Oprah Bows Out Gracefully...Last Show Scheduled To Air Sept. 9, 2011

Reports: Oprah to End Talk Show in 2011


According to several reports, Oprah Winfrey will announce tomorrow that she is ending her talk show in 2011. The show, reportedly, will bow out Sept. 9, 2011, the last day of Oprah's current contract. It bears mentioning that there have been announcements and reports that the Queen of Talk would hang it up in the past; in 2002, her plan was to end the show in 2006.

Word is, however, that Oprah will say tomorrow that she is ending her syndicated show in 2011 to focus on OWN, her cable network. Assuming she means it this time, what does this mean for talk TV?

As I say, I'll believe the end of Oprah as a TV broadcaster when I see it. Oprah may be ending her syndication deal, which is rough for her syndicator, CBS TV Distribution. (The New York Times says she is not bringing her show to cable.) But if Oprah Winfrey decides at any time henceforth that she wants to have a TV show, are you going to refuse her one?

That said, it would make a certain sense for Oprah to hang it up while she's still on top. Her ratings have been declining—with syndicated TV at large—in recent years. She has shown over and over again that she's still relevant and can drive the national conversation, as when she hosted Sarah Palin this week and drew her biggest ratings in two years. But if she doesn't want to ride the declining ratings of syndicated TV to the bottom, this would be a good time to make her cable move.

That would, of course, leave an Oprah-sized hole in the daytime firmament for someone to fill: Dr. Phil, Tyra Banks, a player to be named later, etc. Oprah has so dominated daytime for the last couple decades that the daytime audience could be ready for a new star to show up.

Or stars. I'd have to doubt whether any single person can have the wide impact in so many areas that Oprah did. For starters, forget TV: the end of her book club deprives publishers and authors of their biggest outlet, a forum that can break a book nationally in one shot. (She suspended her club for a while earlier this decade, giving publishers palpitations.) She's had effects in pop culture, in spirituality, in product placement and arguably even in politics.

Oprah—if we are entering a post-Oprah era—could be another Johnny Carson or Ed Sullivan: one of the mass aggregators whose like we just won't see again. It could be that the next Oprah will be several Oprahs, specializing, spread across several shows. In the meantime, we'll have to see what she announces about her future plans: for all we know, some of those next Oprahs may just be working for her.



View Larger Map


Sources: TIME, Oprah.com, Harpo Studios, MSN, Wonder Wall, CNN, O Magazine, BarackObamadot.com, People.com, Academy of Achievement, Wikipedia, Jeffrey Roberts, Youtube, Google Maps

Palin Oprah Interview (Preview) Videos..."Levi Is Loved"

On Thanksgiving with Levi


Watch CBS News Videos Online


On The Katie Couric Interview


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Sarah Palin promotes her new book "Going Rogue".

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Palin Oprah VIDEO: "Levi Is Loved"


On Wednesday night, Oprah tweeted out a short video previewing her upcoming, much anticipated, interview with Sarah Palin. Oprah wouldn't go into much detail, but she said that she and the former governor of Alaska talked about "everything." Today, CBS has two choice segments from their conversation, set to air Monday, November 16th.

"One final question about Levi," Oprah asks in the first clip: "will he be invited to Thanksgiving dinner?"

Palin laughs. "You know, that's a great question." It's also a question that Palin doesn't seem to want to answer. "It's lovely to think that he would ever even consider such a thing," she says. "Because, of course, you want -- he is a part of the family and you want to bring him in the fold and kind of under your wing. And he needs that, too, Oprah. I think he needs to know that he is loved and he has the most beautiful child and this can all work out for good. It really can." She then segues into a mishmash of statements on how the Palins are "not really into the drama."

Oprah presses on: "Does that mean yes he is coming or no he's not?"

In the second clip, Oprah suggests they talk about Palin's interview with Katie Couric -- a series of disastrous segments including an exchange where Couric asked Palin which newspapers she read and Palin responded: "Um, all of them, any of them." Palin tells Oprah she didn't think it was a defining moment, and neither did her campaign, though she acknowledged it was a "bad interview".



View Larger Map

Sources: Harpo Studios, Huffington Post, CBS News, MSNBC, People.com, Newsone, Youtube, Google Maps