Oprah pulling the plug in 2011

Ending her talk show after a quarter-century "feels right in my bones and right in my spirit," Oprah Winfrey told her studio audience at the end of the taping of Friday's show.

Oprah, one of the most powerful women in the world, had promised a statement Friday after news broke Thursday that she was pulling the plug on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011.

"It's exactly the right time," she said, at times tearful.

"For some of you long-time Oprah viewers, you have literally grown up with me. You have your family and you raised your children and you left a spot for me in your morning and afternoon."

But the 55-year-old entertainer's inspirational message, like her media empire, will just keep expanding, a message on www.oprah.com said Friday afternoon.

A link from the site to her next venture, the cable Oprah Winfrey Network, or OWN, declared: "For an hour a day, she's been bringing `live your best life' television right into your living room. Well now it's time for what's next. Not just what's next for Oprah, but what's next for you. The Oprah Winfrey Network will be a 24/7 cable network devoted to self-discovery, to connecting you to your best self and to the world. Oprah will be with us every day. She's the life force of OWN."

The network will launch in January 2011, and a number of executives from her daily TV show have already signed on to the new venture, according to www.oprah.com.

In the hours that followed Thursday's disclosure, industry watchers bemoaned the end of an era and speculated about whether a supremely savvy businesswoman's decision would work to take her star power and brand from the mainstream TV milieu that created her into a more nimble niche that is entirely her own.

Her decision "will have a ripple effect through the TV industry," industry watcher Joe Flint reported on his blog at the Los Angeles Times.

"Winfrey is making the decision that she can make more money and build her brand better on cable ... A few years ago that would have seemed unthinkable, but it is clear that the greater value lies in the broadband medium," Flint wrote.

"Winfrey herself may be a loser because odds are that, at least in the short-term, she will take a financial hit by abandoning daytime talk – although, of course, in the long term she is building an asset that could have tremendous value."

The big winners, Flint wrote, are Discovery Communications, her partner on the Oprah Winfrey Network, as well as Ellen DeGeneres and Warner Bros., "which will no longer have to compete against Winfrey in daytime." The losers, he said, include CBS, which is losing hundreds of millions of fans, along with the revenue they attract and the spillover to local programming.

"Winfrey was boisterous and enthusiastic and endeared herself to her audience and guests," Flint said. "She was able to woo political leaders and movie stars to her couch and at the same time dip into the more tawdry topics that have also become a staple of TV without soiling her own reputation."

On the Broadcast&Cable website, Mark Toney, senior vice-president at consultancy SmithGeiger, said he anticipated that once stations are free of "the shackles of pricey syndicated programming," they will experiment with local content, including news and entertainment.

"But it's truly the end of a huge era," he said. "There'll be a sense of, `Man, we had a great run.'"

WHO WILL TAKE HER PLACE?

Oprah Winfrey's decision to leave CBS is nothing less than a paradigm shift, one that will roil the already fragile local TV station business for the next two years.

"It's going to be the clash of the titans," is how one syndicated-TV onlooker described what the next 18 months will look like as the big guns jostle for position.

Here are some potential heirs to Oprah's syndicated throne:

ELLEN DEGENERES

She's the most obvious choice to follow in Oprah's footsteps. Her show got its start on NBC stations, where the original licence fees, as usual in start-up deals, were quite low.

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Those NBC station deals will be coming up for renewal soon, and with ABC looking for an Oprah replacement, Ellen's timing looks impeccable. (While CBS owns the syndication rights to Oprah, ABC stations air the show in syndication.)

PHILLIP MCGRAW

His hit advice talk show, Dr. Phil, aired by CBS, is a show that Winfrey helped nurture into first-run fame, and it could take advantage of the looming vacuum. Until now, his talk show could not contractually go head-to-head with Oprah in the afternoon, but once the latter is gone, CBS will be working to upgrade the relationship therapist to those coveted 4 p.m. slots.

MEHMET OZ

Health guru and Columbia University professor of surgery, Dr. Oz is another Oprah acolyte; his talk show, launched this fall, is produced by Winfrey's Harpo firm.

NATE BERKUS

Another frequent Oprah guest, this interior designer has a daytime talk show with a lifestyle theme that is set to launch in September 2010.