Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Gail Winfrey
File:Oprah.PNG
Born	January 29, 1954 Kosciusko, Mississippi
Occupation	Talk show host
Website	oprah.com

Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is the multiple Emmy-winning host of the highest rated talk show in television history, an influential book critic, an Oscar nominated actress, and a best-selling magazine publisher. According to Forbes magazine,[1]she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and the world's only Black billionaire by 2004[2].

Career and success

Television

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Oprah on the first national broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986.

In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago, Illinois to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest rated talk show in Chicago, was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour and broadcast nationally beginning September 8, 1986. Having surpassed Donahue in the local market Winfrey quickly doubled his national audience, her show replacing his as the number one day-time talk show in America. Their much publicised contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny.

Time magazine wrote, "Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue...What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye....They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session."

TV columnist Howard Rosenberg said "She's a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy and hungry. And she may know the way to Phil Donahue's jugular."

Newsday's Les Payne observed, "Oprah Winfrey is sharper than Donahue, wittier, more genuine, and far better attuned to her audience, if not the world."

Martha Bayles of the Wall Street Journal wrote, "It's a relief to see a garbmonger with a fond but realistic assessment of her own cultural and religious roots."

In the mid-1990s Winfrey adopted a much less tabloid format doing shows about heart-disease in women, geopolitics with Lisa Ling, spirituality and meditation, and gift-giving and home decorating shows. She often interviews celebrities on issues that directly involve them in some way, such as cancer, charity work, or substance abuse. In addition, she interviews ordinary people who have done extraordinary things or been involved in important current issues.

During a lawsuit against Winfrey (see Influence), she hired Dr. Phil McGraw's company Courtroom Sciences, Inc. to help her analyze and read the jury. Dr. Phil made such an impression on Winfrey that she invited him to appear on her show. He accepted the invitation and was a resounding success. McGraw appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show for several years before launching his own show, Dr. Phil, in 2002, which was created by Winfrey's production company, Harpo Productions in partnership with Paramount which produced the show.

Perhaps Oprah's most famous recent show was the first episode of the nineteenth season of The Oprah Winfrey Show in the fall of 2004. During the show each member of the audience received a new G6 sedan; the 276 cars were donated by Pontiac as part of a publicity stunt.

In February of 2006, Oprah used her overwhelming influence to attack America's debt problem by introducing the Debt diet. In a four-part series, Oprah compared America's over-spending habits to our similar over-eating habits. She showed how compulsive over-spenders are much like compulsive overeaters and how America doesn’t just have a high rate of obesity in our body, but obesity in our debt. In the months to follow, a wave of American debtors rushed to solve their financial burdens. "Debt Diet" became a new phrase in the English vocabulary as Internet searches for the new phrase skyrocketed. This alone may have influenced more Americans to do something about their debt than any other movement so far.

Winfrey recently made a deal to extend her show until the 2010 – 2011 season, by which time it will have been on the air for twenty-five years. She plans to host 140 episodes per season, until her final season, when it will return to its current number, 130. [3]

The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Concert was hosted by Oprah and Tom Cruise. There were musical performances by Cyndi Lauper, Andrea Bocelli, Joss Stone, Chris Botti, Diana Krall, Tony Bennett and others. The concert was broadcasted in the United States on Dec. 23, 2004 by E!. An unofficial Oprah fanclub, also organized a petition drive [4] in 2005, to nominate Oprah for the Nobel Peace Prize.

As well as hosting and appearing on television shows, Winfrey co-founded the women's cable television network Oxygen. She is also the president of Harpo Productions (Oprah spelled backwards).

Film

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The Color Purple by Alice Walker

In 1985, Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's epic adaptation of Alice Walker's award-winning novel The Color Purple. She earned immediate acclaim as Sofia, the distraught housewife. The following year Winfrey was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but she lost to Anjelica Huston. Many believe this was due in part to the Academy's "anti-Spielberg" bias, thinking the film would have been better directed by an African-American. The Color Purple has now been made into a Broadway musical and opened late 2005, with Oprah credited as a producer.

In October 1998, Oprah produced and starred in the film Beloved, based upon Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. To prepare for her role as Sethe, the protagonist and former slave, Oprah experienced a 24-hour simulation of the experience of slavery, which included being tied up and blindfolded and left alone in the woods. Critics said this would not even come close to the experience. Despite major advertising, including two episodes of her talk show dedicated solely to the film, and good critical reviews, Beloved opened to poor box-office results, losing approximately $30 million. Many have suggested that the film was too long and complex for the movie going public, and the subject matter too politically sensitive.

In 2005, Harpo Productions released another film adaptation of a famous American novel, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). The made-for-television film Their Eyes Were Watching God was based upon a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks, and starred Halle Berry in the lead female role.

Winfrey was the recipient of the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards for services to television and film. In 2004, Oprah and her team filmed an episode of her show entitled Oprah's Christmas Kindness, in which Oprah, her best friend Gayle, her partner Stedman Graham, and some crew members travelled to South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS. During the 21-day whirlwind trip, Oprah and her crew visited schools and orphanages in poverty-stricken areas, and at different set-up points in the areas distributed Christmas presents to 50,000 children, with dolls for the girls and soccer balls for the boys. In addition, each child was given a backpack full of school supplies and received two sets of school uniforms for their sex, in addition to two sets of socks, two sets of underwear, and a pair of shoes. Throughout the show, Oprah appealed to viewers to donate money to Oprah's Angel Network for poverty-stricken and AIDS-affected children in Africa, and pledged that she personally would oversee [http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/10140.htm where that money was spent}. From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over (US)$7,000,000.

Books and magazines

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Winfrey publishes two magazines:O, The Oprah Magazine and O at Home. She has co-authored five books; at the announcement of her future weight loss book (to be co-authored with her personal trainer Bob Greene), it was said that her undisclosed advance fee had broken the record for the world's highest book advance fee, previously held by former U.S. President Bill Clinton for his autobiography My Life.. In 2002 Fortune Magazine called O, the Oprah Magazine the most successful start up ever in the industry. [5]

Online

Oprah.com is a premiere women's lifestyle website, offering advice on everything from the mind, body and spirit to food, home and relationships. It provides comprehensive resources related to The Oprah Winfrey Show and exclusive interactive content based on O, The Oprah Magazine. In addition, the website has unique original content, including Oprah's Book Club, which offers free in-depth reading guides for each book selection, online discussion groups and Q&A sessions with literary experts. In 2003, Winfrey relaunched Oprah's Book Club with an online component and it quickly became the largest book club in the world, attracting more than 670,000 members. That same year, Oprah.com also launched Live Your Best Life, an interactive multimedia workshop based on her sold-out national speaking tour that features Oprah's personal life stories and life lessons along with a workbook of thought-provoking exercises.

Since then, Winfrey has also used Oprah.com to continue her crusade to help those in need and against pedophiles by raising over 3 million dollars for Katrina victims and helping to capture 4 convicted child predators. Oprah.com averages more than 100 million page views and more than three million users per month. The book club has since grown to over 800,000 members.

Radio

On February 9, 2006 it was announced that Oprah signed a $55 million, 3-year contract with XM Satellite Radio to establish a new radio channel. The channel will be called Oprah & Friends and will feature popular contributors to The Oprah Winfrey Show and 'O' Magazine including Nate Berkus, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Bob Greene, Dr. Robin Smith and Marianne Williamson. Oprah & Friends will air 24/7 on XM Radio Channel 156. Oprah's contract requires her to be on air 30 minutes a week, 39 weeks a year. The 30-minute weekly show will feature Oprah with friend Gayle King. Winfrey's audience is extremely loyal and XM hopes that the "Oprah Effect" can have the same effect on XM subscription sales that she does on the New York Times Best Seller list, thanks to her book club. The channel will be broadcast from a new studio at Oprah's Chicago headquarters and is set to air in September 2006.

Future projects

Winfrey's latest television project will be developing and producing a new talk show for popular Food Network celebrity chef, Rachael Ray, which will begin airing sometime in 2006.

Recently, Winfrey has been interviewed several times by Anderson Cooper, with whom she has completed several side projects. This has fueled a rumour that Winfrey and Cooper are planning to make a movie together. These rumors have not been substantiated.

Winfrey is going to voice the part of Gussy the goose in the upcoming Charlotte's Web movie.

Wealth & Philanthropy

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Oprah Winfrey during her car giveaway to the entire audience.

Born in rural poverty, then raised by a welfare mother in the ghetto, Winfrey became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show went national. Because of the amount of revenue the show generated, Winfrey was in a position to negotiate ownership of the show and start her own production company. By 1994 the show's ratings were still thriving and Winfrey negotiated a contract that earned her nine figures a year. Considered the richest woman in entertainment by the early 1990s, at age 41 Winfrey's wealth crossed another milestone when with a net worth of $340 million, she replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. Although blacks are 12% of the U.S. population, Winfrey has remained the only black wealthy enough to rank among America's 400 richest people nearly every year since 1995 (BET founder Bob Johnson briefly joined her on the list from 2001-2003 before his ex-wife reportedly acquired part of his fortune [6]).

With a 2000 net-worth of $800 million, Winfrey is believed to have been the richest African American woman of the 20th century. To celebrate her status as a historical figure, Professor Juliet E.K. Walker of the University of Illinois created the course "Oprah the tycoon".[7]

Forbes' international rich list has listed Winfrey as the world's only black billionaire[8] for the past three straight years and as the first black woman billionaire in world history.[9] Winfrey's 2006 net-worth of $1.4 billion USD placed her as the 562nd richest person in the world.

Although Winfrey's show is known for raising money through her public charity and the cars and gifts she gives away on TV are often donated by corporations in exchange for publicity, behind the scenes Winfrey personally donates more of her own money to charity than any other show business celebrity in America. In 2005 she became the first black listed by Business Week as one of America's top 50 most generous philanthropists, having given an estimated $250 million. [10]. Despite being the 235th richest American in 2005,[11] Winfrey was the 32nd most philanthropic.

Influence

Oprah Winfrey was called "arguably the world's most powerful woman" by CNN and Time.com [12].Time Magazine named Winfrey one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and again in 2006. Winfrey and Bill Gates are the only two people in the world to make all four lists. At the end of the 20th century Life magazine listed Oprah as both the most influential woman and the most influential black person of her generation [13] and also called her "America's most powerful woman" in a cover profile. Ladies Home Journal also ranked Oprah number one in their list of the most powerful women in America. In 2003 Winfrey edged out both Superman and Elvis to be named the greatest popculture icon of all time by VH1. In 2005 Forbes magazine named her the world's most powerful celebrity.

While Phil Donahue pioneered the tabloid talk show genre, the warmth, intimacy and personal confession Oprah brought to the format both popularized and revolutionized it. In the scholarly text Freaks Talk Back[14], Yale sociology professor Joshua Gamson credits the tabloid talk show genre with providing much needed high impact media visibility for gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transgender people. In the book's editorial review Michael Bronski wrote "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people had almost no presence on television. With the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Oprah, and Geraldo, people outside the sexual mainstream now appear in living rooms across America almost every day of the week."[15]

One of Winfrey's most taboo-breaking shows occurred in the 1980s where for the entire hour, members of the studio audience stood up one by one, gave their name and announced that they were gay. Also in the 1980s Winfrey took her show to West Virgina to confront a town gripped by AIDS paranoia because a gay man living in the town had HIV. Winfrey interviewed the man who had become a social outcast, the town's mayor who drained the swimming pool because the man had gone swimming, and debated the town's hostile residents. "But I hear this is a God fearing town" Winfrey scolded the homophobic studio audience, "where's all that Christian love and understanding?" During a show on gay marriage in the 1990s, a woman in Winfrey's audience stood up to complain that gays were constantly flaunting their sex lives and she announced that she was tired of it. "You know what I'm tired of," replied Winfrey, "heterosexual males raping and sodomizing young girls. That's what I'm tired of." Her rebuttal inspired a screaming standing ovation from that show's mostly gay studio audience.

Following the success of tabloid talk shows, early 21st century gays were coming out of the closet younger and younger, gay suicide rates had dropped, and gays were embraced on mainstream shows like Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and films like Brokeback Mountain. While having changed with the times from her tabloid talk show roots, Winfrey continues to empower the gay community by using her show to promote openly gay personalities like her hairdresser, makeup artist, and decorator Nate Berkus who inspired an outpouring of sympathy from middle America after grieving the loss of his partner in the Tsunami on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey's intimate therapeutic hosting style and the tabloid talk show genre she popularized has been credited or blamed for leading the media counterculture of the 1980s and 1990s which broke 20th century taboos, led to America's self-help obsession, and created confession culture. The Wall Street Journal coined the term Oprahfication which means public confession as a form of therapy.

In April 1997, Winfrey played the therapist on the sitcom Ellen to whom the character (and the real life Ellen DeGeneres in an ironic twist of humor as the actress playing herself on the show) confessed she was a lesbian. In 1998, Mark Steyn in the National Review wrote of Winfrey "Today, no truly epochal moment in the history of the Republic occurs unless it is validated by her presence. When Ellen said, 'Yep! I'm gay,' Oprah was by her side, guesting on the sitcom as (what else?) the star's therapist. She is, of course, therapist to an entire nation. If only it weren't so hard for the rest of us to get an appointment. Asked to explain the cause of the 1992 riots, one angry black looter from South Central said: 'We had to do something to get Oprah to Los Angeles'"

By confessing intimate details about her weight problems, tumultuous love life, and sexual abuse, and crying along side her guests, Time Magazine credits Winfrey with creating a new form of media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from the "report talk" of Phil Donahue:

"Winfrey saw television's power to blend public and private; while it links strangers and conveys information over public airwaves, TV is most often viewed in the privacy of our homes. Like a family member, it sits down to meals with us and talks to us in the lonely afternoons. Grasping this paradox, ...She makes people care because she cares. That is Winfrey's genius, and will be her legacy, as the changes she has wrought in the talk show continue to permeate our culture and shape our lives".

With a peak weight of 108 kg (238 lb), Winfrey paved the way for other plus sized women in media such as Roseanne Barr, Rosie O'Donnell and Star Jones. The November 1988 Ms. magazine observed that "in a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality...But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant-damned near gorgeous-with her drop-dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality."

In the late 1990s, Winfrey introduced a new segment on her television show: Oprah's Book Club. The segment focused on new books and classics, and often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly became a best-seller (known as the Oprah Effect); for example, when she selected the classic John Steinbeck novel East of Eden, it soared to the top of the book charts. Being recognized by Oprah often means a million additional book sales for an author. [16] Oprah's Book Club is so powerful that, when she selected his memoir Night in 2006, Time Magazine named author Elie Wiesel one of the world's 100 most influential people that year. In Reading with Oprah: The book club that changed America, Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading-a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act-and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."

Such heavy influence upon both America and the world has led many to become aware of her effect on culture. During a show about mad cow disease with Howard Lyman (aired on April 16 1996), Winfrey exclaimed, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!" Texas cattlemen sued her and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement," claiming that Winfrey's remarks subsequently sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers some USD$12 million. On February 26, after a trial spanning over two months in an Amarillo, Texas court in the thick of cattle country, a jury found Winfrey and Lyman not guilty, that they did not act with malice, and were not liable for damages. After the trial, she received a postcard from Rosie O'Donnell reading, "Congratulations, you beat the meat!" In June 2005 the first case of mad cow disease in a cow native to the United States was detected in Texas. The USDA concluded that it was most likely infected in Texas prior to 1997.[17]

In 2002, Christianity Today published an article called The Church of O in which they concluded that Winfrey had emerged as an influential spiritual leader. "Since 1994, when she abandoned traditional talk-show fare for more edifying content, and 1998, when she began 'Change Your Life TV,' Oprah's most significant role has become that of spiritual leader. To her audience of more than 22 million mostly female viewers, she has become a postmodern priestess—an icon of church-free spirituality."[18] The sentiment was seconded by Marcia Z. Nelson in her book The Gospel According to Oprah.[19]

Criticisms and controversies

Though since the mid 1990s Winfrey has changed the focus of her show, her success has been blamed for popularizing the tabloid talk show genre and turning it into thriving industry that unleashed the likes of Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, and Jerry Springer. While Yale sociologist Joshua Gamson praised this media counter culture for doing more to make gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transgender people mainstream and socially acceptable than any other development of the 20th century, sociologist Vicki Abt criticised tabloid talk shows for redefining social norms. In her book Coming After Oprah: Cultural Fallout in the Age of the TV talk show Abt warned that the media revolution that followed Oprah's success was blurring the lines between normal and deviant behavior.

Leading up to the U.S. lead invasion of Iraq, Oprah's show received criticism for having an anti-war bias. Ben Shapiro of Townhall.com wrote:

"Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in America. She decides what makes the New York Times best-seller lists. Her touchy-feely style sucks in audiences at the rate of 14 million viewers per day. But Oprah is far more than a cultural force -- she's a dangerous political force as well, a woman with unpredictable and mercurial attitudes toward the major issues of the day."

Oprah's Book Club has occasionally chosen books which have proven to be modestly controversial. Most notably, one of its selectees, Jonathan Franzen felt conflicted about his book The Corrections being chosen, believing that its selection as an Oprah's Book Club book would demean his literary reputation and scare away male readers. "She's picked some good books, but she's picked enough schmaltzy, one dimensional ones that I cringe myself, even though I think she's really smart and really fighting the good fight" he said in a Powells.com interview.

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Oprah confronts James Frey, January 26, 2006

In a more recent controversy, Winfrey's selection of the drug rehab book A Million Little Pieces recieved heavy scrutiny, with the online publication The Smoking Gun arguing that its author James Frey is guilty of fabricating crucial details of his memoir including a three month jail term that never occurred. Winfrey initially defended the essence of Frey's book during an impromptu phone call during Frey's interview on Larry King's cable TV talk show, but reversed ten days later, inviting Frey back on her show and holding him accountable for misleading her audience. She also expressed dismay with the publisher for not reliably assessing the book's authenticity. Winfrey removed the references to Frey's work on the main page of her webpage but left references in the Oprah's Book Club section earlier in the week. The controversy has received widespread media attention, and was parodied in the show South Park in an episode entitled "A Million Little Fibers".

Recently, rappers 50 Cent and Ludacris have expressed displeasure at Oprah's tendency not to promote rappers who demean women in their music, use the n-word too frequently, and promote negative black stereotypes. Ludacris told GQ magazine that the media mogul was "unfair" to him during a show he appeared on last October with costars from Best Picture Oscar winner Crash. Oprah has said, however, that although she's opposed to some lyrics, she does enjoy a lot of hip-hop artists including Kanye West who appeared on her show, and that talk of an anti-hip-hop bias is "untrue."

Works

Television

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
1997	Before Women Had Wings	Miss Zora	(also producer)
1993	There Are No Children Here	LaJoe Rivers
1992	Lincoln	Narrator	(documentary)
1990 - 1991	Brewster Place	Mattie Michael
1989	The Women of Brewster Place	Mattie Michael	(also executive producer)
1986 - present	The Oprah Winfrey Show	Herself

Movies

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
2006	Charlotte's Web	Gussy
2005	Emmanuel's Gift	Narrator	(documentary)
2004	Brothers of the Borderland	Narrator	(short subject)
2003	Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives	Narrator	(documentary)
1998	Beloved	Sethe
1990	Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones		(documentary)
1987	Throw Momma from the Train		(cameo)
1986	Native Son	Janet Thomason ||
1985	The Color Purple

• Charlotte's Web (2006) (voice)
• Emmanuel's Gift (2005) (documentary) (narrator)
• Brothers of the Borderland (2004) (short subject) (narrator)
• Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives (2003) (documentary) (narrator)
• Beloved (1998)
• Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones (1990) (documentary)
• Throw Momma from the Train (1987) (Cameo)
• Native Son (1986)
• The Color Purple (1985)

Books

• Make the Connection : Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life, by Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey, 1999; ISBN 0786882980.
• Journey to Beloved, by Oprah Winfrey and Ken Regan, 1998; 0786864583.
• The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey : A Portrait in Her Own Words, by Bill Adler (ed) and Oprah Winfrey, 1997; ISBN 1559724196.
• A Journal of Daily Renewal : The Companion to Make the Connection, by Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey, 1996; ISBN 0786882158.
• In The Kitchen With Rosie: Oprah's Favorite Recipes, by Rosie Daley and Oprah Winfrey, 1994; ISBN 0679434046.

Books written by others

• The Gospel According To Oprah, by Marcia Z. Nelson, 2005; ISBN 0664229425.

References

^{^} "Oprah Winfrey". Interview with Oprah Winfrey. Academy of Achievement. February 21, 1991. Retrieved 2006-06-09. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

^{^} "Biography for Oprah Winfrey". IMDb.com. Amazon.com. Retrieved 2006-06-09.

External links

• Oprah 20th anniversary special
• Oprah Winfrey and the Cult of Self-Esteem
• Collection of Quotes by Oprah Winfrey
• Charity Navigator's rating of Oprah's Angel Network

See also

• List of billionaires