This post was part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2007 feature. Voting has now closed and readers have chosen Oprah Winfrey as the most overpaid celebrity of the year. Be sure to let us know in the comments if you are pleased with this result.

Oprah Winfrey returns to our Most Overpaid Celebrity category after having lost the title to Paris Hilton last year. For 2007 she is joined by overpaid celebrities Madonna, George Lopez, and Russell Crowe.

Winfrey, Madonna, and Lopez all made the Forbes Celebrity 100, a ranking of Hollywood players by pay, influence, and popularity. Winfrey, of course, comes in at number one, both in terms of pay and power. Madonna's earnings placed her at number nine on the list, while Lopez came in at number fifty-one.

Forbes estimates Winfrey's earnings at $260 million last year, and her net worth in the area of $1.5 billion, making her the nation's wealthiest African American. She'll be adding two new reality shows to her media empire, which already includes a blockbuster daytime talk show, satellite radio show, magazine, and Broadway musical, as well as stakes in hit shows by Dr. Phil McGraw and Rachael Ray. The school for girls she founded in South Africa has drawn much media attention this year, and she's recently endorsed Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Winfrey has been called the world's most powerful woman, the most influential woman in the world, one of the most influential persons of the 20th century, the world's first black woman billionaire, and the greatest pop culture icon of all time. Can any mortal person live up to all that hype?

XMSR announced at the end of last week that close to 400k new subscribers came aboard during the second quarter, bringing XM's total subscriber count to 6.89 million.

"As we previously indicated, subscriber growth in the second quarter was limited by product availability and overall softness in the retail channel," said Hugh Panero, President and CEO, XM Satellite Radio. "As we approach seven million subscribers, however, satellite radio continues to be one of the fastest growing consumer entertainment products."

The company has scheduled a conference call on July 27, 2006, at 10:00 AM ET to announce and discuss its financial results for the second quarter of 2006.

XM has been busy adding name-brand personalities to its already star-speckled line up, a continuing effort to draw new listeners to XM's side of the satellite radio market. The much anticipated arrival of Oprah Winfrey in September, and the recent addition of Willie Nelson, are hoped to buoy soft sales heading into the last half of the year.

It remains to be seen how effective the Harpo machine will be in drawing subscribers to XM. Oprah seems to turn everything she touches into gold but, I'm just hoping, for the sake of my own santiy and that of the other 6.89 million XM subscribers, that she doesn't decide to bring Dr. Phil with her.

[Photo by miramb]