Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist Winfrey y is best known for her talk show “The Oprah Winfrey show” which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been dubbed the “Queen of all media” and is ranked the richest African American of the 20^th century. The most influential woman in the world. In 2013 Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by president Barack Obama and honorary doctorate degree from Duke and Harvard.

Winfrey was born in Mississippi where she suffered poverty. Her mother was a single-teenage mother. Later on Winfrey acquired a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19.

In  1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV’s low-rated half-hour morning talk show, “AM Chicago”. The movie critic "Roger Ebert" persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much as revenue as his television, At the Movies. It was renamed "The Oprah Winfrey Show", expanded to a full hour, and broadcast nationally beginning September 8,1986. 

In the early years of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the program was classified as a tabloid talk show. In the mid-1990s, Winfrey adopted a less tabloid-oriented format, hosting shows on broader topics such as heart disease, geopolitics, spirituality and meditation, interviewing celebrities on social issues they were directly involved with, such as cancer, charity work, or substance abuse, and hosting televised giveaways including shows where every audience member received a new car (donated by General Motors) or a trip to Australia (donated by Australian Tourism bodies).