CHICAGO -- Oprah Winfrey plans to tell viewers on Friday's live edition of her top-rated daytime program that she will retire the syndicated talk show that made her rich, famous and, if not a kingmaker, a maker of a media empire, several best-selling authors and perhaps even a U.S. president.
The show, based in Chicago, will conclude at the end of the 2010-11 season, its 25th on national TV.
Harpo Productions confirmed Thursday both her decision and that she will discuss it on her program. The last of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" would air on Sept. 9, 2011.
Speculation has been rampant that Winfrey might choose to leave daytime TV ever since it was announced in January 2008 that she and Discovery Networks planned to partner on a cable network, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network.
The cable network's debut, originally set for this year, has been delayed more than once, and a launch date is expected to be firmed up by the end of this year for sometime in 2010. The new channel will take the place of what is now Discovery Health, available in 70 million homes from the start.
One problem for the new venture was that until Winfrey completed her commitment to CBS Television Distribution, her syndicator, and the stations that carry her program, she would not be free to do a talk show for the cable channel or give other OWN matters her full attention.
Winfrey's program, which entered syndication in 1986, has dominated daytime TV for most of its run, evolving from typically exploitative fare into something more spiritual and, lately, seeming to find a happy medium: offering the Black Eyed Peas one day, a young girl with a birth defect another, and Whitney Houston using the show as a confessional on yet another day.
Ratings this season seem to have bounced back from lows last season that some attributed to Winfrey's vocal support for then-Sen. Barack Obama's run for the White House, her first public political endorsement.
The impact of the Obama endorsement, on his campaign and on her show, remains difficult to measure. Her program remained a dominant No. 1 even in a lean year.
Winfrey's interview Monday with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who ran as Sen. John McCain's running mate against Obama and then-Sen. Joe Biden in 2008, gave her program its largest audience for any hour in two years.
Palin was promoting a new book, and Winfrey's show has become a coveted platform for authors and publishers because of its ability to vault even obscure works to best-seller status, particularly through its "Oprah's Book Club" segments over the years.
Similarly, a product plug on the show has been known to cause a run on little-known marketers.
From the talk show's success, Winfrey has been able to build a media empire that has included O magazine, O at Home magazine, Oprah.com and a Sirius XM satellite pay radio channel, as well as movies and television shows, such as "Rachael Ray," "Dr. Phil" and "Dr. Oz."
Just this week, it was reported that her Harpo Productions was close to a deal with Sony Pictures Television to syndicate a program featuring designer Nate Berkus, whom she has been featuring on her program for eight years.
Winfrey also has starred in films such as "Beloved," which was made only because she deemed it important, and Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple," which she later shepherded onto Broadway. She also was a founding partner in the Oxygen cable network, but eventually left.
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