Oprah Winfrey announces end of her uber-successful daytime show after 25 years

OPRAH WINFREY ANNOUNCED on Friday that her powerhouse daytime television show, the foundation of a multibillion-dollar media empire with legions of fans, will end its run in 2011 after 25 seasons on the air.

Holding back tears, the 55-year-old talk show queen told the audience at the end of a live broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show that “prayer and careful thought” led to her decision.

Winfrey said she loved the show, that it had been her life and that she knew when it was time to say goodbye. “Twenty-five years feels right in my bones and feels right in my spirit,” she said.

Once a local Chicago morning programme, the production evolved into US television’s top-rated talk show for more than two decades, airing in 145 countries worldwide and watched by an estimated 42 million viewers a week in the US alone.

Winfrey, 55, is widely expected to start up a new cable television talk show on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a much-delayed 50-50 joint venture with Discovery Communications Inc. that is projected to debut in January 2011. OWN is to replace the Discovery Health Channel and will debut in some 80 million homes.

Winfrey offered no specifics about her plans for the future on Friday’s show, except to say that she intended to produce the best possible shows during her last 18 months on the air.

“Over this holiday break, my team and I will be brainstorming new ways that we can entertain you and inform you and uplift you when we return here in January,” she said. “And then, season 25 — we are going to knock your socks off.”

Winfrey’s 24^th season opened this year with a bang, as she drew more than 20,000 fans to downtown Chicago for a block party with the Black Eyed Peas. She followed with a series of blockbuster interviews — Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, singer Whitney Houston and just this week, former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Her show’s coverage has ranged from interviews with the world’s celebrities to an honest discussion about Winfrey’s weight struggles.

In 1986, pianist-showman Liberace gave his final TV interview to Winfrey, just six weeks before he died. In a 1993 prime-time special, Michael Jackson revealed he suffered from a skin condition that produces depigmentation.

In 2004, Winfrey unveiled her most famous giveaway, when nearly 300 members of the studio audience opened a gift box to find the keys to a new car inside. The stunt became a classic show moment as much for Winfrey’s reaction — “You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car!” — as its $7 million price tag.

Winfrey started her broadcasting career in Nashville, Tennessee, and Baltimore, Maryland, before relocating to Chicago in 1984 to host a local television station’s morning talk show A.M. Chicago — which became The Oprah Winfrey Show one year later. She set up Harpo the following year and her talk show went into syndication.

Powered by the show’s staggering success, Winfrey built a media empire. Harpo Studios produces shows hosted by Dr. Phil McGraw and celebrity chef Rachael Ray. O, The Oprah Magazine was the seventh most popular magazine in the US in the first half of 2009.

“I came from nothing,” Winfrey wrote in the 1998 book Journey to Beloved. “No power. No money. Not even my thoughts were my own. I had no free will. No voice. Now, I have the freedom, power, and will to speak to millions every day — having come from nowhere.”

In 2003, Winfrey, who spent her earliest years in abject poverty in rural Mississippi in the then-segregated South, became the first African-American woman to make Forbes magazine’s billionaire’s list. Earlier this year, Forbes scored her net worth at $2.7 billion.