Women's History Month (WHM) - March 2007

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Also known as: Oprah Gail Winfrey

Birth: 1954
Occupation: Actress, Talk Show Host

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

At The Top. Time named Oprah Winfrey one of the most important people of the twentieth century, and in 1998 Entertainment Weekly ranked her first in its annual list of the most influential people in Hollywood. In 1997 NewsweekTV GuideForbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans; by 2003, she was worth over $1 billion. In 1998 she signed a contract to continue her show until 2002. Winfrey later renewed the agreement, keeping her show on the air on until 2011, the year of its 25th anniversary.

Background. Winfrey was born on 29 January 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi, where she was reared by her grandmother until she was six, when she moved to Milwaukee with her mother. At thirteen she ran away from the abuse in her home and ended up being sent to live with her strict father in Nashville. She began her broadcasting career in 1973 at WVOL radio in Nashville and two years later joined WTVF-TV in Nashville as a reporter and anchor. In 1976 she moved to WJZ-TV in Baltimore and in 1978 became cohost of the station's People are Talking talk show. In January 1984 Winfrey moved to Chicago to host WLS-TV's faltering local talk show, AM Chicago, and, in less than a year, she turned the program into one of the most popular shows in town. The format expanded to an hour and in 1985 was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show. The show went national in 1986 and quickly became the number one talk show in the nation. In 1987 it received three Daytime Emmy Awards for outstanding host, outstanding talk/service program, and outstanding direction. Winfrey's talents were not limited to the small screen. In 1985 she was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. Additionally, in 1986 she became the first black woman to form her own production company, HARPO Productions, Inc., and, when in 1988, HARPO assumed ownership and production responsibilities for The Oprah Winfrey Show, Winfrey became the first woman ever to own and produce her own talk show. HARPO also produced a made-for-TV adaptation of Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place (1989) and a feature film in 1998 based on Toni Morrison's Beloved: A Novel (1987), both starring Winfrey. In 1996 she introduced Oprah's Book Club, an on-air reading club that featured such titles as Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River (1994), Kaye Gibbons's Ellen Foster: A Novel (1987), Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone: A Novel (1992), and Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman (1981). Each book selected for the show became an instant best-seller. In 1997, Winfrey launched Oprah's Angel Network, a humanitarian effort to encourage people to help others in need. One Angel program raised enough money to provide college scholarships for 150 students, and the Angel network teamed with Habitat for Humanity to provide funding and volunteers to build almost two hundred houses for disadvantaged families across the country. Winfrey also used her clout as a political activist. In 1991 she testified before the U.S. Senate judiciary committee to establish a national database of convicted child abusers. The "Oprah Bill" was signed into law 20 December 1993 by President Bill Clinton.

Oprah's Appeal. According to communications expert Deborah Tannen, Winfrey's appeal resulted from her ability to blend public and private in such a way that viewers, especially women, felt as if she were a friend. Contrasting Winfrey's "rapport-talk" with the "report-talk" typical of male talk show hosts, Tannen explains, rather than focusing on information, Winfrey focused on self-revealing intimacies that are the basis of female friendship. "She turned the focus from the experts to ordinary people talking about personal issues," and divulged her own secrets, making the show more immediate, confessional, and personal. Her show became a medium, then, not only to inform and entertain but also to empower.

Oprah vs. the Cattlemen. Winfrey probably received the most press in the 1990s when she became embroiled in a lawsuit with Texas cattlemen. In an April 1996 show about dangerous foods, vegetarian activist Howard Lyman explained that feeding ground-up animal parts to cattle could spread mad cow disease in the United States. Winfrey exclaimed that the information stopped her from eating another burger. Cattlemen in Texas, led by Amarillo rancher Paul Engler, alleged that the broadcast caused the cattle industry to lose millions of dollars in the beef futures market. Engler and six other plaintiffs brought suit under Texas's False Disparagement of Perishable Foods Products law. The suit claimed that Winfrey knew the information presented on the show was false and misleading. The case was to be the most significant test of so-called "veggie libel" laws to date, but U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson ruled that the case would not proceed under the "veggie libel" law, but would be tried as a business disparagement case. In this instance, then, cattlemen had to prove that Winfrey maliciously and intentionally sought to harm the beef industry. Attorneys for the cattle men argued that Winfrey had knowingly produced a show that was unfairly biased against the beef industry. Winfrey's attorney countered that the case was actually about the First Amendment. On 26 February 1998 the jury decided the case in favor of Winfrey, determining that the statements did not constitute libel. After the verdict, Winfrey exclaimed, "Free speech not only lives, it rocks!"

Expanding the Empire. In the early 2000s, Winfrey moved beyond her own television show to move into other television ventures as well as the print media. In April 2000, she launched a magazine targeted at women called O. The Oprah Magazine. The glossy was a success, increasing its circulation from 500,000 at launch to 2.65 million in 2003. Winfrey also was one of the founders of a new cable network for women called Oxygen. She developed programming for the network, including the popular Oprah After the Show. Taped at the end of her syndicated talk show, Oprah After the Show featured Winfrey chatting with her studio audience and guests.

In 2004, Winfrey extended her deal with King World Productions to continue producing The Oprah Winfrey Show through 2011. Winfrey also signed two other deals with King World in the early 2000s. Through her HARPO productions, Winfrey developed other syndicated programming for Kings World. One of her first successes was a talk show featuring Dr. Phil McGraw which hit the air in 2002. In 2004, King World turned over the development of all their syndicated talk shows to Winfrey and her production company.

Worth $1 billion by 2003, Winfrey used her wealth and popularity to benefit a number of charitable causes. In 2004, she donated $5 million for scholarships at Morehouse College. The following year, Winfrey joined with others to raise funds to open a new museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. She also felt drawn to South Africa, and among her projects in the country was the founding of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls South Africa, which was set to open in 2007.


named her the most important person in books and media, and called her the television performer of the year. She received the George Foster Peabody Individual Achievement Award and the International Radio and Television Society (IRTS) Gold Medal Award in 1996, as well as the National Academy of Television Arts and Science's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. She has won seven Emmy Awards for Outstanding Talk Show Host and nine Emmys for Outstanding Talk Show. The first African American woman to own her own production studio, Winfrey revolutionized television talk shows. Since her show began in syndication in 1986, it remained the number one talk show for twelve consecutive seasons and boasted an audience of thirty-three million viewers every weekday in the United States. The show was also broadcast in 135 countries worldwide. In 1999, Oprah, with an estimated $725 million fortune, showed up as number 348 on the

SOURCE CITATION

American Decades 1990-1999. Tandy McConnell, ed. Gale Group, 2001.