Oprah to Film Documentary on Final Season of The Oprah Winfrey Show

According to The New York Times, when the Oprah Winfrey Network cable channel debuts in January 2011, viewers can expect a double dose of Orpah Winfrey herself.  At that time she will still be hosting her syndicated talk show, The Oprah Winfrey show, and she will also be appearing on OWN in "Behind the Scenes: Oprah's 25th Season," which will document the behind the scenes life of her talk show.  Due to contract details, Oprah was prohibited from appearing on OWN in a manner similar to her syndicated talk show until it goes off the air in the previously announced date of September 9, 2011, so this is OWN's solution to that problem.

This show is not the first of its kind for Oprah: when she was still affiliated with the Oxygen network she appeared in "Oprah After the Show" for several years.  Click here to read the full report, and to learn more about OWN's programming.

The Oprah Winfrey Show is the highest-rated talk show in American television history. It is currently the longest-running daytime television talk show in the United States, having run nationally since September 8, 1986, for over 23 seasons and thousands of episodes. On the Oprah Winfrey Show, the talk show queen has interviewed nearly every major celebrity, presidents, and dignitaries from around the world and is considered responsible for launching the careers of now famed personalities such as Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. A indisputed stable of American television culture, Oprah has been included in Time magazine's shortlist of the best television series of the twentieth century in 1998, and it made the top 50 of TV Guide's countdown of the greatest American shows of all time. The show garners an average of 8.5 million views per original broadcast and 4.5 million for repeats.

In addition to a media personality, Oprah Winfrey is an actress, television producer, literary critic and magazine publisher. One of the country's biggest supporters of the arts, she is the producer of Broadway's Color Purple, having starred in the film version. She is also the producer of the current indie hit Precious and will voice a character in Disney's upcoming Princess and the Frog. Oprah has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century and the most philanthropic African American of all time, and was once the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world. Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication, she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue. By the mid 1990s she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. She has defined herself as an inspiration to "the people" everywhere through such programs such as her Book Club, encouraging literacy, and her South African school she recently built in South Africa for young girls, a feat she has called her "proudest achievement."

 

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