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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Oprah Winfrey Show

American television talk show (1986–2011)

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 11, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American daytime talk show that was hosted by Oprah Winfrey. The show ran in syndication for twenty-five seasons from September 8, 1986, to May 25, 2011, in which it broadcast 4,561 episodes. The show was taped in Chicago and produced by Winfrey. It remains the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Oprah Winfrey Show” is american television talk show (1986–2011). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Oprah, Winfrey and Show, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1986, 2011—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Oprah, Winfrey and Show is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american television talk show (1986–2011)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1986 and 2011.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Oprah Winfrey Show primary sources, The Oprah Winfrey Show archive and Oprah research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Oprah Winfrey Show”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.