Oprah Winfrey has overcame many challenges in her early life to become a media giant. Oprah was born in 29 January 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi,with unwed teenage parents. She had a difficult childhood and living in poverty in her grandmother’s home for her first 6 years, after that between her father’s residence in Nashville and her mother’s in Milwaukee. She's an excellent student, she won a full scholarship to Tennessee State University then became interested in journalism and media. After a career in broadcast news, she move to talk show television. With the success of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah built a media empire that includes a magazine, film production company and cable network.
Oprah's Beginnings
In 1976, Oprah Winfrey moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she hosted the TV chat show People Are Talking. The show became a hit and Winfrey stayed with it for 8 years, after which she was recruited by a Chicago TV station to host her own morning show,A.M. Chicago. Her major competitor in the time slot was Phil Donahue. Within several months, Winfrey's open, warm-hearted personal style had won her 100,000 more viewers than Donahue and had taken her show from last place to first in the ratings. Her success led to nationwide fame and a role in Steven Spielberg's 1985 film The Color Purple, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Winfrey launched the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986 as a nationally syndicated program. With its placement on 120 channels and an audience of 10 million people, the show grossed $125 million by the end of its first year, of which Winfrey received $30 million. She soon gained ownership of the program from ABC, drawing it under the control of her new production company, Harpo Productions ('Oprah' spelled backwards) and making more and more money from syndication.
Success and Fame
In 1994, with talk shows becoming increasingly trashy and exploitative, Winfrey pledged to keep her show free of tabloid topics. Although ratings initially fell, she earned the respect of her viewers and was soon rewarded with an upsurge in popularity. Her projects with Harpo have included the highly rated 1989 TV miniseries, The Women of Brewster Place, which she also starred in. Winfrey also signed a multi-picture contract with Disney. The initial project, 1998's Beloved, based on Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison and starring Winfrey and Danny Glover, got mixed reviews and generally failed to live up to expectations.
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