It's been rumored for weeks, but now it's actually happening: Oprah Winfrey is ready to announce tomorrow that she's ending her immensely popular and influential TV talk show. She'll drop the news on Friday morning's live show from Chicago.
Fans shouldn't panic just yet: WLS, where her show began as "A.M. Chicago" in 1984, says the final "Oprah Winfrey Show" will air in September of 2011, giving her nearly two more years to spur water cooler talk, influence trends, and push authors to the top of the best-seller list.
What then? The media queen has been trying to get the cable channel OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, off the ground with Discovery Communications for awhile now, and it seems a good bet she'll move her attention and resources there. After all, why "settle" for a show – even one of the most talked-about and enduring in TV history – when you can have a network?