Oprah Winfrey, the first black woman to appear on Forbes' billionaire list, is the ultimate multimedia icon.
She and her eponymous television program have won scores of Emmy awards. In 1986, Ms. Winfrey was nominated for an Oscar after her film debut in "The Color Purple" and two years later she founded Harpo Productions. In 2000, she launched "O," a top-selling magazine in which she appears on every cover. She has revived her book club, one that guarantees best-seller status for its selections.
In November, 2009, Ms. Winfrey announced that she will end "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2011, in order to concentrate on her forthcoming cable channel, called OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network. The announcement prompted guessing about how big her role would be on the network.
OWN is busy developing programs before its planned premiere on Jan. 1, 2011. The channel, which has been plagued by executive shake-ups, will replace the Discovery Health Channel in at least 70 million homes.
In April, 2010 Ms. Winfrey pitched the network to advertisers in New York, and said she would host a prime-time interview show on the channel called "Oprah's Next Chapter."
Ms. Winfrey will appear in two or three episodes a week, indicating that she will not continue the kind of daily talk show that she has done for decades. Discovery Communications and Ms. Winfrey's Harpo Productions, the two backers, hope that by placing Ms. Winfrey in prime time, she will attract bigger audiences and command premium prices from advertisers.
During her decades as the billionaire queen of daytime television, Ms. Winfrey had many highlights, including a show in 1988 when she appeared after losing 67 pounds, a show in 2005 when the actor Tom Cruise declared his love for the actress Katie Holmes by leaping all over Ms. Winfrey's couch, and another show that year when she sent her audience members into a screaming frenzy by giving them all free cars.
Ms. Winfrey's show was at the height of its popularity when she conducted what was at the time called the most-watched interview of all time with the singer Michael Jackson. That prime-time special in 1993 was seen by 62 million people in the United States and almost 100 million people worldwide.
The link in all Ms. Winfrey's endeavors is her willingness to open her personal life to the public. Born on Jan. 29, 1954, in Kosclusko, Miss., Ms. Winfrey overcame childhood sexual abuse, surprisingly toppled Phil Donahue as the top-rated daytime talk-show host and saw her up-and-down weight - as well as her personal relationships - become the staple of countless shows (and tabloid fodder). "Oprah's Big Give," which premiered in March 2008, is the most recent example of her philanthropy. In 2007, she opened a multimillion-dollar school for girls in South Africa.
Ms. Winfrey is the narrator of "Life," an 11-part nature documentary that began airing on Discovery in the spring of 2010, though most agreed the real stars are the camera operators who captured the simply amazing footage, going to rain forests, deserts and just about every other kind of environment to do it.
Ms. Winfrey's role on cable is expected to be limited until her syndicated show ends. In February, 2010, the channel announced that it would produce a weekly behind-the-scenes series about her final syndicated season.
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