Say goodbye to Oprah.
The queen of daytime TV will announce today that she’s ending her long-running talk show in 2011 — after 25 years — when her current deal expires.
Oprah Winfrey will make the announcement on today’s show, airing at 4 p.m. on Channel 7 here.
Signs that Winfrey was gearing up to leave — including the launch next year of her cable network, OWN — have been around for months.
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“I don’t believe this is the last we’ll be seeing of Oprah’s talk show — I think she’ll be doing it on [OWN],” said industry analyst Marc Berman of Mediaweek.
Ratings for “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” while still strong, took a hit last season, and Winfrey was expected to take a cut in fees if she continued her show beyond 2011.
Still, she seemed to be pulling out all the stops this season to pump life back into her show by grabbing an interview with the elusive Whitney Houston, shocking viewers with a glimpse of chimp-maul victim Charla Nash, and having a hugely anticipated talk with Sarah Palin, whose visit to “Oprah” this week gave the show a huge ratings boost.
The news of the show’s demise came quietly yesterday in an internal memo to the TV stations that carry “Oprah.” The talk-show host had promised to make her decision by the end of the year.
Winfrey, 55, has used the success of show — with an average audience of 7 million a day — to become the most powerful woman in TV.
The show has earned her hundreds of millions of dollars, which she has used to build a vast business empire that includes publishing (O magazine); radio (her own Sirius/XM channel); other TV projects (including a string of ABC-TV movies); and Hollywood films. (She’s a co-producer of “Precious,” an Oscar contender.)
There’s even an “Oprah” merchandise store near the show’s home base in Chicago.
Winfrey was estimated to be worth $2.3 billion last year, according to Forbes magazine — and that was after losing a reported $400 million.
She’s also used her influence — and the power of “Oprah” — to launch the successful daytime shows “Rachael Ray,” “Dr. Phil” and, most recently, “The Dr. Oz Show,” hosted by “Oprah” favorite Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Nate Berkus, another “Oprah” show regular, will get his own Winfrey-produced talk show next year.
The end of “Oprah” also means the end of the gravy train for local stations, including Channel 7, which have been the benefactors of Winfrey’s high ratings since the show, already a regional hit, launched nationally in September 1986.
“Those tremors are going to be felt in a lot of different areas,” said industry analyst Brad Adgate of Horizon Media.
“It’s more than just a one-hour time period being affected — local newscasts in virtually every market where ‘Oprah’ is the lead-in are typically the highest-rated.”