On January 29th, 1954, an African-American girl named Oprah was born in rural Mississippi. She lived for a while with her teenage mother, in Milwaukee and after that was sent to live with her father, in Nashville, Tennessee.
When she was a high-school student, she worked for WVOL radio in Nashville and by the time she was 19 years old, Oprah was a co-anchor for the local evening news. In 1984, Oprah moved to Chicago to host a half-hour talk show called “AM Chicago”. A few months after she took over, the show became the highest-rated talk show in the city. It was renamed “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and it was expanded to 60 minutes.
Today, Oprah Winfrey is considered to be the richest black woman in the world, with a net worth of $3.5 billion. In today’s article we are going to find out how did she managed to become a billionaire.
Shall we begin?
1. The Oprah Winfrey Show
Her show was the most successful television talk show that ever existed. It was on air for 25 seasons, it aired in over 100 countries around the world and it ended in 2011. She used her show as an educational platform, where she featured book clubs, many interviews, a lot of self-development sequences and philanthropic forays into world events.
“The Oprah Winfrey Show” received 47 Daytime Emmy Awards. By 2010, Oprah had a gigantic salary: $350 million per year and she was the most high-paid talk-show host ever.
Her show is considered one of the greatest shows off all the time.
2. Harpo Studios
Harpo Studios is an American multimedia production company that was founded by Oprah Winfrey in 1986. The firm is based in West Hollywood, California. The name “Harpo” is actually her name spelled backwards. This company took over Oprah’s show and also launched a lot of successful movies, including “Selma”, “The Color Purple” and “Beloved”.
These movies made $2 billion and according to Forbes, Harpo Studios has an approximately net worth of $150 million.
What can we say? Oprah has a sixth sense when it comes to making money and also a name for herself.
3. O, The Oprah Magazine
“O, The Oprah Magazine” is a women’s magazine that was launched by Oprah Winfrey in 2000, as a results of a collaboration with Hearst Magazines. This magazine involved interviews with celebrities, book reviews and stories about motivation.
People bought every single copy they could find and as a result, in 2001 it was named the “Best Start-Up Magazine”. The print versions sold around 2 million copies per issue and the magazine stopped printed editions from 2020.
Even though you can’t find copies in the stores anymore, the magazine is available as “Oprah Daily” on the digital platform. Every issue has around 10 million readers.
4. Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)
After her daytime talk show has ended, Oprah launched a network – a cable channel that was in collaboration with Discovery Communications – called Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).
At first, this new show didn’t seem very appreciated. When it first aired, in 2013, there were only 180,000 people who were watching a day. Somehow, Oprah managed to change things when she did a unique interview with Lance Armstrong, about his doping charges. By doing this, she gained 28 million viewers and 15 millions of the were outside the United States of America.
By 2016, her viewership community had grown to 537,000 people watching per day and it has been growing constantly ever since. By doing this show, Oprah has earned roughly $75 million.
5. The Oprah Conversation
Last production that Oprah created is called “The Oprah Conversation”. It is an interview talk show that had its premiere on Apple TV+ on July 30, 2020.
The show focused attention on many high-end celebrities and politicians, such as Barack Obama, Elliot Page, Mariah Carey and Stevie Wonder, where they talked about aspects in their career and personal life.
One of the most appreciated and most talked-about interviews that Oprah conducted in this show was the one where the host sat down with two members of the British royal family: Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle.
According to CBS, they paid around $7 to 9 million to air the episode.
What we can say about Oprah Winfrey is that she is an incredible woman who didn’t have such a decent life. She was assaulted by an older cousin when she was only 9 years old and then, when she was 14, she was assaulted again, but this time by another family member. The second time she got pregnant, gave birth, but the child didn’t survive.
These are huge traumas that can give a person immense pain, but Oprah pushed through and made a name for herself. With her charming personality, intelligence and creativity, she became one of the most-known women on the planet and also the richest African-American woman.
Good one, Oprah!
