How did Oprah get so rich???

Really... she's a talk show host, but she has schools, magazines, tv studios and real estate and television networks, but how did she get the money? She's got more money than most European countries. Regis Filban has been on talk shows for decades... but he's not as ridiculously rich.

She owns a few blocks of downtown Chicago. I'm sure that gets tremendous rent, but how would she get the money to buy downtown Chicago real estate?

A lot of the giveaways her show has are donations from sponsors and ABC network pays for a lot of things.

I'm starting to wonder if she's so charitable to make up for the mystery of where her money came from.

Mind Hax!

I hate this racist pig.

geo said:

She's got more money than most European countries.

At least a gazillion lolmillion times moar!

Breaking news: celebrities earn much more money for doing very little than regular people who work their asses off just to pay their mortgages and put food on the table. Life is unfair.

As for the philanthropy thing, I'm sure her charitable efforts are a small percentage of what she earns.

If you can answer "why people would watch something like BB" then you can also answer this one.

She has 2.7 billion as of 2010 is more than most European countries. Its not racist. I'd wonder no matter what.

She has more money than other celebrities though. Her wealth just seemed to grow exponentially even when she was just a talkshow host.

I'm not wondering why she makes so much compared to me. I'm wondering why she has so much compared to other talkshow hosts. Riki Lake was another Chicago talkshow host for 10 years. Maurey, Jerry. No one made the same money she did in her first 10 years as a talk show host. But again as people will point out life isn't fiar. I just wonder how she made 340 million in her first 10 years as a talkshow host.

Maybe ABC just needed her more.

Charritable efforts shouldn't gain money... hence the charity :-)

Why concentrate on her specifically? There are hundreds of billionaire celebrities out there.

Name another. I'm ignorant about billionaire celebs. I suppose I targeted her specifically because I'm in Chicago and she's a talk show host that before celebrities and give-aways she was talking about mundane things.

Like, Bill Gates? Oprah is rather poor compared to him. But then Bill Gates is poor compared to Carlos Slim :P

Bill Gates is a celebrity? Well I guess what he has done turned him into a celebrity.

How does one get rich? Oprah made good investment decisions, spent wisely, diversified her business enterprises, and built an empire. She is not "just a talk show host."

Thanks Shaik. This post can go to hell now if someone wants to delete it.

Donald Trump is another billionaire celeb that I can think of at the moment.

I hate Oprah.

George Lucas has even more money than Oprah and all he did was release a bunch of good movies then spend decades wrecking them...

On her back?

But Bill Gates made his fortune starting Microsoft. The stuff he created is affecting me today. I'm typing on a computer that is running an OS made by his company.

You probably don't know how Oprah got rich, because as Shai said, she made her fortune investing and putting her face on things.

Vince Mcmahon is a billionair celebrity.
Will Smith
others

CODOR said:

George Lucas has even more money than Oprah and all he did was release a bunch of good movies then spend decades wrecking them...

Yeah, he made a couple of good films. He's created a franchise name and had many other artists make good entries for his corporation.

And yeah, he does self-cannibalize his empire and still manage to double his money from doing so.

geo said:

Name another. I'm ignorant about billionaire celebs.

From a short list I found on the Internet - Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, the recently deceased Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, J.K. Rowling, Warren Buffet and Giorgio Armani.

geo said:

She has 2.7 billion as of 2010 is more than most European countries.

I'd be interested in seeing your definition of a billion. She would be slightly richer than Lesotho, but poorer than the Fiji Islands, for instance.

Maybe he's talking long scale billions, which are the same as short scale trillions.

I don't think anybody in the world is a trillionaire though, not even Bill Gates, Roman Abramovich and a bunch of Wall St players nobody's ever heard of.

Anyway Oprah is "The King Receiver" from this book I'm reading at the moment (obviously the guy who is it in the book will get killed at the end and Oprah is his daughter). She gets the proceeds of everything stolen in all robberies in the whole world. She also has the elixir of life, is 150 years old and lives in a volcano... not some pussy hollowed out one mind you, but in heatproof hamster run things actually immersed in the lava.