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CHICAGO – “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” an iconic broadcast that grew over two decades into a daytime television powerhouse, will end its run in 2011 after 25 seasons, Oprah Winfrey’s production company said Thursday.
Winfrey plans to announce the final date for her show during a live broadcast today, Harpo Productions Inc. said, bringing an end to what has been 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 U.S. alone.
A Harpo spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday on Winfrey’s future plans except to say that “The Oprah Winfrey Show” will not be transferred to cable television.
Winfrey, 55, is widely expected to start up a new talk show on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a much-delayed joint venture with Discovery Communications Inc. that is expected to debut in 2011. OWN is to replace the Discovery Health Channel and will debut in about 74 million homes. An OWN spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday.
CBS Television Distribution, which distributes “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” held out hope that it could continue doing business with Winfrey, perhaps producing a new show out of its studios in Los Angeles.
Winfrey’s 24th season opened this year with a bang, as she drew more than 20,000 fans to the city’s Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue for a Chicago block party with the Black Eyed Peas.
She followed up with a series of blockbuster interviews – Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, exclusives with singer Whitney Houston and ESPN’s Erin Andrews, and just this week, Sarah Palin.
She found time between shows to lobby the International Olympic Committee in Denmark for Chicago’s failed bid to host the 2016 Olympics.
The loss of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” would be a blow to CBS Corp. because it earns a percentage of hefty licensing fees from TV stations that use it.
CBS continues to sell several top shows into syndication, however, including “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy.” But many TV stations are struggling with falling advertising revenue and were unlikely to pay the same fees as in the past for Winfrey’s show, which has seen ratings slip 7 percent from a year ago and saw its average viewership slip below 7 million last season.
Powered by the show’s staggering success, Winfrey built a wide-ranging media empire. Harpo Studios produces shows hosted by Dr. Phil McGraw and celebrity chef Rachael Ray, her “book club” selections produce instant best-sellers, and “O, The Oprah Magazine” was the nation’s seventh-most popular magazine in the first half of 2009.
