Oprah Winfrey leaves void as she forges new path

Oprah Winfrey has taped more than 5,000 episodes of her daytime talk show, transforming television and trying to teach millions of viewers how to live life with purpose along the way. She has one more to go. She says she feels relieved.

She may be the only one.

Television stations are bracing for an afternoon ratings slump without her. Publishers and publicists are contemplating what the next best show for promoting their products will be. And Winfrey's viewers are looking for something else to watch — and many of them are wondering where to find OWN, her five-month-old cable channel, where she will host a new show on a less demanding schedule next year.

"I literally curb my enthusiasm for the end, because I realize that for the other people that are part of this experience" — like the 464 people who produce her show — "the end is a different experience than it is for me," she said in an interview last week.

The last episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which will be televised on Wednesday, is the biggest such moment in television since Johnny Carson quit "The Tonight Show" two decades ago.

Carson walked away and did not look back; what Winfrey is doing may be much more risky. She is moving to cable, to OWN, where she wants to build a bigger business, though the early ratings have been disappointing.

"I'm not going away, I'm just changing," she said. "I'm just creating another platform for myself, which eventually will be wider and broader than what I have now."

Skeptics about the OWN venture abound, but Winfrey has proved skeptics wrong in the past, most notably in the mid-1990s when she turned away from tabloid fare about cheating spouses and scandalous paternity test results and talked, instead, about "living your best life" spiritually and emotionally. Surprising the television business, she held onto her viewers, and she remains the country's most popular talk show host by far.

People around Winfrey say they sense that she is nervous about OWN. "I wish more people were watching," she said, when asked about OWN's weekly show about the making of her talk show. But she seems at peace with her decision, made 18 months ago, to quit her syndicated program and the demanding schedule that goes with it.

Some stations will replace "Oprah" with "Dr. Oz," "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" or, in the fall, a show by Anderson Cooper. Others will expand newscasts.

Her departure is turning into yet another teachable moment. Her farewell tour this season has been fantastical to her fans and egomaniacal to others. All manner of anchors, actors, and authors have kissed her ring. President Barack Obama, whom she helped to elect, dropped by last month.