Oprah
got on the phone and said, “Barbara, don’t have Kitty on. She doesn’t have to. She is that powerful.”’ Oprah recently announced what will be the biggest career change for her in decades. In 2009 she said that she would be ending the Oprah Winfrey Show in September 2011. This is probably a very smart move on her part, as although the show remains incredibly popular its ratings have slipped considerably in the 2000s, along with all of network TV’s as the media have fragmented. In 2010, she announced that she would be hosting her own evening show, called Oprah’s Next Chapter, on the Oprah Winfrey Network; this would be a huge boost for the Network. But some commentators have suggested that a career in politics might be a more suitable second act for a woman who is still only in her 50s. As Jon Friedman noted on the MarketWatch website, ‘I suspect that Oprah has bigger dreams than simply making another billion bucks.’
References and further reading Australian Women’s Weekly (2005) A woman of substance: the story of Oprah, 9 February Harris, Paul (2005) You go, girl, Observer, 20 November Leonard, Tom (2010) The omnipotence of Oprah Winfrey, Telegraph, 13 April Pearce, Garth (1999) When it’s not so good to talk, Sunday Times, 7 February Sellers, Patricia (2002) The business of being Oprah, Fortune, 1 April
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