OPRAH G. WINFREY, THE AMERICAN QUEEN OF ALL MEDIA

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Oprah Winfrey, the American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist, who was born on a day like today in 1954.

 

Oprah Gail Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954), often referred to mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist.

She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011.

Dubbed the Queen of All Media, she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only black billionaire.

By 2007, she was sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teenage years and became pregnant at 14; her son was born prematurely and died in infancy.

Winfrey was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and landed a job in radio while still in high school.

By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Winfrey's often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company.

By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality. Though she has been criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas, and having an emotion-centered approach, she has also been praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.

Winfrey also emerged as a political force in the 2008 presidential race, with her endorsement of Barack Obama estimated to have been worth about one million votes during the 2008 Democratic primaries.

In 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and received honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard.

In 2008, she formed her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

Credited with creating a more intimate, confessional form of media communication, Winfrey popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue.

In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Winfrey has won many accolades throughout her career which includes 18 Daytime Emmy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Chairman's Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, a Tony Award, a Peabody Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, awarded by the Academy Awards and two additional Academy Award nominations. Winfrey was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.

More information: Instagram-Oprah

Orpah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954; her first name was spelled Orpah on her birth certificate after the biblical figure in the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it regularly and Oprah stuck. She was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi.

Winfrey attended Lincoln High School in Milwaukee, but after early success in the Upward Bound program, was transferred to the affluent suburban Nicolet High School.

She had won an oratory contest, which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution, where she studied communication. However, she did not deliver her final paper and receive her degree until 1987, by which time she was a successful television personality.

Working in local media, Winfrey was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV (now WTVF-TV), where she often covered the same stories as John Tesh, who worked at a competing Nashville station.

In 1984, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago, after being hired by that station's general manager, Dennis Swanson. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest-rated talk show in 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 revenue as his television show, At the Movies.

It was then renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and expanded to a full hour. The first episode was broadcast nationwide on September 8, 1986. Winfrey's syndicated show brought in double Donahue's national audience, displacing Donahue as the number-one daytime talk show in America. Their much-publicized contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny.

More information: Twitter-Oprah Winfrey

The Oprah Winfrey Show, often referred to as The Oprah Show or simply Oprah, is an American daytime syndicated talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986, to May 25, 2011, in Chicago, Illinois. Produced and hosted by Oprah Winfrey, it remains the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history.

The show was highly influential to many young stars, and many of its themes have penetrated into the American pop-cultural consciousness. Winfrey used the show as an educational platform, featuring book clubs, interviews, self-improvement segments, and philanthropic forays into world events. The show did not attempt to profit off the products it endorses; it had no licensing agreement with retailers when products were promoted, nor did the show make any money from endorsing books for its book club.

Oprah was one of the longest-running daytime television talk shows in history. The show received 47 Daytime Emmy Awards before Winfrey chose to stop submitting it for consideration in 2000.

In 2002, TV Guide ranked it at No. 49 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

In 2013, they ranked it as the 19th greatest TV show of all time.

In November 2009, Winfrey announced that the show would conclude in 2011 following its 25th and final season. The series finale aired on May 25, 2011.

Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985), as distraught housewife Sofia. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.

Winfrey has co-authored five books.

Winfrey publishes the magazine: O, The Oprah Magazine and from 2004 to 2008 also published a magazine called O At Home.

Winfrey's company created the Oprah.com website to provide resources and interactive content related to her shows, magazines, book club, and public charity.

On February 9, 2006, it was announced that Winfrey had signed a three-year, $55-million contract with XM Satellite Radio to establish a new radio channel. The channel, Oprah Radio, features popular contributors to The Oprah Winfrey Show and O, The Oprah Magazine including Nate Berkus, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Bob Greene, Dr. Robin Smith, and Marianne Williamson.

More information: Oprah

My philosophy is that not only are you
responsible for your life,
but doing the best at this moment
puts you I the best place for the next moment.

Oprah Winfrey