NEW YORK – Is it too soon to begin missing Oprah?

Why put it off? In less than two years, she will vanish from sight as a five-hours-weekly broadcast TV fixture. How could we not feel early pangs of withdrawal? Let’s go ahead and start our seven stages of grief.

For nearly a quarter-century Oprah Winfrey has been our moral arbiter, lifestyle coach and window on the world. Her show has been our church, Chautauqua and kaffeeklatsch.

She has inspired us to monitor her ricocheting weight gains and losses as a national pastime, akin to following the Dow or baseball box scores.

Along the way, she has certified the so-called “Oprah Effect,” which was celebrated in a documentary on CNBC last spring. It seems her mere mention of your product or service on her show “just might make you a millionaire,” thanks to Oprah’s “unprecedented power of persuasion” over us viewers.

How then will we manage without Oprah as a daily TV reference point? How will we know what to read, buy or think?

Howard Rosenberg, TV critic of The Los Angeles Times, had Oprah pegged pretty well from her show’s first day, back on Sept. 8, 1986.

“She’s roundhouse, a full-course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, lowdown, earthy, raw, hungry,” he wrote.

A quarter-century later, how could this lollapalooza of a TV personality desert us?

Already the date is inscribed on millions of our calendars or, at least, our wounded psyches: Sept. 9, 2011. Around 660 days from now. That’s when “The Oprah Winfrey Show” as we have known it for so long will end.

Making it official on Friday’s program, Oprah said “the countdown to the end of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ starts now,” and invited viewers to take “this 18-month ride with me.”

And then?

Maybe we should take heart. Evidence suggests that the unparalleled power Oprah wields isn’t going away. Oprah is a unique force of nature, and the vast store of energy she commands, like all energy in the universe, can neither be created nor destroyed. Instead, it’s converted to a different form.

So Winfrey’s daily syndicated talk show will be transformed into her stewardship of an entire cable network, the forthcoming OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. When it switches on in 2011 (dislodging the Discovery Health Channel), it will take its place in Oprah’s sprawling multibillion-dollar media empire with her magazine, the syndicated talk shows she produces (such as “Dr. Phil,” “Rachael Ray” and “The Dr. Oz Show”), a production studio, a satellite radio channel, and more.

That’s not to say the farewell edition of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” isn’t likely to be a TV leave-taking of epic proportions.

Why delay? Get those hankies ready.

Winfrey will be forsaking some 200 stations in the U.S. alone (take that, broadcast TV!) in favor of cable. She will be vacating time slots that must be filled by station owners with something else viewers want to see.

Meanwhile, she will ride off into the sunset – to OWN headquarters in Los Angeles, that is, from her longtime home base in Chicago.

And then, before we start to miss her too much, we will learn for sure how she’ll manifest herself on her new cable platform.

Will it be as a behind-the-scenes spiritual presence? As a pop-in guest star on the as-yet-unknown slate of shows that will span her network’s schedule?

Will she carve out a fixed time and space to host a newly hatched show of her own, something similar but different from her current show that will guarantee her audience continuing contact?

Probably all of the above. And it’s a safe bet that a quarter-century’s cache of syndicated reruns will also find a place in the lineup.

Maybe there won’t be anything to miss.