blog 5

Winfrey's choice of career in media didn't shock her grandmother. As a child Oprah would interview her corncob doll and crows perched on the fence of her family's property. Oprah acknowledge her grandmother's influence, she said it was Hattie Mae who had encouraged her to speak in public and "gave me a positive sense of myself." Oprah landed a job at her local radio station when she was still in high school. She then began co-anchoring the evening news at Nashville's WLAC-TV when she was only nineteen. She moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV to co-anchor the six o'clock news in 1976. She was selected join Richard to co-host WJZ's local talk show People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14, 1978. Winfrey moved to Chicago, in 1983, to host WLS-TV's, which was only a half-hour long and had low rates, it was called AM Chicago. It aired fo the first time on January 2, 1984. Within months after Oprah took over, the show from low ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest rated talk show in Chicago. Once it became more popular, it was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, and expanded to a full hour.