It was the mid-1980s. It might have been the only time
that Oprah was guaranteed to have the best hair in the room.
September 8, 1986, 40 years ago: The Oprah Winfrey Show premieres in syndication, mostly (but not entirely) on ABC affiliates. It runs for 25 years, and remains the highest-rated daytime talk show in history.
Winfrey, then 32 years old, had been a newscaster in Nashville and Baltimore -- the latter also including Maria Shriver, giving her later interview access to the Kennedy family -- before coming to Chicago, and had been hired to host A.M. Chicago on the city's ABC affiliate, WLS-Channel 7. Two years later, following her Academy Award nomination for her role in The Color Purple, it became The Oprah Winfrey Show, and was nationally syndicated.
The show made her an icon, the kind of person known only by her first name. And the show and its spinoff ventures, including Harpo productions ("HARPO" is "OPRAH" spelled backwards) made her the 1st black billionaire in America, the richest black person of the 20th Century.
It also helped to boost the 2008 Presidential candidacy of fellow black Chicagoan Barack Obama. The sight of Oprah and Jesse Jackson, standing and crying together at Grant Park in Chicago as Obama took the stage for his Election Night victory rally, has stayed with me and many other people.
Unfortunately, it also introduced America to a pair of regular guests who have been revealed as selfish charlatans: Psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw and heart surgeon turned Trump Administration official Dr. Mehmet Oz.
The show was taped at Harpo Studios in Chicago. In 2016, the building was demolished, and the new corporate headquarters for McDonald's opened on the site.
In a 2014 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, comedian Nikki Jenkins, a.k.a. November Christine, played Oprah, against comedian Lauren Flans, who played Ellen DeGeneres.
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