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 on 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 cautioned viewers that they would hear "a lot of speculation in the press about why I am making this decision," warning them not to listen to the "conjecture." But she 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.
"I just wanted to say whether you've been here with me from the beginning or you came on board last week, I want you all to know that my relationship with you is one that I hold very dear," she said. "Your trust in me, the sharing of your precious time every day with me has brought me the greatest joy I have ever known."
It has also brought her a fortune estimated at $US2.7 billion ($A2.94 billion). As a newcomer, she chipped away at the dominance of Phil Donahue. She flirted with a tabloid format for a time, but gradually reinvented her show to focus on themes of inspiration, hope and the power of positive thinking.
"She's made such an imprint in today's society. She's just part of everyone's lives," said Yasmeen Elhaj, a 19-year-old student from Chicago who was in the studio for Friday's announcement. "People talk about Oprah like that's her friend. So that's why everyone is sad to see her go because she's just a giving person, feels like she's your homegirl."
The show has a breadth that no other has been able to match. A serious hour on domestic abuse could be followed the next day by a rollicking party with the Black Eyed Peas.
When Whitney Houston and Sarah Palin wanted to talk this autumn, Winfrey's show was their first stop. An endorsement by Winfrey for her book club is a make-or-break opportunity for authors.
Powered by the show's staggering success, Winfrey built a media empire. Harpo Studios produces shows hosted by Dr. Phil McGraw and celebrity chef Rachael Ray. O, The Oprah Magazine was the 7th most popular magazine in the US in the first half of 2009.
"I came from nothing," Winfrey wrote in the 1998 book Journey to Beloved. "No power. No money. Not even my thoughts were my own. I had no free will. No voice. Now, I have the freedom, power, and will to speak to millions every day - having come from nowhere."
In 2003, Winfrey, who spent her earliest years in abject poverty in rural Mississippi in the then-segregated South, became the first African-American woman to make Forbes magazine's billionaire's list. Earlier this year, Forbes scored her net worth at $US2.7 billion ($A2.94 billion).
The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, which cost her $US40 million ($A43.51 million), opened near Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2007.
But even Winfrey 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.
This season, boosted by blockbuster interviews with Palin, Houston and others, the show is doing better, averaging 7.2 million viewers a day.
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. It will replace the Discovery Health Channel and debut in some 80 million homes in January 2011.
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