Ellen Gray: 25 things that just won't be the same after 'Oprah' goes off the air

DOOMSAYERS notwithstanding, we do not expect to wake up Thursday morning to a world without Oprah Winfrey.

There's still her cable network, OWN. Her magazine, O. Her website, Oprah.com. Her Sirius/XM outpost, Oprah Radio. But we're not in denial. When the internationally syndicated "Oprah Winfrey Show" signs off tomorrow afternoon after 25 seasons, there are some things my Yo! colleagues and I agree won't be the same.

Let us count the ways:

1. The talk-show circuit. Whether it's someone with a project to promote or a failure to 'fess up to, all the late-night interviews with Jay, Dave, the Jimmys, Craig and Conan, don't add up to the cultural impact of one visit to the woman who's been shaping viewers' tastes and opinions from a studio in Chicago for longer than most of these guys have even had shows.

2. There'll no longer be a good excuse to cry in the middle of the afternoon. (Do not talk to us of "Dr. Phil." Because he just wants to make us throw things.)

3. Our favorite show on Oprah's new cable network, OWN, "Season 25: Oprah Behind the Scenes," will officially run out of fresh material. The good news? There's still enough of a backlog to supply fresh episodes through the summer, according to an OWN spokeswoman.

4. Product placement on TV is bound to be way less interesting. In 25 seasons, Oprah's given away 570 cars alone, according to O Magazine. That's a lot more fun than seeing a character on a show break off a conversation to talk about how well the vehicle she's never even mentioned before handles curves.

5. No more calls: "Girrrl, are you watching 'Oprah'?"

6. Arnold "The Inseminator" Schwarzenegger will have to seek absolution elsewhere. He might be better off: Dissed wife Maria Shriver and Oprah go way, way back - to the days when both worked at a Baltimore TV station. And it was Shriver, not Schwarzenegger, who's on the farewell fete airing this week.

7. Celebrities will have to write full memoirs to reveal traumatic childhood moments.

8. Four o'clock? For Philadelphians used to that being the Hour of O, its biggest claim to fame goes back to being some other country's tea time.

9. Charles Dickens - whose "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations" are among the more than 60 books to get the Oprah Book Club nod - will finally have to hire a publicist.

10. E! Entertainment's "The Soup" will lose one of its best clip sources.

11. Tom Cruise's next manic episode? Likely to involve less-stylish couch, lower ratings.

12. Obtaining tickets to the taping of a daytime talk show's season premiere will no longer be considered the equivalent of winning the lottery.

13. People - not us, of course, but people we see far too often out on the road - will continue to text while driving, but may no longer feel so guilty about it.

14. "My Favorite Things" will go back to being a song from "The Sound of Music." List will return to relatively inexpensive items: raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, etc. And we'll stop fantasizing about being the beneficiaries of Oprah's sponsored largesse.

15. We'll once again be consulting librarians - or Amazon.com's "new & noteworthy" listings - for reading suggestions.

16. With televised fitness advice becoming the exclusive province of skinny women in Lycra whose idea of weight gain is ballooning from a 0 to a size 2, viewers whose closets contain a more Winfrey-like range will think seriously about killing their TV sets.

17. John Travolta will have to look elsewhere the next time he wants to fly a planeload of strangers Down Under.

18. If there are any Oprah secrets left - from long-lost relatives to weird personal habits - they're likely to stay secret. Because if they haven't come out in 25 seasons, they're in to stay.

19. Insomniacs will be more desperate without 1 a.m. "Oprah" reruns on 6ABC.

20. We'll no longer have someone reminding us regularly to "live your best life."

21. If we want to know what's going on with Oprah's BFF Gayle, we're just going to have to watch or listen to "The Gayle King Show" (10 a.m. weekdays, OWN; 9-11 a.m., Sirius/XM Radio).

22. We'll have to move to Vegas if we want to see this much of Celine Dion again. After King, who's been on "Oprah" 139 times, Dion's the most frequent female guest, with 27 appearances, according to the numbers-crunchers at O. That's one more than Suze Orman, who probably can't sing a note.

23. Beef? It's what's for dinner again.

24. Writers can no longer get motivated by imagining themselves on that couch Cruise jumped on, talking their way onto the bestseller list.

25. James Frey who? *

Compiled with the help of Yo! colleagues Jenice M. Armstrong, Laurie Conrad, Molly Eichel and Debi Licklider. Send email to graye@phillynews.com.