For more than two decades, Oprah Winfrey has been the inspirational, change-your-life champion who reigned over daytime television. Now she's ready to say goodbye, leaving a huge void for broadcast TV even as she raises the possibility of more Oprah than ever when she starts her own cable network. Winfrey told viewers Friday that she will dim the lights on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” at the close of its 25th season in late 2011. “I love this show. This show has been my life. And I love it enough to know when it's time to say goodbye,” she said, holding back tears. “Twenty-five years feels right in my bones, and it feels right in my spirit. It's the perfect number, the exact right time.” Once a local Chicago morning program, Winfrey's show 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. Winfrey's show “is one of daytime television's very foundations,” said Larry Gerbrandt, an analyst for the firm Media Valuation Partners in Los Angeles. “You could, and stations did, build their schedules around her. They gave it the best time period, leading into their news, and used it to promote other shows.” Winfrey offered no specifics about her plans for the future, except to say that she intended to produce the best possible shows during the final two years. Even she was not immune to the dips in ratings that have plagued broadcasters as viewers flock to specialty programming on cable. Her average audience, easily the largest of daytime talk shows, fell from 12.6 million in 1991-92 to 6.2 million in 2008-2009. The decline in audience numbers has long argued for a move to cable, where audiences are increasingly able to finding niche programming. Winfrey, 55, is widely expected to start up a new talk show on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture with Discovery Communications Inc. that was first announced last year.
