Oprah ends reign as queen and rebel of daytime TV

By Andy Goldberg May 24, 2011, 0:41 GMT

Los Angeles - It's rare that a queen is also a revolutionary, but the enigmatic and unprecedented career of Oprah Winfrey allows her to justifiably claim both titles.

The African-American talk show host, who for years has ranked at the top of Forbes annual list of the most powerful celebrities, screens her last daily show on daytime network TV Wednesday after 25 years at the top of her game.

In this period she has not only consistently dominated the ratings, but also redefined what television talk shows should be about. Not for Oprah the lurid fascination with the low-brow troubles of celebrities or the violent confrontations of lower class Americans.

Rather she has championed the higher aspirations and purposes of ordinary folks, preaching and cajoling her millions of viewers to 'live their best lives,' and becoming along the way what Philadelphia Inquirer critic David Hiltbrand calls 'perhaps the most influential personality in TV history.'

'She has been all things to all people: healer, confessor, martyr, seeker, avenger, celebrity, benefactor, teacher and guru,' Hiltbrand wrote. 'She has provided viewers with a comprehensive instruction manual to life - in all its messy splendour.'

Is that mere journalistic hyperbole? Largely not, says Robert Thompson a professor of TV and popular culture at Syracuse University, who says that Oprah was a product of her times, as much as she helped create them.

The facts of her personal history explain only a small part of her success. Winfrey, 57, was born into poverty in Mississippi to a teenage single mother. Raised mostly by her grandmother, she often wore dresses made of potato sacks as a small child.

She was raped at age nine and became pregnant at the age of 14, though her son died in infancy. She has said that her pregnancy and the death of the child were seminal events that shocked her into action.

'When the baby died, I knew that it was my second chance,' she said when she revealed the experience in 2007. She became a good student whose oratory skills landed her a university scholarship and a part time job as a radio announcer.

But it was in her move to television where her empathy and eloquence came to the fore, especially when she moved to Chicago in 1984 and within months had overtaken the reigning king of talk shows Phil Donahue.

'You could see how at ease and natural she was,' said Dennis Swanson, a Fox executive who gave Oprah one of her early screen tests. 'Even then she had this ability to ask questions and say things that nobody else could get away with.'

Those abilities undoubtedly changed the lives of millions of people since she took her show national in 19867. Many say that her example of an empowered and literate black woman, and her message of hope and possibility, helped paved the way for Barack Obama's rise to the presidency.

But while acknowledging her unique array of talents, Thompson prefers to put her success within an historical context. Her 'confessional' approach had been on the ascent since the rise of psychotherapy, as was the 'let in all hang out culture of the 1960s,' Thompson told the German Press Agency dpa.

'One of the things that made her so successful was that she did what she did when the culture was primed to hear it,' he said.

Her show may be ending, but Oprah is sure to stay in the public eye with her magazine, production company and own cable TV channel where she plans to debut her new show next year.

In a way she is practicing the most central idea of what she preaches, and the core reason for her ability to resonate with so many people - that in America reinvention is the prime component of success.

'Her idea of reinvention, of taking control of your life and being empowered is so American - it's what the pilgrims and all other immigrant waves were all about,' said Thompson. 'Her genius was how brilliantly she packaged that into the daily lives of her viewers.'