. She has no obligation, of course, but it would be nice if she shared the wealth with some of these people who don't get the spotlight who have been loyal over the past however many years. by Peggy Bundy Will John Travolta be her final guest? He was her first, it makes sense.

by Peggy Bundy reply 21 03/26/2011 OWN is just not all that good at all, except for Lisa Ling who is just to dang good to be on that channel.%0D %0D If you like to cook, Chritina Ferrare's show is rather good as well and is a great deal better than the Food Network crud.%0D %0D I have been patient with that channel and have just about had it. Two shows, imho, out of a whole channel are pretty darned nice and informative and that is it. Horrible. by Peggy Bundy Shania Twain's reality show airs on the OWN network sometime next month. by Peggy Bundy reply 23 03/26/2011 The only shows I'm interested in is the Tatum/Ryan O'Neal show for the train wreck factor and Rosie's talk show. by Peggy Bundy reply 24 03/26/2011 [quote]How's her OWN network doing? I occasionally will watch Oprah, but I've never tuned into the OWN network. Is there anything worth watching on it? Seems like her minions are all over network tv already (Dr.

Oz, Dr. Phil, Nate Berkus, Suze Orman).[/quote]It's not doing well, actually. They're rebooting the network this week with a change in line-up. So far, there's 3 hits: Behind the Scenes, Lisa Ling's Our America (which unfortunately is wrapping up) and Master Class. Lisa's show is really good. I saw the heroin episode and dang it I tried my best not to cry. by Peggy Bundy reply 25 03/26/2011 Wow I live in Podunk Canada and it usually takes forever for our cable company to get a lamer Canadian version of most channels, but we already have OWN. by Peggy Bundy RELATED: Full archive of Oprah countdown The experience of sacking out in front of the TV after school, or of having sat around a dorm watching Oprah, or of confessing to a colleague, as I have as an adult, “So I don’t know why, but I saw Oprah yesterday…” and learning that coincidentally, she too had been watching. These are experiences that zillions of women –- even those who are loathe to admit it -- have shared for 25 years.

I have strong opinions on the wrongness of the way in which our entertainments are divided into male and female. But whether it has to do with social conditioning, self-fulfilling marketing assumptions about what women want, or just plain old nature, Oprah is, and has been for my whole life, a girl thing. That doesn’t mean that all women watch her or like her, or that many men don’t. It just means that if I mention the name “Gayle” to most American women of a certain age, you’ll elicit an affectionate grin, perhaps a joke or theory about how we all should have a best friend who accompanies us on road trips and is a partner/bonus spouse. Anytime there’s an Oprah thing -– a Tom Cruise couch-jumping joke, a great Maya Rudolph sketch on "Saturday Night Live" –- we smile, with exasperated warmth. She’s like a relative who sometimes embarrasses us but for whom we feel an immense amount of affection. I agreed to blog about Oprah for the past eight days in part because I am on maternity leave and thought it would be a perfect low-impact, couch-potato job to take on with an 8-week-old baby in my arms.

I was kind of wrong about that, but I’m glad I did it anyway. Because partway through, it occurred to me that it was pretty strange that my daughter will grow up without the "Oprah" show. While (obligatory OWN acknowledgment) Oprah’s new network may continue to shape the life of a whole new generation of American girls and boys (end of acknowledgment) seriously –- no Oprah! My daughter will know who she was, like how I know who Ed Sullivan was, and how my grandfather wouldn’t let my mom watch Elvis. But she won’t know what it is to come home and plop in front of the television on any ordinary Thursday and maybe catch Billy Crystal being interviewed or Dr. Oz telling you about your excrement or Oprah rolling out a wheelbarrow meant to represent her own body fat. And she won’t know what it is to call a friend and say, “Are you watching this?” PHOTOS: 25 great 'Oprah' moments I realize that this is just how gaps open up between generations. I just happen to be watching this one yawn open in front of my eyes.

So all this is to say that I was pleased that Wednesday’s show wasn’t some graduation day extravaganza but, instead, a gentle, quiet, weird Oprah monologue that took place in her familiar studio. Noting that she sees herself as a teacher who “ended up in the world’s biggest classrooms,” Winfrey told her audience that the day’s show would include “no guest, no makeovers, no surprise...You will not be getting a car or a tree.” Winfrey made jokes about her first television appearances, in Baltimore, showing a clips of herself, as she said, “just a Jheri Curl and a bad fur coat.” She remembered how she knew that Chicagoans were watching her when she’d hear them say, “You all seen that black girl on TV named O-frey?” Oprah presented her final episode as one last class, with lessons between each commercial break. Most of them were satisfyingly loopy, obvious, pseudo-spiritual.

They included, “You are not alone”; “All life is energy”; “There is a difference between thinking you deserve to be happy and knowing you are worthy of happiness”; “We often block our own blessings because we don’t feel inherently good enough or smart enough or pretty or worthy enough”; and “Every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire –- They want to know, ‘Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you?’” I actually think that last one is true. Winfrey did a segment about her work with sexual abuse victims, showed old clips of herself rappelling off a building and riding into the studio on “a pooping elephant.” She quoted from viewers who had written her messages in the past few months, including Courtney310, who wrote of Oprah’s departure, “I take with me my gratitude journal, my a-ha moments, and most importantly my sense of self that I dug deep to find because of you.” The weirdest part of the episode came when Oprah -- usually secular, if blandly spiritual –- touched on the divine, allowing as how her answer to how she’s done it all these years has always been, “My team, and Jesus.

Because nothing but the hand of God has made this possible for me.” Anticipating questions about which god she was talking about, she continued, “I’m talking about the same one you’re talking about. I’m talking about alpha and omega, the omniscient, the omnipresent, the ultimate consciousness, the source, the force, the all of everything there is, the one and only G-O-D.” Well, OK, then! “I know I’ve never been alone, and you haven’t either,” she said. “And I know that that presence that flow, some people call it grace, is working in my life at every single turn, and yours too if you let it in." Wait, was Oprah preaching? Yes, yes, she was. And how did she know all this? She asked. Wellllll…. “That one teeny little sperm of Vernon Winfrey hittin’ that egg of Vernita Lee in the one time they were together under the trees in Mississippi and, voila, out pops me!” PHOTOS: 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' by the numbers Oprah’s theorem on the existence of god is reliant on the story of her own conception.

“From Mississippi to this moment with you, I know what a miracle that is,” she said. “God is love, and God is life, and your life is always speaking to you,” she said. “First in whispers. … If you don’t pay attention to the whispers, it gets louder and louder and louder.… So I ask you: What are the whispers in your life right now?” Mine was saying that straight-up religion had gotten into my last episode of "Oprah" and was making me confused and nervous. But then she went and shut me up, reminding her audience of her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Duncan. “Mrs. Duncan was my first true liberator. She made me feel that I mattered. She let me lead devotion every day -– that’s when we were allowed to pray in school –- she let me lay out the graham crackers for the class. She validated me.” The ancient Mrs. Duncan then stood from her seat in the audience, and the preaching was momentarily forgotten, lost to the reminder of what a difference one good teacher and some graham crackers can make in a life.

And then Oprah was wrapping it up, asking viewers to jot down her new email address -– just like she was a real person, leaving for a new job! –- and encouraging us to keep in touch. And the only moment she got really choked up was a perfectly valid one, when she said, “I am truly amazed that I, who started out in rural Mississippi in 1954 when the vision for a black girl was limited to being either a maid or a teacher in a segregated school, could end up here.” She went on, “Many of us have been together for 25 years. We have hooted and hollered together, had our a-ha moments; we ugly cried together and we did our gratitude journals. So I thank you all for your support and your trust in me.

I thank you for sharing this yellow brick road of blessings, thank you for tuning in every day along with your mothers and your sisters and your daughters, your partners, gay and otherwise, and all the husbands who got coaxed into watching 'Oprah.' ” “I won’t say good-bye; I’ll just say, ‘Until we meet again,’” said Winfrey, with a final “To God be the glory.” And then she walked out, kissing Steadman, hugging weeping audience members. And there I was, splayed out on my couch, rolling my eyes, emailing my best friend from high school about what was up with all that god stuff, trying to balance my computer and my daughter on my lap and crying despite it all. Because this sometimes silly, sometimes moving, sometimes infuriating show will be part of my life, my era, my experience of being a girl in America, that I’ll never be able to properly convey to my kid, but which I’ll tell her she got to unconciously experience for a couple of weeks.

I’ve never kept a “gratitude journal,” but if I were forced at gunpoint to do so, I would definitely write in it about how I’m grateful to you, for putting on a great show for a lot of years of my life. Thanks and goodbye. -- Rebecca Traister Photo: Kimberly Adams outside Harpo Studios before the final taping of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in Chicago on Tuesday. Credit: Paul Beaty / Associated Press Rebecca Traister is the author of "Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women." RELATED: Oprah Winfrey focuses on fans during finale - Boston.com TV Oprah Winfrey focuses on fans during finale FILE - In this May 17, 2011 file photo, Oprah Winfrey acknowledges fans during a star-studded double-taping of "Surprise Oprah! A Farewell Spectacular, in Chicago. The final episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" was taped in Chicago on Tuesday, May 24, and will air Wednesday, May 25, 2011.

(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File) By Caryn Rousseau Associated Press / May 24, 2011 E-mail this article Add a personal message:(80 character limit) Your E-mail: Text size – + CHICAGO—In the end, it was just Oprah. For the final episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" taped Tuesday, the talk show queen appeared alone on her Chicago stage, talking to viewers about what they've meant to her during the show's 25-year run. The finale will air on Wednesday. Fans leaving Tuesday's taping said Winfrey had tears in her eyes as the television icon said a final thank you. "She said, `This isn't goodbye. This is until we meet again," said Amy Korin, 32, of Chicago, who was in the audience. Winfrey then kissed and hugged her longtime partner, Stedman Graham, and made her way through the halls of Harpo Studios, saying goodbye to her staff, audience members said. She kept saying, "We did it! We did it!," Korin said, and giving employees high-fives.

There was a single chair on the stage, but Winfrey stood most of the time, audience members said. "A lot of crying and hugs, crying and hugs," Korin said. Audience members described a simply produced series finale filled with a sense of gratitude. "It was just her the whole time, a recap of what she believed in, what we've given her as viewers and what she hopes she has given us," said Nancy Evankoe, 60, Hoffman Estates, who went to the taping with her daughter. Winfrey announced in November 2009 that she would end her popular talk show after 25 years. Tuesday's taping comes a week after Hollywood's A-list and 13,000 fans bid Winfrey farewell during a double-episode extravaganza at Chicago's United Center. The shows that aired Monday and Tuesday included Aretha Franklin, Tom Cruise, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jordan and Madonna, among other stars of television, music and movies. The bare-bones final taping had its share of celebrities in the audience including Tyler Perry, Maria Shriver, Suze Orman and Cicely Tyson, but none of them joined Winfrey on stage.

There were 404 audience members, according to Harpo Productions. Hundreds of giddy fans struck by their luck at getting tickets for the final show had gathered outside Winfrey's television studio in Chicago Tuesday morning. Sarah Cranley, 32, of Chicago waited in line with her mother, who traveled in from Pittsburgh for the taping. Cranley said she felt very lucky to snag tickets to the last show and the prospect of seeing Winfrey live didn't yet feel real. "You think about how many billions of people around the world watch her and want to be here," Cranley said. "What are the odds?" Cranley's mother, Sally Mowrey, 59, said Winfrey was a constant in her life when her husband's job transfers had her family move 17 times. "That was something I could count one, watching Oprah," Mowrey said. "That was one thing that didn't change." Fans said they went through the normal ticketing process for the final taping by submitting their names online. Some said they wrote letters explaining why they were Winfrey fans. Winfrey's best friend Gayle King mixed with the waiting fans and interviewed several with a camera phone.

For her, the show's end is bittersweet. "I have such mixed feelings about it," King told fans. The finale of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" has remained a secret, even as Harpo Studios hyped it as a television event. In a promotional video posted online May 16, clips of famous television finales plays over a sad song with the lyrics "It's hard to say goodbye." It includes Mary Tyler Moore, Walter Cronkite, Johnny Carson, "M.A.S.H," `'The Cosby Show," and "Cheers." The video asks viewers "Where were you?" and "Where will you be?" Another promotional video for the final three episodes prompts viewers to "Say farewell." When Winfrey announced her show would end she promised her viewers she would use the final season to "knock your socks off." On her 25th and final season premiere she danced onstage with John Travolta and told everyone in the audience they were going to Australia. Other season highlights included interviews with President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, former President George W. Bush and Michael Jackson's family. Winfrey also revealed she found a sister who her mother gave up for adoption.

Already a television journalist, Winfrey came to Chicago in 1984 to WLS-TV's morning talk show, "A.M. Chicago." A month later the show was No. 1 in the market. A year later it was renamed "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Winfrey opened Harpo Studios on Chicago's West Loop neighborhood in 1990. On Jan. 1 of this year she launched the Oprah Winfrey Network, which is based in Los Angeles. ---- THE END OF 'OPRAH' AS WE KNOW HER: Daytime Diva Giving Up Syndie Talk Show & Moving It To Her Cable Network In 2011 | Deadline THE END OF 'OPRAH' AS WE KNOW HER: Daytime Diva Giving Up Syndie Talk Show & Moving It To Her Cable Network In 2011 UPDATE: Here’s What CBS Is Saying About Oprah EXCLUSIVE: One of the biggest questions in the TV biz has been when, and even if, Oprah Winfrey would give up her daytime syndicated talk show to focus on OWN, her long delayed Oprah Winfrey Network in 70 million homes that was supposed to launch in place of the Discovery Health Channel as a joint venture between Winfrey and Discovery Communications.

The industry has been betting that the daytime diva would extend The Oprah Winfrey Show for at least another year or two because of the huge cash license fees which stations have long paid her. But people around Oprah are telling me that won’t happen. They say that Discovery Communications chief David Zaslav has demanded that Oprah “move it or lose it” — move her talk show to OWN, or risk losing the Oprah Winfrey Network altogether. I’ve learned that in coming days Winfrey and Discovery will issue a press release announcing OWN’s on-air launch for the start of 2011. And, in several weeks, Oprah will tell the public that she’s ending her syndicated Chicago-based daytime talk show when her current deal runs out and moving it to OWN headquarters in Los Angeles probably as soon as mid-2011. Hardest hit by the news will be CBS Television Distribution which syndicates the show, Also hit will be ABC’s owned-and-operated stations which make up Oprah‘s core station group, and also Sony TV execs who’d been hoping Oprah would deliver any extension of her daytime talker into their hands based on the success they’ve had this season syndicating Dr Oz, Harpo’s latest daytime talk show star).

“Les Moonves, Bob Iger, and Sony will flip out,” one of my insiders says about Oprah’s news. “The only winner is David Zaslav.” *UPDATE: My news this morning caught CBS by surprise. The Eye was counting on a 1- or 2-year renewal of The Oprah Winfrey Show. “In all honesty, we have not heard she’s made a decision yet whether to continue,” an insider tells me. “We think we’re still in the talking stages. To our minds, it’s a non-decision.” CBS had scheduled a face-to-face meeting a month ago with Oprah and her personal and professional posse at her Santa Barbara compound to discuss her plans. But one of the people in the close group of people around her passed away. So it was canceled, I’ve learned. CBS is quick to point out that, a few years back, Winfrey re-negotiated her distribution deal with CBS TV Distribution so it “gets a lesser fee now”. The result is that, when Oprah stops her syndicated talk show and moves it to OWN, “It will be a hit for us, but not until 2012.

And with the lower syndication fee, it’s not as big a hit as it would have been,” a CBS insider tells me. Besides, CBS has seen Oprah claim time and time again over the years that she’s “retiring” from the syndicated show. But to take Oprah to a nosebleed cable channel even if it reaches into 70 million homes? “She has always respected the fact that the pulpit she has now gives her such a huge amount of influence.” And CBS also plans to remind her that, thanks to the syndicated show, “she by far makes more money on TV than anybody else.” Now let’s see how persuasive Les Moonves and his people can be.* I’m told that right now Oprah and her advisers are trying to figure out what to do with her mini-city in Chicago, and which personnel she can and will move out to LA in the next six months. Also Discovery will have to renegotiate her own deal. Even though it has yet to go on the air, OWN has experienced tremendous turmoil since it was announced, including the entrances and exits of many top female TV executives — three in just the last 7 months. Combined with the unprecedented delays, that has come at a cost for Discovery.

“It’s so upside down because Discovery has lost millions of dollars since it was announced,” a source tells me. “It was rumored 50/50 that Zaslav would throw in the towel and her network wouldn’t launch. But Zaslav sees it as a loss leader.” Last week, Oprah called a confab in Los Angeles and met with everyone associated with OWN. She also personally heard programming pitches. Only very recently has she put in place her two current top lieutenants to run OWN (but for how long?): Christina Norman, who at the start of the year was named CEO after spending 17 years with Viacom Inc’s MTV cable empire before stepping down as MTV president. And Lisa Erspamer who this week was named OWN’s Chief Creative Officer and is a 15-year veteran of Harpo Productions where she served as co-executive producer of Oprah since 2006. But I hear that recently appointed OWN head of programming Jamila Hunter, NBC’s former SVP of alternative entertainment, is out looking for a job after just 3 months. I understand that Oprah was supposed to tell CBS Inc chief Les Moonves back on October 1st what her plans were but then cancelled several scheduled calls to him.

Winfrey’s distribution deal was re-signed in 2004 with King World which is now part of CBS Television Distribution. It expires in fall 2011 which marks the end of Oprah’s 25th season. (News reports said a clause existed in her current contract that would have let her end the show in 2010, but that she chose last year to extend the show’s run through the contract’s full term.) She said in 1997 that she was planning to retire, then renewed her contract through 2002. Then in 2002 she said she would call it quits in 2006, but in 2004 she re-upped through 2011. Back then she was still enjoying high ratings and fat cash license fees from TV stations and big popularity. But that was then, and this now. Her ratings have been in double-digit decline in recent years.

And given the financial crisis which has put TV stations on life support because of the plunge in advertising, Oprah was unlikely to be able to demand another big cash raise to continue her show in syndication — especially in today’s climate when stations are bartering with syndicators, not paying them. “It had the potential to bankrupt stations. She would have wanted all cash up front. GMs would have told her to go away,” one source explains to me. When Oprah leaves syndication, it will open up time slots and free up station cash not just for syndication’s existing stars (which now include Harpo-started Dr Phil, Rachael Ray and Dr Oz) but also new ones. Leaving the extraordinary visibility she enjoyed through syndication for a nosebleed cable channel is a huge gamble for Oprah as a TV brand. There’s the possibility that OWN could distribute her new talk show for syndication. But I hear no one is talking about that now. In the U.S., Oprah is viewed by an estimated 7 million people a day (though that audience has fallen by half over the past 10 years) and in 140 countries. It has been estimated that she currently earns about $275 million a year in showbiz income.

Long the No. 1 rated daytime talk show, Oprah also made Winfrey into the richest African American woman worth $2.3B at last count, a worldwide media personality with a powerful media empire around her, a celebrated actress who doubled as a film and television producer, a force in both book and magazine publishing. But there’s also no question that Oprah is a much more controversial figure now than she’s ever been before because of her wealth and fame and politics. “She’s lost her authenticity. Like when she said, ‘It’s good to have your own private jet.’ Or when she shut down the City of Chicago with this season’s ‘flash mob’ for the opening show. Where’s the relatability?” The word internally at ABC is that TV stations have been cringing at Oprah’s past and present and continuing support for Barack Obama, from her appearance at his inauguration (see photo) to her visits to the White House, because it antagonizes half the viewing public who don’t share her politics. Now Oprah will no longer be in their faces: instead she’ll be isolated on cable. The biggest question now in the TV industry is whether it’s “Good Luck!” or “Good Riddance!”

Question: Last week saw the end of the line for the Oprah Winfrey Show, after how many years on the air?
Answer: 25