It’s an ending and a beginning for Oprah Winfrey. The talk show queen told her studio audience Friday that she would end her syndicated TV show in 2011 after a quarter-century on the air. But everyone expects Oprah (net worth: $2.7 billion) to start up a new show on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, a much-delayed joint venture with Discovery Communications Inc. that is projected to debut in 2011. OWN is to replace the Discovery Health Channel and will debut in 74 million homes.

AP reports that Winfrey told the audience that she loved “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” that it had been her life and that she knew when it was time to say goodbye. “Twenty-five years feels right in my bones and feels right in my spirit.” She said she and her staff were going to brainstorm ideas for the final season of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and that she hoped viewers would take “this 18-month ride with me.” In Season 25, “we are going to knock your socks off,” she said. “The countdown to the end of `The Oprah Winfrey Show’ starts now.”

“Oprah,” which began as a local Chicago morning program, evolved into television’s top-rated talk show for more than two decades, airing in 145 countries worldwide and watched by an estimated 42 million viewers a week in the U.S. alone. “Oprah Winfrey is in a category of her own,” said Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, in the AP story. “This is a great American story and like any great American story it’s supersized.”