The two-decade long daytime television talk show ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ will run only until 2011, the show’s producers announced on Thursday.
Harpo Productions Inc. said that Winfrey would announce the top-rating programme’s final date of airing during Friday’s live broadcast.
‘Oprah’ has been broadcast in 145 countries and has a weekly audience of roughly 42 million in the United States alone.
Oprah Winfrey has been expected to come up with her new talk show, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a long-awaited joint venture with Discovery Communications Inc.
The distributor of ‘Oprah’, CBS Television Distribution, hoped that it could still carry on doing business with the highly popular entertainment icon.
CBS Corp’s unit said in a statement, “We have the greatest respect for Oprah and wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavours . . . we know that anything she turns her hand to will be a great success. We look forward to working with her for the next several years, and hopefully afterwards as well”.
The show has featured the most popular personalities from the entertainment industry. Politicians have also been featured on the show. Winfrey interviewed the most popular celebrities and also dealt with a wide range of issues, most particularly weight loss problems.
‘Oprah’ started in 1985 after the original talk show hosted by Winfrey entitled ‘A.M. Chicago’ was renamed.
