Oprah Winfrey announced Friday that her powerhouse daytime television show, the foundation of a multibillion-dollar media empire with legions of fans, will end its run in 2011 after 25 seasons on the air.
Winfrey said at the end of a live broadcast of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" that her decision to set a final date came "after much prayer and careful thought."
Once a local Chicago morning program, the production evolved into US television's top-rated talk show for more than two decades, airing in 145 countries worldwide and watched by an estimated 42 million viewers a week in the US alone.
"Oprah Winfrey is in a category of her own," said Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University. "This is a great American story and like any great American story it's supersized."
A spokeswoman for Winfrey's company, Harpo Productions Inc., declined to comment Thursday on Winfrey's plans except to say that "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which has seen ratings slip 7 percent from a year ago, will not move to cable television.
Winfrey, 55, is widely expected to start up a new talk show on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a much-delayed joint venture with Discovery Communications Inc. that is projected to debut in 2011. OWN is to replace the Discovery Health Channel and will debut in some 74 million homes.
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