Oprah Winfrey

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Sandra Garcia-Myers

Oprah Winfrey, who began her career as a Midwest talk show host in 1985, wielded such clout in the entertainment field at the end of the twentieth century that her participation in a project guaranteed its success. Her strong identification with her audience could be witnessed again and again; when she did something as simple as starting a diet, or, as complex as taking a stand against social injustice, millions of people across the United States followed suit. Yet, her considerable influence was neither happenstance nor opportunism. Her social and political views came from a lifetime of struggle that has imbued her with a missionary zeal to get her message across.

The television persona of "Oprah" is virtually inseparable from the person herself. She was born into poverty in 1954 in rural Mississippi and then spent many of her formative years living in a Milwaukee ghetto with her divorced mother. As a teenager, her life began a downward spiral marked by sexual abuse and early signs of delinquency that were only interrupted by the reappearance of her father, a Nashville barber. He took custody of her, brought her to Tennessee and placed her in a local high school where she developed an interest in oratory. This experience led her to a student internship at a black radio station that sparked her interest in a career in journalism.

After graduation, she matriculated at Tennessee State University where she garnered more experience in broadcast journalism but also competed for and won the "Miss Black Nashville" and "Miss Black Tennessee" titles. Despite her later, pro-feminist stands on various issues, she harbored no regrets for cashing in on her physical beauty saying that she won on "poise and talent." "I was raised to believe that the lighter your skin, the better you were," she later admitted. "I wasn't light skinned, so I decided to be the best and the smartest." Her experience and poise also positioned her for a job as a "street reporter" at the CBS-TV affiliate in Nashville.

She then parlayed this job into a co-anchor position at Baltimore's ABC outlet where she ran into her first setback as a broadcaster. Her journalistic skills were undermined by her tendency to become emotional when hosting unpleasant stories and questions were raised about her professional objectivity. ABC management thus decided to try her out on a morning talk program where her emotionalism and penchant for becoming personally involved with her subject matter actually became a bonus.

After six years in Baltimore, Winfrey was hired in January 1984 to take over a faltering morning program on WLS-TV's AM Chicago which had employed a succession of hosts only to finish dead last among the competition for the 9 a.m. ratings slot. Not the least of the show's problems was the fact that it was scheduled opposite The Phil Donahue Show (1970-1996), hosted by Chicago's favorite son and national ratings champ. Yet, in Winfrey, WLS-TV found an engaging personable host who had a "common touch" not possessed by the somewhat patrician-appearing Donahue. Her formula was simple: working with a studio audience and a number of guests in a classic town meeting format, she rose above the traditional moderator role by injecting both her persona and her life experiences into debates on failed relationships, sexual abuse, and weight loss plans. Although her manner of interjecting her audience into the discussions by walking quickly through the crowd and jabbing the microphone into someone' s face to get their point into play did not differ terribly much from Donahue's, she allowed herself to almost become part of her own audience in a way that her male counterpart did not.

By 1985, the show had displaced The Phil Donahue Show at the top of the Chicago ratings, prompting the station management to extend the show to one hour and to take advantage of Winfrey's growing stardom by renaming it The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986. But when film composer Quincy Jones happened to turn on the show while on a visit to Chicago, he was so impressed that he mentioned Winfrey to director Steven Spielberg, who was beginning to cast roles for his film The Color Purple. Her performance as Sophia earned her an Academy Award nomination for "Best Supporting Actress" and transformed her into a household name. Within 18 months, Winfrey had become a star in one medium and was standing on the threshold in another.

In 1986, WLS-TV began to syndicate the show nationally through King World, making Winfrey the first black woman to host her own show and become a millionaire by the age of 32. At the same time, she formed her own production company, Harpo (her name spelled backwards), and began to take a more active role in the creation of the show. Within its first five months, the show ranked number one among talk shows in 192 cities, forcing competitor Phil Donahue to move his home base from Chicago to New York in an attempt to stay competitive.

When her contract expired in 1988, she threatened to leave in order to pursue other opportunities in film and television. This forced ABC, King World, and WLS-TV to guarantee her complete control of the show in return for her promise to stay on until 1993. Industry estimates at that time figured that Winfrey's company would garner more than $50 million for the 1988-89 season alone. This assured her position as the richest and most powerful woman on television and also freed her to pursue her own agenda without network interference.