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Oprah Winfrey
Copyright © All rights reserved
By Anthony James & Ken Chapman
Abridged by Beth Lanier
Oprah Winfrey has become the most powerful woman in
television. Her talk show is the most widely watched program of its genre.
Winfrey’s swift rise from local Chicago talk show host to one-woman
conglomerate is an extraordinary story of personal achievement.
Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on
January 29, 1954. Her parents, Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey never
married. Vernon Winfrey, twenty years old and in military service, had no
knowledge of his fatherhood until Lee mailed a card to him announcing the
baby’s arrival. There was little work in Kosciusko, Mississippi for a young
black woman who had no specific skills and no advanced employment training.
Hearing that jobs were plentiful in Milwaukee and the pay better, Lee moved
to Wisconsin, leaving Oprah in the care of Vernon Winfrey’s mother. This
began a series of moves in Winfrey’s childhood that made her increasingly
rebellious and difficult for her parents to deal with. Winfrey rejoined her
mother in Milwaukee for a short time before leaving at age eight to live
with her father who was now married and living in Nashville. A year later,
Oprah was again living with her mother who was soon married.
The return to Milwaukee
represented a downturn in Oprah Winfrey’s life. During this period, Winfrey
was subjected to frequent sexual abuse, initially by a cousin, then by a
family friend, and finally, by an uncle. Twice, she ran away from home. At
fourteen, Winfrey became pregnant, but miscarried. Due to her mother’s
inability to deal with her rebellious daughter, Winfrey returned to her
father and his wife in Nashville in 1968. Vernon Winfrey dealt with his
daughter by setting high standards of conduct and achievement for her and
then seeing that she met them. By the time Winfrey entered her senior year
in high school, she knew that her future lay in the performing arts. A
local radio station, WVAL, managed and operated by black people, hired
Winfrey to read the news, a job she maintained while attending Tennessee
State University in Nashville. Winfrey was soon hired away by WLAC; first
for radio and later assigned to TV as the station’s first black anchor. She
began to look beyond Nashville and found a new job at WJZT TV in Baltimore,
Maryland in 1976; leaving college just a few months short of her
graduation. Winfrey’s tenure in Baltimore proved challenging for her. An
attempt on the part of her station manager to develop an entirely new
persona was unsuccessful, and her lack of formal training in journalism or
mass communication led to a less than desired degree of objectivity in her
reporting. Instead, Winfrey preferred to approach a story from the inside
and react to it in a subjective manner. When she was assigned to co-host a
local morning show called People Are Talking, Winfrey found her niche. The
very traits of emotionalism and subjectivity that hampered her efforts as a
reporter helped make her an effective and stimulating interviewer.
Winfrey had to stand out in a
field dominated by white men in suits, and she did so by being herself. As
the popularity of her show began to grow, she sought opportunities for
big-time broadcasting. In 1984, Winfrey was hired for a new morning talk
show in Chicago. With Winfrey’s arrival, AM Chicago took off and quickly
out-distanced local favorite, the Phil Donahue Show, in the ratings. In
early 1985, Phil Donahue moved his show to New York and left Chicago to
Winfrey. Later that year, Winfrey took leave from her show and went south
to portray Sophia in the Quincy Jones and Stephen Spielberg production of
Alice Walkers’ novel, The Color Purple. Most film critics praised Winfrey’s
performance and it earned her an Academy Award nomination.
Meanwhile, Winfrey’s AM Chicago,
having become such a sensation, was allotted a full hour instead of its
former thirty minutes and its title changed to the Oprah Winfrey Show. By
late 1986, the show was in syndication. The deal grossed 125 million
dollars and netted its star more than 30 million dollars in 1987–1988 as
well as a five-year contract securing her position through the 1990– 1991
seasons. Winfrey soon became one of the best known, highly paid figures of
the 1980’s. As the show expanded, Winfrey’s contracts reflected her desire
to not only host the show, but to control its contents and eventually own
it. With her lucrative deals, she was able to build her own production
studio, Harpo, making Winfrey the third female and only black female to own
her own studio. She was also well on her way to becoming the first black
billionaire.
Eight years into her nation-wide
run, Winfrey wanted to set her show apart from the “Trash TV” reputation
that talk shows were gaining. She refocused the show to deal with human
interest stories and self-help tips that her audience could use in their
daily lives. Despite an initial slight dip in ratings, The Oprah Show has
maintained the highest total viewers.
Oprah Winfrey has won six
daytime Emmy Awards, her show was honored by the British Academy as “Best
Foreign Television Program” in 1994, and she has been inducted into the TV
Hall of Fame. She is an extremely wealthy woman who shares her wealth with
many charities including Tennessee State University, Morehouse College, and
the Hale Washington Library as well as the United Negro College Fund.
Winfrey’s traumatic childhood has made her a passionate spokeswoman for
children’s rights and safety, and she seeks to raise the self-esteem of her
female listeners to help them win self-empowerment. Winfrey states, “I want
to be able to spread the message that you are responsible for your own life
and to set up a format to teach people how to do that.” It is difficult to
envision a more able teacher of that lesson than Oprah Winfrey.
For information about Ken
Chapman and Associates’ Leadership Development Programs, contact Ken Chapman
at 205.366.0265 or email Ken at
kchapman@leaderscode.com.
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