Oprah Winfrey, known primarily as the host of the nationally and internationally syndicated American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, has successfully charted and navigated a career that has built on the television industry as a form of public therapy. On The Oprah Winfrey Show, both ordinary people and guest celebrities are there to reveal their inner truths, and it is these revelations that create in the audience the dual sentiments that have been critical to the success of Oprah: there is a voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about what is normally hidden by others, and there is the cathartic sensation that the public revelation will lead to social betterment.

     One of the key features of Winfrey's television persona is that her own private life has been an essential element of her talk show format of public therapy. Her accounts of growing up as a poor black child and of her past and current problems with child abuse, men, and weight have made Winfrey an exposed public per­sonality on television and have allowed her loyal audi­ence to feel that they "know" her quite well. This televisual familiarity is part of the power of Oprah Winfrey.

     Winfrey's path into the profession was partially connected to her success in two beauty pageants. At 16, Winfrey was the first black Miss Fire Prevention for Nashville. From that position, and with her obvious and demonstrated abilities in public speaking, she was invited to be the newsreader on a local black radio station, WVOL. Later, she maintained her public profile by winning the Miss Black Tennessee pageant and gained a scholarship to Tennessee State University. In her final year of studying speech, drama, and English, Winfrey was offered a position as co anchor on the television news program of the CBS affiliate WVTF. She has described her early role model for news broadcasting as Barbara Walters.

     Although not entirely comfortable with her role as news journalist/anchor, Winfrey gained a more lucra­tive co-anchor position at WJZ, the ABC affiliate in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1977. She struggled for several months in the position; her greatest weaknesses derived from not reading the news copy before airtime and from her penchant for extensive ad-libbing. She was pulled from the anchor position and given the role of co-hosting a morning chat show, People Are Talking. Able to be relaxed and natural on air, Winfrey excelled in this position. By the end of her run, her local morning talk show had transformed into a program dealing with more controversial issues, and Winfrey's presence helped the show outdraw the nationally syndicated talk show Donahue in the local Baltimore market.

     In 1983 Winfrey followed her associate producer Debra Di Maio to host AM. Chicago, a morning talk show on Chicago station WLZ-TV. By 1985 the name was changed to The Oprah Winfrey Show, and once again Winfrey's program was drawing a larger audience than Donahue in the local market. Winfrey also gained a national presence through her Oscar­ nominated role in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985). The large television program syndicator King World, realizing the earning potential of Winfrey, took over production of her show in 1986 and reproduced the daily program for the national market. Within weeks of the launch in September 1986, The Oprah Winfrey Show became the most-watched daytime talk show in the United States.

     The deal struck with King World in 1986 instantly made Winfrey the highest-paid performer in the entertainment industry, with estimated earnings from the program of $31 million in 1987. She has continued to be one of the wealthiest women in the entertainment industry and has used that power to establish her own production company, Harpo Productions. Harpo's presence on television has been evident in a number of arenas. First, in dramatic programming, Harpo produced the miniseries The Women of Brewster Place (1989) and the follow-up situation-drama/comedy Brewster Place (1990). Winfrey both starred in and produced these programs. She has produced and hosted several prime-time documentaries, including one specifically on children and abuse. In recent years, she has sometimes supplanted Walters in securing one­ off interviews with key celebrities. Winfrey's prime­ time interview of Michael Jackson in February 1993 (ABC) garnered a massive television audience both nationally and internationally. Similarly, her interview with basketball star Michael Jordan in October 1993 reaffirmed Winfrey's omnipresence and power in television. In the late 1990s, Winfrey continued  to operate as a producer with many special programs. films. and series. including Jonathan  Demme's feature film  Beloved (1998). in which she also played a part; the television miniseries The Wedding (1998): and the made-for­ television movie Tuesdays with Morrie (1999), based on a best-selling book Winfrey had featured on her talk show.

     The centerpiece of both Winfrey's wealth and her public presence continues to be her daily talk show. which is also broadcast successfully internationally. Borrowing the "run and microphone thrust" device from Donahue, she makes the television audience part of the performance. With this and other techniques. Winfrey has managed to create an interesting public forum that transforms the feminist position that "the personal is political" into a vaguely political television program. Themes range from the bizarre ("Children Who Abuse Parents") to the titillating ("How Important is Size in Sex?"), from the overtly political ("Women of the Ku Klux Klan") to the personal trials and tribulations of her own weight loss/gain and the "problems" of fellow celebrities.

     In direct counterpoint to programs such as the talk shows hosted by Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake, Win­ frey has consolidated an older, and perhaps more middle-class, audience as she has moved to edify her audience. One effort to distance her program from the more scandal-driven talk shows. the "Oprah's Book Club" feature. has had a significant impact on the book industry. as Winfrey's endorsements of particular titles have become the harbinger of success for the authors of those works. Winfrey's role in book sales has become so important as to frequently spark debate. In particular. Jonathan Frantzen’s decision in 2001 to decline an invitation to have his novel The Corrections discussed on air in her book club. and Winfrey's own announcement in 2002 that she intended to end the feature because she could not find enough satisfactory works. inspired many pundits to comment on the state of contemporary literature. In 2003 Winfrey resuscitated her book club. with John Steinbeck's East of Eden.

     In 2001, through Harpo Productions. Winfrey successfully launched the lifestyle magazine 0, the cover of which is almost exclusively a photo of her. Her website, oprah.com. consolidates the wealth of material that now is circulated by Winfrey and her loyal and large audience and is associated with the larger media entity Oxygen Media. Thus. Winfrey continues to represent a televisual and now multimedia path to self­ actualization.