Final Oprah Episode Airs Today

The Oprah Winfrey Show is the highest-rated talk show in American television history. It is currently the longest-running daytime television talk show in the United States, having run nationally since September 8, 1986, for over 23 seasons and thousands of episodes. On the Oprah Winfrey Show, the talk show queen has interviewed nearly every major celebrity, presidents, and dignitaries from around the world and is considered responsible for launching the careers of now famed personalities such as Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. An indisputed staple of American television culture, Oprah has been included in Time magazine's shortlist of the best television series of the twentieth century in 1998, and it made the top 50 of TV Guide's countdown of the greatest American shows of all time. The show garners an average of 8.5 million views per original broadcast and 4.5 million for repeats.

Now, after a quarter of a century as queen of the talk show universe, the final episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show airs today.

Though Oprah's new cable network OWN has rights to all of the talk show's previous episodes - and will likely air them fairly frequently - the network is branching out into new territory as well, such as the already popular "Our America with Lisa Ling" and the upcoming documentary "Becoming Chaz" to launch the OWN Documentary Film Club.

Oprah tweeted that she's "hard at work" on the upcoming episodes, but she also told the Hollywood Reporter that the last two shows will be a surprise to just about everyone - including the media personality herself: "I'm allowing for Sheri and the team to plan two days of full surprises...I've given up control for the last two days. It's a lot to relinquish. [I had to] get a guarantee from Sheri there would be no strippers or dancing people coming out of shells."

Oprah has defined herself as an inspiration to people everywhere through such programs such as her Book Club, encouraging literacy, and her South African school she recently built in South Africa for young girls, a feat she has called her "proudest achievement."

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