When Oprah packs up and moves to L.A. next year, her talk show replacement won’t be another syndicated show.

Instead, it will be a brand new, live, local morning show with a studio audience, tentatively titled “Morning Rush,” to originate from WLS-Ch. 7’s studios at 190 N. State St., according to broadcast reporter Robert Feder’s vocalo.org.

That’s the word from Emily Barr, president/general manager of the top-rated ABC-owned station, which has served as Oprah’s flagship outlet at 9 a.m. Monday through Friday for a quarter-century.

Kitty Kelly’s unauthorized biography of Oprah will be turned into a TV movie biopic or miniseries to air in September, 2011, coinciding with Oprah’s departure from her daytime talk show of 25 years.

TV movie producer Larry A. Thompson, who called the story “certainly a challenge,” acquired the rights to “Oprah: A Biography,” according to Deadline Hollywood’s Nikke Finke.

“I happen to be from Mississippi where she is from, and I know her career very well,” Thompson told Finke. “I think it’s a fabulous story ?

Media Process Group moved into its West Loop facility in 2005 in part to be closer to Harpo Studios, which is just a few blocks east of MPG on Washington Boulevard.

But even with Oprah Winfrey’s announcement that she’d end her talk show on Sept. 9, 2011 after 25 years on the air, co-owner Bob Hercules was confident about prospects for his company.

“One thing I’ve learned in 24 years [at MPG] is that clients change all the time,” Hercules says. “This has been a great run on ?Oprah’ for many years, but all good things come to an end.

All good things must come to an end and Oprah’s extraordinary 25 year TV run in Chicago will end on Sept. 9, 2011, according to ABC.

Oprah’s announcement on her Friday show put an end to weeks of speculation that she may leave daytime syndication and possibly move her show to OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, Winfrey’s joint venture with Discovery Communications.

“We have the greatest respect for Oprah and wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors,” the show’s distributor, CBS TV Distribution, said in a statement.

Over the 25 years Oprah has broadcast her daily talk show from Chicago, it was inevitable that one day she would move the show to Los Angeles.

Apparently that day will arrive in 2011 when her CBS syndication contract ends and she will transition to her own Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) on cable in a joint venture with Discovery Communications.

The world will await the announcement of her future plans by the end of the year. In the past, Oprah either announced her retirement or a move to L.A. and she always cheerily and thankfully stayed right here.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC) has received a $250,000 grant from The Oprah Winfrey Foundation for the innovative education program, DocuFest.

The grant will support the digital transfer of 150 programs from the museum’s civil rights collection and create free online access to streamed television programs and lesson plans for students and teachers.

The collection highlights specific stories and events related to the earlier struggle for equality. Many programs showcase the influence and accomplishments of America’s civil rights leaders.

It looks like Oprah may not leave her show in 2006 after all. It’s been reported she could renew through the 2007-08 season with distributor King World and the seven ABC-owned stations that carry the show to an average audience of about 26 million viewers a week.

After Oprah wraps her 25-year-old daytime show in May, the two studios at Harpo Inc. may simply go dark. While the company hinted a new program might replace “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” behind-the-scenes production work is all that’s slated now.

“This is going to be a content factory, for many platforms and distribution outlets, from digital to video-on-demand to cable,” said Harpo co-president Erik Logan.

WHO HE IS: Bronx native Fred Keller was hired by Filmworkers’ Reid Brody in April of last year as fresh new talent to match a new facility upgrade.

WHAT HE DOES: Operates one of its three $1 million Spirit telecines, including a new 2K DataCine, and one of three DaVinci upgrades to 2K-Plus.

He color corrected Oprah Winfrey’s 2007 Oscar special and spots for McDonald’s, Hallmark, Capital One, Allstate and Blue Cross Blue Shield and KFC.

When Oprah Winfrey toured the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for her special coverage of the disaster, Keith Walker was behind the camera.

“Oprah told Keith it was one of the best pieces she’d ever done,” said Bob Hercules, Walker’s partner in Media Process Group. “They shot New Orleans a couple days after it happened. They went to the Astrodome. They did some very moving pieces.”

Among a host of other projects, MPG regularly operates as a field crew for Winfrey, and edited parts of Winfrey’s 20th Anniversary DVD boxed set, due out for the holidays.

Chicago native Terrence Howard’s 17-year film and TV career underwent a seismic shift with his star turn in “Hustle & Flow,” the Memphis hip-hop drama that sold to MTV and Paramount Classics for a record $9 million at Sundance.

This year alone Howard appears five films.

They are “Crash,” “Lackawanna Blues,” “Four Brothers,” “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” and the Oprah Winfrey-produced made-for-TV “Their Eyes were Watching God.”

Howard will be the honoree of the Chicago International Film Festival’s Black Perspectives Program this October.

THE ONLY U.S. MEDIA LION awarded at Cannes this year went to Oprah for the much talked-about giveaway of more than 200 Pontiac G6 cars to Oprah Winfrey’s studio audience, engineered by GM’s media-planning agency, Publicis Groupe’s GM Planworks, Detroit. It was the only U.S. entry among more than 1,000 in the category to win a Lion.

ROGER EBERT’S STAR DEDICATION on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood Thursday was studded with stars, fellow movie columnists and friends of the critical icon.

WHEW, OPRAH STAYS PUT. The tension’s over as to whether she would or wouldn’t opt out of TV and Chicago at the end of her current contract. But we can relax. Oprah is not going to hang it up after all. Her newly-signed contract will keep her on TV through 2011 ? and assure continuing jobs for the nearly 300 people who work on the show.

By 2011, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” will have been on a full 25 seasons. And they say there’s no indication that the 25th season will be the last.

DIRECTOR MICHAEL MANN (“Public Enemies”) signed screenwriter Sheldon Turner (“Up in the Air”) to script his next big project, “Big Tuna” ? a movie about Chicago Outfit boss Tony Accardo, aka “Big Tuna” and his relationship with his mobster prot?g? Sam Giancana.

The movie could be filmed here, given Chicago native Mann’s penchant for realism — remember how he had Lincoln Ave. repaved with cobblestones for the scene in “Public Enemies” outside the Biograph Theatre? Accardo had a big house in River Forest and Giancana lived in Oak Park.

The announcement that Oprah’s Harpo Production would remain in Chicago after Oprah’s syndicated show ends in September, 2011, was the best Christmas gift Harpo employees and the company’s many local suppliers could receive this year.

But Tim Bennett, Harpo, Inc.’s president, is not remaining. He will retire from the company at the end of May and plans to move to Santa Barbara.

Two Harpo executives have replaced Bennett, who has been the man behind the scenes for 15 years. Oprah brought him aboard from Ch.

A new design studio, mr. moqo, headed by graphic designer Robert von Bjal, has opened in shared space with Hootenanny and fxphd, where he will become part of the collaboration among the creative media companies.

Von Bjal will provide entertainment and advertising clients with his brand of designimation, a unique blend of animated typography, mnemonics, branding and identity systems.

“I am not mr.

When Misty Tosh completes her reality show assignment in mid-March, the globe-trotting producer will spend a month of humanitarian work in the slim volcanic Indonesian island of Lombok.

There, in the tiny village of Sembalun, Tosh and her production partner, Lisa Colangelo, will resume their mission of providing English education and self-help programs to the island villagers.

The traveling filmmakers first went to Indonesia two years ago after working on back-to-back production projects, one of which had a profound effect on Tosh.

Tom Rovak, S2/Swell’s ace colorist for a dozen years, has been freelancing under the banner of his new company, Highly Defined, Inc., until he opens Chicago’s only independent color room outside of a post house.

A $400,000 da Vinci Resolve? v3.4 digital mastering suite will be the heart of the facility.

The new company probably will be located in 4-5,000-sq. ft. space in a River West building he’s currently negotiating for, Rovak said.

“Most color correction rooms in town are traditional linear rooms.

A MAJOR ROCK SHOW was captured for webcasting at the Aragon Ballroom by Third Wave Productions for client Network Live.

“It will be a simulcast broadcast later on AOL and XM Satellite Radio later this month,” said Hank Neuberger, a producer-partner with Terry Fryer and Stephen Warner in Third Wave.

A Jam Productions’ show, the two rock groups were Franz Ferdinand and The Cribs, in concert before an SR0 live audiences. The seven-camera HD shoot was provided by the HD Roadie Truck.

AN ENVIABLE PROJECT. A post job for Leo Burnett and client Philips Sonicare dental hygiene that Machete editors started in May and kept growing and growing finally ended two weeks ago.

“Philips is an international player,” notes Machete partner Luis Landgraf, “and the number of spots kept growing and they were sent back and forth to Germany, Holland and Japan.” Everybody edited, he says, meaning: Marty Bernstein, Scott Cohen, new addition Kenan Legg and Mary Roland.