Oprah Winfrey says ending TV show ‘feels right’

CHICAGO – Oprah Winfrey said on
Friday that she will end her popular TV show in 2011 because it
“feels right in her bones” after 25 years, and urged viewers
not to believe rumors of why she’s quitting.

“This show has been my life and I love it enough to know
when it’s time to say goodbye. Twenty-five years feels right in
my bones, and it feels right in my spirit. It’s the perfect
number, the exact right time,” Winfrey said during Friday’s
show at her Chicago studio.

Winfrey, 55, did not divulge her future plans. But her
production company Harpo Inc. said in a statement that once
production ends on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2011, she “plans
to appear and participate in new programming for OWN”, the Los
Angeles-based cable TV venture she formed with Discovery
Communications Inc.

Harpo said the launch date for OWN, or the Oprah Winfrey
Network, which will be seen in more than 70 million homes, was
now set for January 2011.

During her long career atop the television talk show heap,
Winfrey’s fluctuating weight and personal relationships have
become tabloid fodder, and commentators have wondered whether
she was tiring of the grind — only to see her slim down and
revive her show’s popularity.

“Over the next couple of days you may hear a lot of
speculation in the press about why I am making this decision
now, and that will mostly be conjecture,” she said.

Winfrey choked up once and wiped away a tear as she thanked
viewers for having “graciously invited me into your living
rooms, your kitchens and into your lives.

“So here we are, halfway through the season 24. And it
still means as much to me to spend an hour every day with you
as it did back in 1986,” she said.

Oprah delayed the 3-1/2-minute announcement until the end
of the show. She began the show saying she would make an
announcement at end, then went into a segment about a
5-year-old girl who was murdered and raped.

She then probed for personal details in interviews with
Gabby Sidibe, the star of the Winfrey-produced movie
“Precious,” and comedian Ray Romano, who was promoting his new
TV show about middle-aged men.

Her predominantly female audience gave her a standing
ovation and then hugs when she stepped into the crowd.

“The Oprah Winfrey Show,” broadcast from Chicago on ABC
stations across the United States and in more than 140
countries overseas, is one of the TV industry’s biggest
money-makers. It is the top-rated U.S. daytime talk show,
averaging 7.1 million viewers this year.

It has helped Winfrey, born in 1954 to a single mother in
rural Mississippi, amass a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine
at $2.3 billion and anchored an entertainment empire that
produces television talk shows, movies, and the style magazine
O, the Oprah Magazine.

Winfrey, who also earned an Oscar nomination for her
supporting role in the 1985 film “The Color Purple,” is
considered a major opinion-maker in the United States. Her
public backing of presidential candidate Barack Obama last year
was considered a boost for the Democrat’s campaign.

Her book and product choices have launched best-sellers and
marketing bonanzas.

In a telling moment on the show, she noted Romano was at
one time the best-paid actor on television and then told him:
“I don’t make decisions based on money, and neither do you.”

Winfrey’s disarming style that endeared her to her viewers
has encouraged such celebrities as Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise
and Whitney Houston to unburden themselves on camera.

She promised more of the same in the coming 18 months,
saying she and her staff will be “brainstorming new ways we can
entertain you and inform you and uplift you when we return here
in January” after a holiday hiatus.