National Syndication Launch of The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986)

CTL-E-5435 · Event · other · 1986

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

On September 8, 1986, The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast nationally for the first time, syndicated by King World — the event the intake timeline files as 'Oprah Winfrey Launches Syndicated Talk Show.' The show had begun in Chicago, where Winfrey arrived in 1984 to host WLS-TV's AM Chicago and turned the market's lowest-rated morning program into its leader, overtaking Phil Donahue's local ratings within months. On the advice of Chicago film critic Roger Ebert, who predicted the syndicated show would out-earn his own many times over, Winfrey signed the King World deal, and the renamed, hour-long program launched in markets across the country at once. It became the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history, ran for twenty-five seasons, and built the platform from which Winfrey — held at CTL-E-0092, with her Harpo (CTL-E-1627) and OWN (CTL-E-0712) elsewhere in the graph — became the defining media proprietor of her generation. The stop matters to this graph doubly: it is a national milestone whose studio address was always Chicago.

The record

• Also known as: Oprah Winfrey Launches Syndicated Talk Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show Goes National

Notes

Statistics: National launch: September 8, 1986 (History.com; Wikipedia). The intake paste's stop #37 (1986) is VERIFIED. Staged edge: related_to Oprah Winfrey, CTL-E-0092. The Work record for the show itself is a Wave 2 (TV & Film) question, deliberately not duplicated here — this record is the launch event. · Curator's Judgment: DRAFT — for founder review: Every graph needs the moments where its home city exports the future. A morning show on WLS became the most powerful hour in television, and it happened from Chicago — the record states the Ebert detail because it is the rare prophecy, on paper, that undershot what occurred. · Photo slot: HELD — no rights-cleared image was verified for this record in the merge run's bounded Commons sweep (2026-10-15); slot stays HELD until a cleared image is obtained (commons upload, public-domain government portrait, or CTL original), per CTL-PHOTO-001.

Relationships

• Oprah Winfrey — related to
  This event record documents the September 8, 1986 national syndication launch of Oprah Winfrey's (CTL-E-0092) talk show (History.com).

Sources

• History.com, 'Oprah Goes National' (This Day in History, September 8) — supports: the September 8, 1986 first national broadcast, the King World syndication deal, Roger Ebert's role, and the AM Chicago origin — http://history.com/this-day-in-history/september-8/oprah-goes-national
• Wikipedia, 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' — supports: the show's 25-season run (September 8, 1986 – May 25, 2011), its Chicago taping, and its standing as the highest-rated daytime talk show in U.S. history — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oprah_Winfrey_Show
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Oprah Winfrey' — supports: Winfrey's 1984 arrival in Chicago and the show's transformation of AM Chicago's ratings

Record CTL-E-5435 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship · CTL research: BCI-001, MEDIA-001.
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