Oprah Winfrey will appear on OWN | Oprah Winfrey network

Chicago — When Oprah Winfrey was 3 years old, her grandmother taught her to read. When Winfrey walked into a radio station at age 16, she had never thought about becoming a broadcaster. But she was sure of one thing — she loved to read.



She had just won a beauty pageant and was at the station to pick up her prize when a man in the station’s newsroom said, “Hey, kid, do you want to hear your voice on tape?” He handed her a news article, and she took the microphone with confidence.

“I read like a champion,” Winfrey recalls. “Yes, because one thing I know I can do, ‘You want me to read something? I will read for you, sir.’”

After she read the news, right then, the station hired her. From there, the poor girl raised on a Mississippi farm won a college scholarship, worked television news jobs, landed her own talk show and became one of the richest and most influential celebrities in the world.

Reading changed the trajectory of Winfrey’s life, and she has never forgotten it. As her success grew, so did her philanthropic work to promote education, which she calls the “open door to anybody’s future.”

Oprah Winfrey plans nighttime show on her network

NEW YORK – Calling her new venture "the network built on great intentions," Oprah Winfrey says her sleeves are rolled up to make the Oprah Winfrey Network "all that I know it can be."
What will those great intentions look like? Speaking to media buyers Thursday at a presentation by partner Discovery Communications, Winfrey filled in a few of the gaps that have left people wondering just what her round-the-clock network will be since she announced it in January 2008.

She took her audience through a dozen or so new shows planned for OWN after its launch next Jan. 1, and offered reassurance that she would be appearing on the 24-hour network she'll also be guiding from behind the scenes.
After reigning in daytime for a quarter-century, she moves to nights to host a show called "Oprah's Next Chapter" that will release her from the confines of a studio and talk-show format for conversations and travel around the world. Read More