Oprah Winfrey (0:00)

Want to get more from business movers? Subscribe to Wondery plus for early access to new episodes, ad free listening, and exclusive content you can't find anywhere else. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. It's 1996 in Oprah Winfrey's office at Harpo Studios in Chicago, Illinois. Oprah leans back in her chair, flipping through the pages of a novel. She wants to start a book club to get America reading again, and she's landed on the perfect first choice. The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacqueline Mitchard. It's a heartbreaking story of a mother whose child is kidnapped. And Oprah sees a bit of herself in the main character, and she knows her audience will, too. So now she's calling up the director of publicity at the book's publishing house to share the good news. The light on her phone blinks, and Oprah picks up the receiver. Hi, is this Patty? It's Oprah Winfrey. Oprah, goodness. Hi. When your assistant said you wanted to talk to me, I thought it was a joke. What can I do for you? Well, this might sound a little crazy, but hear me out. I'm starting a book club on my show, and I swear to you, it's going to be the biggest book club in the world. That's fantastic. You know, anything that encourages people to read is music to my ears. And. And I want Jacqueline Mitchard's book to be the first pick. The Deep End of the Ocean. Yes. I loved it. I'm going to launch the club, and then I'll give my audience a month to read the novel. But we'll want access to Jacqueline for some film segments where I can interview her about the book. We may even have a few fans join us for a short discussion, if that's okay. A dinner party of sorts. Wow. Well, we can certainly arrange that. I was actually just talking with Jacqueline. She's gonna be over the moon. How many copies do you plan on printing? Well, we were at 68,000, but the book's attracting some buzz, so we just bumped it up to 100. I think you can double that. Quadruple it, even. You're gonna sell out in minutes. There's a long pause because the publicist doesn't want to contradict Oprah, but she can't help being a little skeptical. Well, Oprah, this is contemporary literature, and it's Jacqueline's debut novel. 100,000 copies is really a stretch target here. I don't know. You gotta see how quickly Optifast sold when I mention it on air, a million people call the place an order. Yeah, but I'm thinking there might be a lot more people who want to lose weight than they want to read a novel. I mean, it breaks my heart. I really want people to read more, but they just don't. I'm going to change that. Well, I hope you do. And I'll see if we can increase the run a bit. But there's just no way we're printing half a million copies. Well, I mean, all right, it's, you know, it's your book, but when it sells out, and it will, I'm going to call you back and say, I told you so. After Oprah Winfrey's phone call, the publisher decided to print an extra 150,000 copies of Jacqueline Mitchard's novel. But that was not enough. After Oprah announced the Deep End of the Ocean as the first pick of her new book club, the novel's publisher had to print 400,000 more copies within two weeks just to keep up with demand. Oprah Winfrey's book club would be the start of a new era when the Oprah effect would prove its power in new industries and markets. That power would come at a cost, though. It would give Oprah unprecedented influence, but it would also make her a target. Apple Cart is the perfect card for your holiday shopping. You can apply on your iPhone in minutes and start using it right away. You'll earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, including products at Apple like a new iPhone 16 or Apple Watch Ultra. Start holiday shopping for your friends and family today with Apple card subject to credit approval. 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Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is Business Movers. Oprah Winfrey began her career when she was just a teenager. She made a name for herself in Nashville and Baltimore as a reporter and then a news anchor. But though Oprah always felt comfortable in front of cameras, she never felt entirely at ease behind a news desk. It was only when she made the switch to hosting talk shows that she found her true calling. From there, she never looked back. She turned around a failing morning program in Chicago and went on to challenge the king of daytime talk, Phil Donahue, for his crown. Eventually, she impressed the higher ups at ABC so much that her talk show was renamed after her, and she began broadcasting across the country. After the Oprah Winfrey show entered national syndication in 1986, Oprah Winfrey almost instantly became the most popular talk show host in the country. Her show was then shifted from the morning to the afternoon and given the coveted spot in the schedules right before the nightly news. Her ratings were off the chart, and her fans hung on her every word. This success gave Oprah immense power in America. In the late 90s, Time magazine would name her one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. And her unique ability to create and sustain trends could be seen in industries as diverse as dieting and book publishing. But as the turn of the millennium approached, that power would be put to the test. A controversial episode of her show would make her a new enemy, and Oprah would have no choice but to embark on the biggest legal fight of her career to protect her credibility and salvage the future of her show. This is the third episode in our four part series on Oprah Winfrey, the Oprah Effect. It's April 1996 on the set of the Oprah Winfrey Show. A few months before the launch of Oprah's book club, Oprah Winfrey is taping an episode titled Dangerous Foods. But it's really all about one food in particular. Beef. There's been a recent outbreak of mad cow disease in Britain, and Oprah wants to know if it could spread to the United States. She's already interviewed a representative from the National Cattlemen's Beef association who assured her everything was fine. But now Oprah sits across from Howard lyman from the U.S. humane Society, and she's questioning him just how safe beef really is. Okay, Howard, can you walk us through what mad cow disease actually is? Yeah, sure. The technical term is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or bse, but it's most commonly known as Mad cow disease. Because of the symptoms, cattle with the disease can be agitated and get nervous. They start trembling or stumbling. They can even fall asleep on their feet. Similar symptoms appear in humans with the disease, too. You'll start losing your short term memory and then you'll fall down. You're super fatigued, and there's a 100% fatality rate. Once symptoms start presenting themselves, you'll die within a year. And what causes this disease? It develops when cows are fed high protein supplements made from carcasses and offal. That's the trimmings of butchered animals. So essentially, when cows are fed cows. Yes. How on earth is that allowed? What it comes down to is about half of the byproducts from the slaughter of animals can't be sold to humans. So they either have to pay to put all that into a dump or do something else with it. So they take this waste and they add it to all the animals that died unexpectedly. All of the roadkill and the euthanized. Then they grind it up, turn it into something that looks like brown sugar, and feed it back to other animals. It's about as simple as it can be. We're doing something to an animal that was never intended to be done. And you said this disease could make AIDS look like the common cold. Absolutely. It's a pretty extreme statement, isn't it? What we're looking at right now is exactly the same path they followed in England. 10 years of dealing with it as a public relations issue rather than doing anything substantial. 100,000 cows per year in the United States are fine at night and then dead in the morning. The majority of those cows are ground up and fed back to other cows. If only one of them has mad cow disease, it has the potential to affect thousands. But hold on. Cows are herbivores. They shouldn't be eating other cows. That's exactly right. We should have them eating grass, not other cows. We've not only turned them into carnivores, we've turned them into cannibals. Oprah grimaces and turns to her audience. Now, doesn't that concern y'all a little bit right here? Hearing that, this has just stopped me cold from eating another burger. With the Dangerous Foods episode, Oprah Winfrey was convinced she had another ratings hit on her hands. But before it was aired nationwide, the episode was edited for time. And in that process, the statement from the National Cattlemen's Beef association got cut. Their representative had told Oprah's studio audience that there was already a voluntary ban on using Ground up cattle parts as feed. That might have helped calm people's fears had they heard it. But instead, the episode Oprah aired stoked panic. She earned the high rating she hoped for, but she had also angered a powerful group of lobbyists and was about to feel the wrath of an entire industry. The day after Oprah Winfrey aired her Dangerous foods episode, cattle prices plummeted by over 10% and kept falling for two weeks afterward. Ranchers across America knew who to blame, Calling the downturn the Oprah crash. But the cattlemen had no intention of letting a talk show host undermine their industry. The National Cattlemen's beef association immediately pulled $600,000 of advertising from the networks that aired Oprah's show. Then they threatened to sue Oprah under a Texas statute that outlawed anyone from making untruthful statements about perishable food products. Sensing that she might have crossed the line, A week after the Dangerous foods episode, Oprah returned to the subject for a second time. She still believed that she had asked fair questions in the original episode, but she recognized that cutting the statement from the beef association was a mistake. So she brought back the National Cattleman representative and gave him a chance to reiterate the points cut from the previous show more thoroughly. But it wasn't enough to satisfy the disgruntled farmers. So six weeks later, in the early summer of 1996, four ranchers in Amarillo, Texas, began legal proceedings. They targeted Oprah herself, Her distributor, King World productions, her production company, Harpo, and Howard Lyman, the animal rights activist who had been a guest on her program. The cattlemen sought $12 million in damages for the alleged libel, today worth about twice that. Oprah knew that to fight the charges in court would be an expensive and lengthy process. The legal bills alone would be over a million dollars, with no guarantee she would win. So several of her advisors suggested that she try to settle with the ranchers instead. But not everyone around Oprah agreed. As part of her early preparations for the trial, Oprah had hired the consultancy firm Courtroom Sciences, inc. Its co founder was 45 year old psychologist Phil McGraw. He would later become famous as the television personality Dr. Phil. But in 1996, he was just a consultant specializing in courtroom tactics. He strongly advised Oprah against settling the case with the ranchers, telling her that if she decided to fight and fight hard, then far fewer people would be willing to sue her in the future. But if she gave in now, she would open the door to all kinds of speculative and vindictive lawsuits. Oprah agreed with Phil, believing She had been fully within her rights to air an episode on mad cow disease, so she decided to stand her ground. She would take on the cattlemen in court. It took over 18 months for the case to reach trial. The hearing was predicted to last for six weeks, and that was a problem for Oprah. She still had to record her show every weekday, and she didn't want to commute the 900 miles between her studio in Chicago and the courtroom in Amarillo. Of course, the case could not be moved to Chicago, so Oprah had to go to Texas. At the start of 1998, Oprah moved her show's entire production to Amarillo and set up a new production base at a theater in the town. At first, locals weren't exactly pleased to see her. Amarillo had been a center of the cattle industry ever since it was founded in the 1880s. And soon after her arrival, the town was covered in ban Oprah buttons and bumper stickers that read, the only mad cow in America is Oprah. But Oprah had always known how to work a crowd, even a hostile one. In her first episode, taped from Amarillo, she had steak sizzling on barbecues in the background, and she interviewed the Texas born movie star, Patrick Swayze. In another show, she learned how to Texas two step. And at some point in every episode, she made sure to thank the people of Amarillo for their hospitality. Within just a few days, sentiment in the town began to shift, and soon the bumper stickers read amarillo loves Oprah as citizens started lining up for tickets to watch tapings of the show. But as much as Oprah threw herself into life in Amarillo, that wasn't the real reason she was in Texas. As well as recording her program every day, she attended court. Her team of lawyers and consultants had decided to make the case a matter of free speech. Their argument was that if the jury voted to take away Oprah's right to free speech, then someone could just as easily come along and take away theirs. And when it came time for Oprah herself to testify, she hammered that point home for three days. She made it clear again and again that she hosted a talk show, not the evening news. The standard for unbiased reporting was not the same, and she had every right to express her own opinions. In the end, the jury sided with Oprah. And moments after the decision was announced, Oprah appeared on the courthouse steps in downtown Amarillo surrounded by reporters. She flung her fists into the air, yelling, free speech not only lives, it rocks. With this trial over, her crew packed up their temporary home in Amarillo and the Oprah Winfrey show returned to Harpo studios in Chicago. Oprah's triumph had not simply been a legal one. Despite all her wealth and power, she had shown she still knew how to connect with ordinary people, even those initially hostile to her. That skill was what kept the audience of her talk show loyal. Even after more than a decade on the air, Oprah was the most popular talk show host on television, with around 10 million people tuning in every day. And that continued to make her a hot property. Only a few months after returning from Texas, Oprah and her right hand man, Jeff Jacobs, signed a new contract with the distributor of her talk show, King World Productions. This deal would see Oprah continue her program for three more years. And as part of the agreement, Oprah secured a cash advance of $130 million as well as 450,000 King World stock options on top of the nearly 1.4 million stock options she already had from earlier deals. There was speculation in the press that Oprah eventually intended to take over King World Productions herself. Oprah's business interests seemed to be constantly expanding. But that success disguised a growing weakness at the heart of Oprah's empire. Oprah had dethroned Phil Donahue to rule the world of talk shows and made her program the foundation of everything she did. But in the late 1990s, cracks would begin to appear in those previously rock solid footings. The ratings for the Oprah Winfrey show would dip, and a new challenger would emerge for Oprah's crown. Business Movers is sponsored by the Walker webcast. If you're looking to learn more about commercial real estate, entrepreneurship, leadership, and the economy, where would you turn? Well, a good start might be the CEO of one of the largest commercial real estate, finance and advisory services firms in the nation. But how are you ever going to get on their calendar? 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Extra speeds lower above 40 gigabytes of details. So then I punched him in the face. It's the summer of 1998 in Oprah Winfrey's dressing room at Harpo Studios in Chicago, a few months after her legal victory in Texas. Oprah sits on a couch watching an episode of the Jerry Springer show on her tv and she's horrified at what she's seeing. There are people screaming profanities and a fight is about to break out on screen. She knows she should turn it off, but she can't look away. Oprah's right hand man, Jeff Jacobs, pokes his head in. Ah, see, you're doing some market research. Oprah turns down the tv. Can't believe this is what's beating us in the ratings. Jeff comes in and takes a seat beside her, looking at the antics on television. I don't know, that's pretty tame by Jerry's standards. Oprah points wearily at the two women on the screen. Is it? This one is living with that one's fiance apparently, and she doesn't look happy about it. No, she's not. Look, I'm no prude, but I'm out here trying to get folks to read and he's got guests fighting and, I don't know, pulling their pants down on national television. Yeah, I saw that episode. This can't be what people really want to watch. I get that there's shock value, but come on, I don't know. People love how salacious it is. You're not defending this? No, I'm just saying. I mean, I saw your face while you were watching. You might have been disgusted, but you didn't turn it off. Whether people love him or hate him, Jerry Springer gets their juices going. We could take a page out of his book, you know. Absolutely not. I'm not suggesting we let our audience descend into mayhem. No, these women are literally fighting each other. But maybe we can look for some more scandalous stories again. Been a while since we've had a real eye popper. Oprah shakes her head. You know, I can still remember the look on this one woman's face that episode where we brought on a wife her cheating husband and his mistress years ago. You know the one I mean? And live on air, he says that the mistress is pregnant. I can see that woman's face, her pain. It's seared into my memory. I don't want to do that again. Okay, well, we don't have to go that far, but maybe something in the middle. If you want to compete with the Jerry Springers of the world, you're going to have to do something. I don't even want to be in the same sentence as Jerry Springer. We're operating on entirely different playing fields. If people want to watch his show, well, fine, then they're not my people. I want to help change lives for the better, not tear them apart. Oh, Oprah, you know, I hate to say it, but I just don't think viewers are going to tune in for that. What Jerry's doing is what the American people want. Two grown women wrestling on the floor. Yeah, but surely we can do better than this, right? Oprah Winfrey had always thought she had been in sync with her audience. But now she began to wonder whether she was losing her touch. Jerry Springer's success left her with a decision to make. She could join him in chasing audiences through sensational and titillating subjects, or she could find a way to make a rating success out of something more positive. But creating compelling popular television that also bettered people's lives would be no easy task. Oprah would be betting her show's future on the belief that as long as she remained true to herself, her audience would follow. Oprah Winfrey had been weaving the ideas of empowerment and self help into her show for years, but now she made it official. In the fall of 1998, she began marketing the Oprah Winfrey show as Change youe Life Television. She brought on new age writers, spiritual counselors, and life coaches. The talk was all about energy, karma, and the power of the soul. Oprah was excited about the new focus for her show, but at affiliate stations across the country, eyebrows were raised. Part of the reason that television executives were so willing to pay top dollar for Oprah's talk show was to secure her audience for the programs that followed her in the schedules, especially the evening news. But Oprah's new spiritual style had news directors worried. They were concerned Oprah's traditional audience might be turned off by this new direction. And they feared that the kind of audience who would tune in would be less interested in sticking around for the news. They were right to be worried. Ratings for the Oprah Winfrey show kept dropping as viewers looked elsewhere. And it wasn't just Jerry Springer that was taking a chunk of her audience. The sharp tongued Judge Judy was also outrating Oprah. So was Miami based Spanish language talk show, the Christina show. Oprah realized that changes had to be made. She was still determined to help her viewers, but she wasn't too stubborn to admit that she had gotten things wrong. So she toned down the spiritual talk and stopped telling people to change their life, Focusing more on empowerment and encouraging her audience to find their authentic selves. This course correction seemed to stop the bleeding in the show's ratings. By the spring of 1999, Oprah had taken back her top spot. But Jerry Springer and the other challengers were still nipping at Oprah's heels. And as the 20th century drew to a close, the entire media landscape in America was shifting. Oprah could sense it. After a period of rapid growth, the uptake of cable TV was beginning to plateau. And the newly popular Internet promised to change the industry in ways no one could yet predict. If Oprah's business empire was to continue to thrive in this new millennium, she would have to diversify. She realized that there were large numbers of women who might be interested in the type of content Oprah produced, but couldn't watch her program. The Oprah Winfrey show went out at 4:00 every weekday afternoon. But since the early 80s, when Oprah launched the show, the proportion of women in the workforce had gone up by 20%. Oprah wanted a new way to reach these potential fans. Such diversification would cost money, though. Fortunately for Oprah, that's when her finances got a timely boost. In 1999, the TV network CBS bought King World Productions, the distribution company that not only syndicated Oprah's show, but also other popular programs like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. CBS put up $2.5 billion in stock to acquire King World, and Oprah cashed in. This deal made her stake in King world worth about $144 million, over a quarter of a billion today. With that money in her pocket, it was around this time that Oprah met Geraldine Laborn. Geraldine was a former executive at the children's cable TV channel Nickelodeon. She wanted to start a new network run by women for women. It would be centered around what Geraldine called intent and service. The idea of working with deliberation and determination on something bigger than any one person. And this philosophy was a perfect match for Oprah's own. She had been secretly kicking around the idea of starting her own cable network for some time. She simply hadn't found the opportunity to develop it further. But with Geraldine as a potential business partner, Oprah felt the time had come. She quickly decided to come on board. And in exchange for a quarter share in the company, Oprah invested the modern equivalent of $35 million and granted the new network rights to some of the Oprah Winfrey show's back catalog. This new network launched on February 1, 2000, under the name oxygen. It seemed like with Oprah's backing, There was no way it could fail. But in its early months, Oxygen struggled. The network's programming was of inconsistent quality, and they found it hard to find a steady audience. It was a disappointing setback that some saw as further proof that Oprah was losing her touch with the public. But she didn't panic just yet. Oprah viewed the network as a long term investment, and its growing pains did not deter her from taking a bet on another new media venture. In addition to her own cable network, Oprah also wanted to launch her own magazine. She began negotiations with three of the biggest publishing firms in the world. Conde nast, Time Warner, and Hearst. Between them, they published more than 20 of the bestselling magazines, including vogue, Time, and Harper's Bazaar. But out of the three, only Hearst was willing to grant Oprah the total editorial control she was after. This sealed the deal. The first edition of o, the Oprah magazine, Was scheduled to hit newsstands in April of 2000. But to many in the publishing industry, the magazine was a crazy idea. New titles were rarely successful, and even the most popular generally took about five years to turn a profit. Making matters worse, the industry was in the middle of an advertising recession, with revenues down across the board. In short, it was a terrible time to launch a new magazine, no matter how famous the name behind it. But Oprah was confident that she could defy the odds, Feeling certain her magazine would both appeal to the viewers of her talk show and also reach the women who were too busy to tune in. But it was a gamble, and one with a lot riding on it. The Oxygen network hadn't yet worked out the way Oprah had planned. Ratings for the Oprah show continued to fluctuate, and TV industry observers were even wondering Whether the era of daytime talk itself was beginning to pass. So with her magazine, Oprah hoped to find a new way to expand. Expand her business and prove to herself and America that she still had the unique connection with her audience that had made her a star. But if the magazine failed, it would be just another sign that Oprah Winfrey had lost her touch and that the television, film and publishing empire she built over the last 15 years was about to crumble. Audible's best of 2024 picks are here. Discover the year's top audiobooks, podcasts and originals in all your favorite genres, from memoirs and sci fi to mysteries and thrillers. Audible's curated list in every category is the best way to hear 2024's best in audio entertainment, like a stunning new full cast production of George Orwell's 1984 heartfelt memoirs like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's lovely one. The year's best fiction, like the Women by Kristin Hannah and Percival Everett's brilliantly subversive James Audible. There's more to imagine when you listen. Go to audible.com imagine and discover all the years best waiting for you. It's April 2000 at the offices of O, the Oprah Magazine In New York, two months after the launch of the Oxygen TV network, 45 year old Gayle King strides through the busy newsroom, stabbing at the buttons of her cell phone. Around her, the staff at Oprah Winfrey's new magazine are in a frenzy as they try to finalize the very first edition. It's grown to 322 pages, half of them ads, and everything needs final approval. Approval from Oprah herself. She, however, is in Chicago working on her talk show, so all eyes are on Gail. She's not just the editor at large, but she's also Oprah's unofficial second in command. And though she's never worked in print journalism before, she knows what Oprah likes and, crucially, can get Oprah on the phone. Gail, I'm about to go on air. Can I call you back? I'll be real quick. Have you had a chance to look at the latest proofs? Yes, but everything's wrong with them. I'll get you my notes after this show. Is there anything we can start working on now? We're up against the deadline. Where do I even start? The layouts aren't grabbing my attention. The writing is not good. We need to schedule a reshoot too, because there's an incredibly ugly bowl in one of the photos. Oprah, Oprah, slow your horses. We don't have time for a reshoot. Well, we can't put out a terrible magazine, so let's make the time. This has to be perfect. If the first issue is bad, no one's coming back for the second. Okay, well, how about. How about this? If you can just let me know what your specific issues are, we can brainstorm some solutions here and get back to you when you're off the air. Well, the solution is a reshoot. I should have known better than leave these things up to anyone else. I'll be there for the next one. Or maybe you could trust the people you've hired. Have you met me, Gail? Well, you can't be everywhere at once. You're doing too much. If you want this magazine to succeed and you still want to do your show, you have to let something go. Oprah sighs. She knows Gail is right, but she doesn't want to admit it. But Gale can read Oprah's silences. Can you just go look at the proofs for me one more time before you tape? Let me know what we can do without blowing this entire thing up. Fine. Thank you. Look, Gail, I know I'm being difficult, but I'm really grateful to you. I couldn't do any of this without you. Oh, I know. Come on, give me your notes. Oh, gosh. Where do we start? How about the front cover? Okay, but you better get a pen. Gayle King's greatest strength was her ability to communicate with Oprah Winfrey. She helped manage the relationship between Oprah and the magazine staff in New York, but still several senior team members left the publication in its early days, unwilling to put up with Oprah's constant demands. Despite all this, however, the magazine was an instant success. When it launched, the first mile million copies sold out almost immediately, and Hearst was forced to print another half million in short order. Once again, Oprah had seen off her doubters. She still knew her audience better than anyone, and she'd been rewarded with yet another hit. Within a year o the Oprah magazine had a paid circulation of 2 and a half million, more than Vogue, Self, and Martha Stewart Living combined. That made O the most successful startup in magazine history. And no one was in any doubt over the reason why. The magazine wasn't just named after Oprah. Her photo was on the COVID of every issue. To her critics, this was a sign of arrogance, but Oprah didn't care. She thought of the magazine as a personal growth manual and believed there was no one better to embody that message than her, who had herself risen from rags to riches. Advertisers loved this message and the audience it had won. With an average income of around $115,000 in modern money, the typical O reader at launch was considerably wealthier than the viewers of Oprah's daytime TV show. Hoping to reach that affluent readership, luxury brands like Lexus fashion line, Donna Karan and Leather goods store coach flocked to take ad space in the new title. And despite the broader struggles of the publishing industry, Oprah had no trouble filling the pages of her magazine with a potent mix of devoted readers and happy advertisers. Revenues soared. The success of the magazine also gave Oprah renewed confidence. She had not lost her touch. Her daytime talk show may no longer reach the same audience it once did, but it was still aired in 107 countries around the world. It was also the number one in the U.S. despite all the challenges from rivals. And its annual revenues had now reached well over half a billion dollars in today's money. Elsewhere, Oprah's movie production arm was earning about $4 million a year, and she had begun touring cities across America on a live your best life speaking tour, which generated another 1.6 million in ticket sales. But even then, Oprah was leaving money on the table. She received countless lucrative offers to endorse food, clothing lines and perfumes. But where other talk show hosts and lifestyle coaches had eagerly signed such licensing deals, Oprah had resisted. She knew that one bad product partnership could sully her reputation forever. That did mean she lost out on some revenue in the short term. But she could afford that. And by protecting her brand, she believed she was ensuring the future sustainability of her entire business. It was a long term strategy that paid off. In 2003, Forbes magazine announced that Oprah had officially crossed the threshold and become a billionaire. She was the first black woman to accomplish the feat, and she did it without ever taking her company public. Oprah had always said that giving up control to become a publicly traded company would be like losing a part of herself. Being authentic was how she'd made her enormous fortune. And she could only be authentic because she answered to no one else. So in the early 2000s, it seemed that the billionaire Oprah Winfrey could do just about anything she wanted. She was already a trailblazing success in television, film, and publishing after a series of big bets on herself. But Oprah's next move would be her most daring yet. As she approached her third decade at the helm of her own talk show, she would shock the world by ending the program that made her name and embrace a future for Oprah Winfrey without the opinion. Oprah Winfrey show from Wonder E. This is episode three of Oprah's empire for business members. On the next episode, Oprah says goodbye to the Oprah Winfrey show and focuses on her next big venture. Her second attempt at building her own television network. If you like business movers, you can unlock exclusive episodes found nowhere else on Wondery plus and access new episodes early and ad free. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Pod Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a survey@wondery.com survey if you'd like to learn more about Oprah, we recommend a biography by Kitty Kelly Lifeline Biographies Oprah Winfrey, Global Media Leader by Katherine Krohn and WBEZ Chicago's Making Oprah A quick note about our dramatizations in most cases, we can't know everything that happened, but all our reenactments are based on historical research. Business Movers is hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship Audio editing by Mohammed Shazib Sound design by Gabriel Gould Music by Lindsey Graham. This episode is written and researched by Alex Burns. Executive producers are William Simpson for airship and Erin O'Flaherty, Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louie for Wondering Bombas makes the most comfortable socks, underwear and T shirts. Warning. Bombas are so absurdly comfortable you may throw out all your other clothes. Sorry, do we legally have to say that? No, this is just how I talk. And I really love my Bombas. They do feel that good. And they do good too. One item purchased equals one item donated. To feel good and do good, go to bombas.com wondry and use code wondry for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S.com wondry and use code Wondry at checkout.