UPDATE: Oprah Winfrey has announced that she is planning to end her iconic show at the end of the 2010-11 season.
Of course she’s ending it on a milestone year — her show would conclude in September 2011, which marks her 25th season.
Sources tell Entertainment Tonight that she will officially announce the groundbreaking news on tomorrow’s live episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Stay tuned for more fireworks.
Is Oprah walking away from her daily talk show? Looks like it.
According to Hollywood insider Nikki Finke, the reigning queen of daytime TV will surrender her throne in 2011, leaving her syndicated Oprah Winfrey Show as she moves to cable television.
According to Finke, Winfrey will send out a press release in the coming days that details her move to OWN, her joint venture cable network with Discovery Communications. Switching to OWN means she’ll leave Chicago for Los Angeles as soon as mid-2011.
Word is that Discovery’s chief, David Zaslav, has become frustrated with the delay of OWN – which is to take the place of Discovery Health – and demanded that Winfrey move her talk show to cable or risk losing the Oprah Winfrey Network for good.
All of this spells bad news for CBS Television Distribution, which syndicates The Oprah Winfrey Show across the U.S., and means millions in income will be lost. In the U.S., roughly seven million watch Oprah every day, as well as viewers in 140 countries around the world.
Finke reports that Winfrey was in Los Angeles last week, where she was meeting with everyone associated with OWN, and was personally hearing programming pitches for shows on the network.
Do you watch Oprah every day? How do you feel about this? greg@tvguide.ca
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