Cannot talk about Black women in television without mentioning Oprah Winfrey. I doubt that when she took the AM Chicago talk show gig that she could have believed that she would become OPRAH WINFREY.

Oprah created an entire new book on what it means to be Black and on television.

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Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist.[1] Winfrey is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011.[5] Dubbed the “Queen of All Media”,[6] she has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century,[7] the greatest black philanthropist in American history,[8][9] and is currently (2015) North America’s only black billionaire.[10] Several assessments regard her as the most influential woman in the world.[11][12] In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama[13] and honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard.[14][15]

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, saying she was raped at age nine and became pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy.[16] Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place,[17] she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication,[18] she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized[18][19] the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue,[18] which a Yale study says broke 20th-century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream.[20][21] By the mid-1990s she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas,[22] and an emotion-centered approach,[23] she is often praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.[24] From 2006 to 2008, her support of Barack Obama, by one estimate, delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race.[25]

Television
Main article: The Oprah Winfrey Show

In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago 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. The movie critic Roger Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies.[50] It was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour, and broadcast nationally beginning September 8, 1986.[51] Winfrey’s syndicated show brought in double Donahue’s national audience, displacing Donahue as the number-one daytime talk show in America. Their much publicized 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.[52] ”
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.”[53] 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”[53] and Martha Bayles of The Wall Street Journal wrote, “It’s a relief to see a gab-monger with a fond but realistic assessment of her own cultural and religious roots.”[53]

In the early years of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the program was classified as a tabloid talk show. In the mid-1990s, Winfrey adopted a less tabloid-oriented format, hosting shows on broader topics such as heart disease, geopolitics, spirituality and meditation, interviewing celebrities on social issues they were directly involved with, such as cancer, charity work, or substance abuse, and hosting televised giveaways including shows where every audience member received a new car (donated by General Motors) or a trip to Australia (donated by Australian tourism bodies).[54] In addition to her talk show, Winfrey also produced and co-starred in the 1989 drama miniseries The Women of Brewster Place, as well as a short-lived spin-off, Brewster Place. 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). On January 15, 2008, Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced plans to change Discovery Health Channel into a new channel called OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. It was scheduled to launch in 2009, but was delayed, and actually launched on January 1, 2011.[55]

The series finale of The Oprah Winfrey Show aired on May 25, 2011.[56]

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The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), named after the former daytime talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, is an American television channel produced by Harpo Productions and Discovery Communications. It debuted on January 1, 2011, in approximately 80 million homes, replacing the former Discovery Health Channel (DHC).

In late 2012, Tyler Perry partnered with OWN to provide it with scripted television programming. One of Perry’s series The Haves and the Have Nots has consistently posted very successful ratings and has set a preeminent record on OWN, providing the network with its highest ratings to date.[3] A March 11, 2014 episode of the series brought in 3.6 million viewers, surpassing the 3.5 million that tuned in for an Oprah’s Next Chapter episode which was the network’s previous highest rated viewing.[3]

As of February 2015, OWN is available to approximately 81.9 million pay television households (70.3% of households with television) in the United States.[4]

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Philanthropy

Winfrey visits evacuees from New Orleans temporarily sheltered at the Reliant center in Houston following Hurricane Katrina.
In 2004, Winfrey became the first black person to rank among the 50 most generous Americans[178] and she remained among the top 50 until 2010.[179] By 2012 she had given away about $400 million to educational causes.[100]

As of 2012, Winfrey had also given over 400 scholarships to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.[100] Winfrey was the recipient of the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at 2002 Emmy Awards for services to television and film. To celebrate two decades on national TV, and to thank her employees for their hard work, Winfrey took her staff and their families (1065 people in total) on vacation to Hawaii in the summer of 2006.[180]

In 2013, Winfrey donated $12 million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.[181] President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom later that same year.[182]

Oprah’s Angel Network
In 1998, Winfrey created the Oprah’s Angel Network, a charity that supported charitable projects and provided grants to nonprofit organizations around the world. Oprah’s Angel Network raised more than $80,000,000 ($1 million of which was donated by Jon Bon Jovi). Winfrey personally covered all administrative costs associated with the charity, so 100% of all funds raised went to charity programs. The charity stopped accepting donations in May 2010 and was later dissolved.[183][184]

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Oprah created the Oprah Angel Network Katrina registry which raised more than $11 million for relief efforts. Winfrey personally gave $10 million to the cause.[185] Homes were built in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama before the one-year anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.[186]

South Africa
Main article: Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls
In 2004, Winfrey and her team filmed an episode of her show, Oprah’s Christmas Kindness , in which Winfrey travelled to South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS. During the 21-day trip, Winfrey and her crew visited schools and orphanages in poverty-stricken areas, and distributed Christmas presents to 50,000 children,[187] with dolls for the girls and soccer balls for the boys, and school supplies. Throughout the show, Winfrey appealed to viewers to donate money to Oprah’s Angel Network for poor and AIDS-affected children in Africa. From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over $7,000,000. Winfrey invested $40 million and some of her time establishing the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Henley on Klip south of Johannesburg, South Africa. The school set over 22 acres, opened in January 2007 with an enrollment of 150 pupils (increasing to 450) and features state-of-the-art classrooms, computer and science laboratories, a library, theatre and beauty salon. Nelson Mandela praised Winfrey for overcoming her own disadvantaged youth to become a benefactor for others. Critics considered the school elitist and unnecessarily luxurious.[188] Winfrey rejected the claims, saying: “If you are surrounded by beautiful things and wonderful teachers who inspire you, that beauty brings out the beauty in you.”[188] Winfrey, who has no surviving biological children, described maternal feelings towards the girls at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.[189][190] Winfrey teaches a class at the school via satellite.[189]

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