title: Telemundo

text: Other key on-air personalities that joined Telemundo from Univision or Televisa in the 2000s are Gabriela Spanic, Pedro Fernandez, Kate del Castillo, Aracely Arámbula, Raúl González, Blanca Soto, Laura Flores, Ana María Canseco, Cristina Saralegui.


title: Telemundo

text: Continuing the momentum in 2013 were telenovelas "La Patrona" ("The Return") and "El Señor de los Cielos" ("The Lord of the Skies"), and the musical competition series "La Voz Kids" ("The Voice Kids"; a Spanish language adaptation of "The Voice" franchise featuring children as contestants), hosted by Daisy Fuentes and Jorge Bernal, featuring musical coaches Paulina Rubio, Prince Royce and Roberto Tapia. With the debut of "El Señor de los Cielos" that spring, Telemundo also launched the "Super Series" format, a slate of action-oriented telenovelas – which usually air during the final hour of the network's prime time novela block – designed as a reinvention of the genre using the multiple-season continuity model common with English language drama series, shorter episode runs (between 60 and 80 episodes per season, compared to traditional single-season novelas, which produce between 100 and 200 episodes on average) and the incorporation of storylines more relatable to American audiences.


title: Telemundo

text: These programs helped Telemundo decrease its ratings gap in the key demographic of Adults 18–49, decreasing the gap between the two networks by 54 percent between 2010 and 2015, with Telemundo even beating Univision four times during the 2014–2015 television season on nights when the former aired sports events and specials; the network also narrowed the ratings differentials with Univision in total prime time viewership from a gap of 1.2 million viewers in July 2013 to 238,000 in July 2015. Telemundo also began improving its ratings during the 10:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) hour, following its transition from traditional novelas to the "Super Series" format, with "El Señor de los Cielos" posting some of the network's highest viewership for an entertainment program, when its second-season finale in 2014 drew 3.2 million total viewers.


title: Telemundo

text: On May 13, 2014, during the network's 2014–15 upfront presentation at Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City, Luis Silberwasser was named president of Telemundo Network, LLC, maintaining overall responsibilities for the Telemundo network and production division Telemundo Studios.


title: Telemundo

text: On July 21, 2015, Telemundo beat Univision for the first time in a singular-night demographic, averaging 969,000 viewers and a .76 rating in the demographic (26K more viewers and a .2 higher share than the 943K and .74 earned by Univision's prime-time schedule); "El Senor de los Cielos 3" ("Lord of the Skies 3") also beat the Televisa-produced novela "Yo No Creo En los Hombres" ("I Don't Trust Men Anymore") on Univision in the demographic during the 10:00 p.m. hour, with a 1.4 rating (over the 0.7 rating earned by "Yo No Creo En Hombres") and was the most-watched television program among Adults 18-49 during the hour that evening. For the week of July 20–24, Telemundo came within 40,000 viewers of beating Univision in prime time viewership. Overall, the network ended the 2014–15 season posting its highest average total prime time viewership against Univision with 1.46M, a 23 percent increase in total viewership yearly, compared to Univision's 2.29M and decrease of 21 percent yearly.


title: Telemundo

text: , Telemundo operates on a 147½-hour network programming schedule. Its base programming feed provides various types of general entertainment programming weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., Saturdays from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m. (the first three hours of which are occupied by the children's programming block, MiTelemundo, which features programs compliant with FCC educational programming requirements), and Sundays from 11:00 to 1:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time. A separate block of feature films (and occasionally, other entertainment programs) also airs overnights on Monday through Wednesdays from 3:30 to 5:00 a.m., Thursdays and Fridays from 3:00 to 5:00 a.m., and weekends from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time. All remaining time periods are filled with infomercials.


title: Telemundo

text: While Telemundo's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates largely rely on Telemundo's master schedule to fill their broadcast day, many of its stations also produce their own local programming (which may pre-empt certain programs within the base network schedule), usually in the form of newscasts and public affairs programs (production of local infotainment programming, and leasing of brokered programs such as direct response and religious content, is at the station's discretion). Many Telemundo stations usually air limited local news programming, which are commonly reserved for early and late evening timeslots on Monday through Friday nights; some Telemundo stations may also air newscasts on weekday mornings (these are mainly limited to the network's O&Os in larger markets) and/or on weekend evenings.


title: Telemundo

text: The majority of Telemundo's programming consists of first-run telenovelas and series, many of which are produced by the network itself through its Telemundo Studios unit; however, some shows broadcasts by the network are produced by outside companies (including Caracol Television and Promofilm). Telemundo's schedule does not incorporate situation comedies, although some comedy series have aired on the network in the past, particularly during the 1990s and early 2000s. Variety shows, a common format in Spanish language television in the U.S. and other countries, have had a limited presence on Telemundo's lineup in recent years; with "La Voz Kids" being the only such show appearing on the network as of July 2013. Two additional variety series debuted in 2015: "Si Se Puede", an adaptation of the Armoza Formats celebrity talent competition franchise "I Can Do That", and "¡Qué Noche! con Angelica y Raul" ("What a Night! with Angelica and Raul"), a family-oriented series using the traditional Saturday evening variety program model that was created to fill part of the void opened up by the cancellation of Univision's "Sabado Gigante".


title: Telemundo

text: From 2010 to 2013, Telemundo utilized an off-time scheduling format for its prime time programming (similar to the "Turner Time" format used by TBS from 1981 to 2000), in which programs that aired weeknights from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific Time) started on a three-minute delay – resulting from intentional overruns of the network's 7:00 p.m. program ("Caso Cerrado: Edićion Estelar" ("Case Closed: Special Edition")) into the 8:00 p.m. timeslot. As a result, until this format was discontinued, conventional "top-and-bottom" start times were not restored until the evening's final prime time program aired at 10:00 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific), allowing late local newscasts seen on some Telemundo stations to start at 11:00 p.m. (or 10:00 p.m. in the Central and Mountain Time Zones).


title: Telemundo

text: Daytime programming on weekdays features a mix of consisting of repeats of past Telemundo-produced telenovelas and acquired serials (which are re-edited as extended 90-minute and two-hour episodes) during the late morning and early afternoon hours, while newsmagazine, reality and court series (such as "Caso Cerrado" ("Case Closed") and "Suelta La Sopa" ("Tell Me What You Know")) making up its afternoon programming. The network also regularly airs Spanish-dubbed English-language films (primarily those produced by American film studios such as Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment) that make up much of the network's weekend afternoon and prime time lineup, as well as films natively produced in Spanish (imported from various Latin American countries) that it usually airs daily during the overnight hours; the network also airs films in place of regularly scheduled programming on select national holidays (such as Thanksgiving and Christmas).


title: Telemundo

text: Telemundo provides English subtitles via closed captioning primarily on weekdays from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time, during the network's prime time lineup. The subtitles are transmitted over the CC3 caption channel in standard definition and the CS2 caption channel available on most digital tuners in high definition. The network produces the translations in-house, and intends them to attract Hispanic viewers who may not be fluent in Spanish as well as other non-Spanish speakers. Programs that include English captions are identified on-air by a special digital on-screen graphic seen at the start of each episode, denoting the specific caption channels in which viewers can receive subtitles in either Spanish or English (see right).


title: Telemundo

text: Telemundo was the first Spanish-language network in the United States to incorporate English captions during its programming, beginning with the premieres of "La Cenicienta" ("Cinderella") and "Amor Descarado" ("Barefaced Love") on September 8, 2003; this generated a small, loyal fan base among English-speaking viewers. The subtitles were briefly discontinued without notice on October 14, 2008, citing budget cuts made by NBC Universal and the network's switch from analog to digital broadcasts; representatives for Telemundo also cited the need to concentrate resources on its core Spanish-speaking audience. However, the network soon reversed its decision due to demand by viewers in favor of the English subtitles, which returned on all prime time novelas on March 30, 2009.


title: Telemundo

text: Programs that include English-language captions during their original broadcast may also include them in repeat broadcasts airing outside of the network's prime time schedule after the program's original run on the network or, since 2012, as part of the network's late-night novela repeat block. Some programs (notably the defunct long-running erotic anthology "Decisiones" ("Decisions"), which the network now airs only in reruns), include English captions only for certain episodes, depending on when they were produced. Programs that use English captions are primarily consist of telenovelas, though a few shows outside the genre (such as the prime time court show "Caso Cerrado") are also transcribed in both languages. Availability of English subtitles is limited to the technical capacity of the local station, cable or satellite provider, or other outlet to disseminate them over the network feed.


title: Telemundo

text: Since then, other networks in the United States have utilized the practice of providing closed captions in both English and Spanish. On January 30, 2012, Univision began airing CC3 English captions on its evening programming (primarily with its weeknight telenovelas, along with select weekend prime time series). Azteca also transmits English language captions on certain programs. And in an inverse manner, upon the launch of the now-defunct Qubo Channel in 2007, most of its programming included CC3 Spanish subtitles in addition to its native CC1 English subtitles.


title: Telemundo

text: The network operates a news division, Noticias Telemundo ("Telemundo News"), which produces a half-hour early evening flagship newscast, "Noticiero Telemundo", that has aired daily for most of its run (Telemundo also produced a secondary newscast, "Noticiero Telemundo Internacional", until 2011, which aired in place of late local newscasts on affiliates without their own news department or which opted to preempt regularly scheduled local newscasts on certain holidays). It also produces the morning news and lifestyle program "Un Nuevo Día" ("A New Day"), the late afternoon newsmagazine series "Al Rojo Vivo con Maria Celeste" ("Red Hot Live with Maria Celeste") and the Sunday morning talk show "Enfoque" ("In Focus"); the network previously produced weekend editions of "Al Rojo Vivo" and "Noticiero Telemundo" until 2007, which were replaced with feature films and reality-based series; the latter returned to a daily broadcast with the restoration of Saturday and Sunday editions on September 4, 2014.


title: Telemundo

text: The beginnings of the news division trace back to 1987, when the network debuted its first news program "Noticiero Telemundo-HBC" ("Telemundo-HBC News"), through an outsourcing agreement with the Miami-based Hispanic-American Broadcasting Corporation. The following year, Telemundo outsourced news production to CNN, which produced "Noticiero Telemundo CNN" ("Telemundo CNN News"), consisting of two Atlanta-based daily newscasts that were anchored by Jorge Gestoso and Maria Elvira Salazar. When Salazar accepted a position as a reporter for "Noticiero Univision" in Miami, Chilean former Miss Universe Cecilia Bolocco joined Gestoso on the Telemundo newscast. The final incarnation produced in Atlanta was co-anchored by Patricia Janiot. Following the sale of its cable news channel Telenoticias to CBS Cable in late 1996, Telemundo entered into a content partnership with the channel to produce early-evening and prime time newscasts that would air on the broadcast network.


title: Telemundo

text: Former CBS News vice president Joe Peyronnin founded Telemundo's news division in 1999 and served as its executive vice president until 2006. Additional news programs were created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks: "Hoy en el Mundo" ("Today in the World") on ABC News, anchored by Marian de la Fuente and Jose Diaz-Balart (also of NBC News), debuted to inform viewers of national and international events. This program and its companion show "En la Madrugada" ("In Early Morning") were cancelled due to the much heralded arrival of María Antonieta Collins from Univision. "Cada Dia with Maria Antonieta" ("Every Day with Maria Antonieta") replaced these shows on October 10, 2005; Collins continued to host the program along with the much recycled Diaz-Balart – who anchored the network's morning news program "Noticiero Telemundo: Madrugada" ("Telemundo News: Early Morning"), later to be anchored by Ana Patricia Candiani – as co-host. "Cada Dia" was cancelled in May 2008, after Collins announced that she would leave Telemundo when her contract expired in August of that year return to news anchoring and as a result of low ratings for the program; it was replaced by a new morning show called "¡Levántate!" ("Get Up"), another hybrid news and lifestyle format, which was broadcast out of the studios of WKAQ-TV, and initially produced by Telemundo Puerto Rico. The hybrid program, which was retitled "Un Nuevo Día" in July 2012, originally included local participation of the network's Miami owned-and-operated station WSCV from its studios in the suburb of Miramar, Florida, and bureaus located in New York City, Los Angeles and Mexico City. The show was later revamped, dropping the local cut-ins and relocating its production operations to Telemundo's headquarters in Hialeah, Florida in February 2011.


title: Telemundo

text: The network also maintains a sports division, Telemundo Deportes, which superseded the network-operated division Deportes Telemundo when NBCUniversal created the current division within its NBC Sports Group in May 2015. The division, which is responsible for the production of sports content on Telemundo and Universo, produces association football matches for the network from Liga MX, as well as CONCACAF Champions League tournament events (including Olympic qualifying matches). Through broadcasting agreements with NBC Sports, Telemundo also holds the Spanish-language broadcast rights to the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and Spanish play-by-rights to association football matches from the Premier League. The network also produces "Boxeo Telemundo", a weekly late-night boxing series that airs on most Friday nights (except during the summer) showcasing fights from up-and-coming boxing talents.


title: Telemundo

text: In 2014, Deportes Telemundo acquired the Spanish language rights to broadcast the FIFA Men's and Women's World Cup for a reported $600 million. The deal, which began with the 2015 Women's World Cup and runs through 2026, includes rights to associated FIFA-sanctioned tournaments (including the FIFA U-17 and U-20 World Cups, and the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup), which are telecast on Telemundo and Universo.


title: Telemundo

text: In addition, the division also produces three weekly sports-related talk and magazine programs for Telemundo: flagship sports highlight/discussion program "Titulares Telemundo" ("Telemundo Headlines"), which airs on Saturday and Sunday evenings (and is offered to Telemundo stations on a half-hour tape delay to accommodate local late-evening newscasts); the male-oriented Sunday afternoon sports/lifestyle program "Ritmo Deportivo" ("Rhythm Sports"; which debuted in 2003, and briefly aired on Saturdays from September 2013 to April 2015); and the late-night sports talk show "Titulares y Mas" ("Headlines and More"; which originally aired on Thursday and Friday nights until 2014, when it expanded into a five-night-a-week broadcast).


title: Telemundo

text: For much of its history, the bulk of NetSpan/Telemundo's children's programming has been derived of mainly live-action and animated programming from American and international producers, including Spanish-language dubs of programs produced in other languages, and Spanish-language programming acquired from other countries.


title: Telemundo

text: The network's first foray into children's programming, Telemuñequitos, was in partnership with Warner Bros., and featured Spanish-language dubs of Warner Bros. Cartoons productions. In September 1995, Telemundo launched a Saturday morning block, Telemundo Infantil ("Telemundo Kids"). On September 15, 1998, Telemundo introduced Nickelodeon en Telemundo, a block featuring Spanish dubs of Nickelodeon programming. The block ran on weekday mornings until September 5, 2000, when it was relegated to Saturday and Sunday mornings in order to accommodate a time slot for "Hoy En El Mundo." The Nickelodeon blocks were discontinued after September 30, 2001, ahead of the expiry of Telemundo's program supply deal with Nickelodeon. It was then replaced with Telemundo Kids, which featured a mix of acquired programming from various providers, including Sony Pictures Television and later Nickelodeon.


title: Telemundo

text: In September 2006, Telemundo debuted Qubo, a new weekend morning block of educational programming formed as a joint venture between NBC Universal, Ion Media Networks, Corus Entertainment, Scholastic, and Classic Media. The block carried Spanish-language dubs of programming acquired or produced for Qubo's English-language blocks on NBC and Ion, airing on Saturday and Sunday mornings in 90-minute blocks.


title: Telemundo

text: On July 7, 2012, after the acquisition of NBC Universal by Comcast, the block was replaced by MiTelemundo; programmed by Sprout, it consisted of Spanish dubbed versions of programs seen on its sister broadcast network's Saturday morning block, NBC Kids, which debuted on the same date. With NBC Kids being replaced with Litton Entertainment's The More You Know block on NBC by September 25, 2016, MiTelemundo initially retained its existing programming until January 6, 2018, when MiTelemundo moved exclusively to Saturday mornings and became programmed by Litton. The relaunched MiTelemundo carries Spanish dubs of programming from The More You Know.


title: Telemundo

text: Telemundo holds the broadcast rights to several annual specials and award show telecasts. From 2003 to 2014, the network held the Spanish language rights to two of the three pageants organized by the Miss Universe Organization: the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants, through NBC's existing contractual agreement for the pageant. Although parent NBCUniversal held half-ownership in the organization at the time, the rights were obtained by Univision Communications in February 2015 with the intent to move the Miss Universe and Miss USA telecasts to UniMás (Univision later terminated the contract that July following now-former part-owner Donald Trump's remarks in his speech declaring his Republican presidential campaign disparaging Mexicans immigrating into the United States as being mostly made up of those involved in criminal activity, later culminating in Trump's sale of the Miss Universe Organization to WME-IMG in September 2015, after NBCUniversal sold its interest).


title: Telemundo

text: Since 1999, Telemundo has served as the official U.S. broadcaster of the Billboard Latin Music Awards ("Premios Billboard a la Música Latina"), an offshoot of the Billboard Music Awards honoring songs from Latin music artists during the previous year that are chosen by viewer voting. In 2012, the network also debuted Premios Tu Mundo ("Your World Awards"), a viewer-decided awards show honoring the achievements of Hispanics and Latinos in media, maintaining a format similar to the People's Choice Awards with categories pertaining to television, film, music, fashion and sports.


title: Telemundo

text: In October 2015, through a licensing agreement with Dick Clark Productions signed in July 2014, Telemundo became the originating broadcaster of the Latin American Music Awards ("Premios de la Música Latinoamericana"), a Latin music-focused version of the American Music Awards.


title: Telemundo

text: , Telemundo has 28 owned-and-operated stations, and current and pending affiliation agreements with 66 additional television stations encompassing 50 states, the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; this makes Telemundo the largest American Spanish language broadcast television network by total number of affiliates. The network has an estimated national reach of 57.23 percent of all households in the United States (or 178,837,113 Americans with at least one television set).


title: Telemundo

text: While Telemundo does not have any over-the-air stations in a few major markets with relatively sizeable populations of Hispanic and Latino residents it conversely maintains affiliations in several markets where Univision currently does not have over-the-air availability, including New Orleans (KGLA-DT), Indianapolis (WDNI-CD) Boise (KKJB) and Richmond (WZTD-LD). Telemundo maintains affiliations with low-power stations (broadcasting either in analog or digital) in a few markets, such as Orlando (WTMO-CD), Milwaukee (WYTU-LD), Tampa (WRMD-CD), Albuquerque (KTEL-CD and its repeater K46GY) and Minneapolis (KMBD-LD). In some markets, including the former two mentioned, these stations also maintain digital simulcasts on a subchannel of a full-power television station, usually (though not in all cases) one that is owned or managed with the Telemundo outlet.


title: Telemundo

text: The network also maintains a sizeable number of subchannel-only affiliations, consisting of a mix of stations in cities located within and outside of the 50 largest Nielsen-designated markets; the largest Telemundo subchannel affiliate by market size is WKTB-CD in Norcross, Georgia (serving the Atlanta market), which carries the network on its second digital subchannel. In other areas of the U.S., Telemundo provides a national cable network feed that is distributed directly to cable, satellite and IPTV providers as an alternative method of distribution in markets without either the availability or the demand for a locally based owned-and-operated or affiliate station.


title: Telemundo

text: Currently outside of the network's core O&O group, News-Press & Gazette Company is the largest operator of Telemundo stations by numerical total, owning or providing services to eight primary affiliates (all but one of which are simulcast on subchannels of the group's Big Four network stations) and four additional subchannel-only affiliates). The former ZGS Communications was the largest operator of Telemundo stations in terms of overall market reach, owning ten Telemundo-affiliated stations (including affiliates in larger markets such as Tampa, Orlando, Boston, Hartford and Washington, D.C.); after the purchase of the ZGS stations at the start of 2018 by NBC's Telemundo Stations Group, they are now direct O&Os of the network.


title: Telemundo

text: Universo is an American digital cable and satellite television network that is aimed at Latinos between the ages of 18 and 49, featuring a mix of sports, scripted and reality series and music programming (including programs that originated on Telemundo and other NBCUniversal-owned cable networks). It was originally launched on October 10, 1993 as GEMS Television, under the ownership by Empresas 1BC, featuring programs aimed at Latino females. The network was as GEMS Television by former owner and later co-owned with Cox Communications the following year.


title: Telemundo

text: Telemundo parents Sony Pictures Entertainment and Liberty Media purchased GEMS in 2001, and relaunched it as mun2 (a portmanteau pun of Telemundo and "dos," the Spanish word for "2," butbis intended to reflect the "two worlds" that Latino Americans live in), a network featuring a mix of Spanish and English language programs (including some Spanish-dubbed versions of American programs and series incorporating Spanish language subtitles) aimed at adults ages 18 to 49. On December 24, 2014, NBCUniversal announced that mun2 would be rebranded as NBC Universo – shifting it under the NBC umbrella – on February 1, 2015, to coincide with its Spanish-language broadcast of Super Bowl XLIX.


title: Telemundo

text: Telemundo Puerto Rico is a digital cable and satellite network that originally launched in December 1994 as Telenoticias, a Spanish-language cable news channel originally serving Latin America (and broadcasting in Spanish and Portuguese) that was developed by Telemundo in partnership with Grupo Clarín (owner of Argentina-based broadcaster Artear), Spain-based Antena 3 and Reuters. Due to struggles in obtaining sufficient viewership and disagreements between its co-owners, the partnership sold Telenoticias to CBS – which rebranded the network as "CBS Telenoticias" – in June 1996; with that sale, the network expanded across the Americas, with distribution in 22 countries. In 1998, CBS later sold Telenoticias back to Telemundo parents Sony Pictures Entertainment and Liberty Media, which subsequently relaunched the network as the bilingual entertainment channel Telemundo Internacional in 2000. In 2006, the channel was reformatted as "Telemundo Puerto Rico", becoming a national superstation feed of San Juan O&O WKAQ-TV.


title: Telemundo

text: TeleXitos is a digital multicast network that was originally launched by the network's parent division Telemundo Television Group in January 2012 as Exitos TV. In its original format, the network primarily featured reruns of telenovelas previously aired on Telemundo, and was exclusive to Telemundo's owned-and-operated stations. The network adopted its current name on December 1, 2014, when it was relaunched with a new focus toward Spanish-dubbed reruns of action and adventure series as well as feature films sourced primarily from the content library of corporate sister NBCUniversal Television Distribution, in addition to featuring select programs from other distributors.


title: Telemundo

text: Telemundo maintains several video on demand services for delayed viewing of the network's programming, including its TV Everywhere service Telemundo Now; a traditional VOD service called Telemundo on Demand, which is carried on most traditional cable and IPTV providers (and like the video-on-demand television services provided by the other U.S. broadcast networks, disallows fast forwarding of accessed content); and via Hulu and iTunes through content deals with those services. Through its ownership by Comcast, the network's programming is also available through Xfinity on Demand. Cataloged episodes of past telenovelas seen on the network are also available on DramaFever, a streaming service that had originally exclusively focused on television shows and movies imported from various Asian countries, through a distribution deal signed on December 13, 2013.


title: Telemundo

text: On October 22, 2013, Telemundo launched "Telemundo Now", a multi-platform streaming service (which derived its name from that of a similar TV Everywhere service operated by sister network Bravo, "Bravo Now"), originally encompassing a dedicated streaming portal at TelemundoNow.com and a mobile app for smartphones and tablet computers supporting the iOS and Android platforms. Recent full-length episodes of the network's shows as well as specials are usually made available on Telemundo Now (as well as Telemundo on Demand) the day after their original broadcast to authenticated subscribers of participating pay television providers (such as Comcast, AT&T U-verse, Optimum, Charter Communications, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Dish Network, Mediacom, Suddenlink Communications and Verizon FiOS) using an ISP account via an authenticated user login. The service also offers special features like "Mi Lista," viewers can catalogue their favorite shows for fast access and easily resume play to pick up right where they left off.


title: Telemundo

text: Telemundo's master feed is transmitted in 1080i high definition, the native resolution format for NBCUniversal's U.S. television properties. However, twelve Telemundo-affiliated stations (including a standard definition simulcast of San Francisco O&O KSTS that is carried on a subchannel of sister station KNTV) transmit the network's programming in 720p HD, while 31 other affiliates owned by various companies carry the network feed in 480i standard definition either due to technical considerations for affiliates of other major networks that carry Telemundo programming on a digital subchannel or because a primary feed Telemundo affiliate has not yet upgraded their transmission equipment to allow content to be presented in HD.


title: Telemundo

text: As of July 2019, Telemundo's network feed originates from NBCUniversal's corporate office in Centennial, CO (along with the NBC broadcast network), a technical operations facility that is shared with Comcast. The network utilizes three satellite uplink facilities to distribute its signal. One in Littleton, CO, a short distance from the network's master control operation; a second in Universal City, CA, near the Universal Studios lot; and a third in Englewood Cliffs, NJ at the CNBC building, which also houses master control operations for NBCUniversal's cable properties, including Universo.


title: Telemundo

text: Telemundo became the first national Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S. to provide its prime time programming in high definition through the network and its local stations (nine years after the major English language broadcast networks began their conversion to HD) with the launch of its simulcast feed, Telemundo HD, on April 23, 2009, with that year's edition of the Billboard Latin Music Awards as its inaugural HD broadcast. Concurrently, Telemundo's owned-and-operated television stations in nine markets (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Francisco, Houston, Miami, Las Vegas, and San Juan) became the first to begin broadcasting the network's programming in HD; the remaining O&Os upgraded their digital signals to allow the transmission of high definition content over the next twelve months, while its affiliated stations gradually followed suit over a four-year period. The network's scripted prime time telenovelas became the first regularly scheduled Telemundo shows to upgrade to the format, beginning with "Mas Sabe El Diablo" ("Falling Angel"), which premiered in September 2009.


title: Telemundo

text: All of the network's first-run entertainment and sports programming, as well as specials and select acquired programs, have been presented in HD since 2012 (with the current exception of archived programs that were made prior to 2009 – such as dubbed versions of "Criss Angel Mindfreak" and "World's Most Amazing Videos" ("Videos Más Asombrosos del Mundo") – and were originally produced in standard definition, as well as most older Mexican-produced feature films). The weekend morning "MiTelemundo" E/I block has also been broadcast in HD since its debut in July 2012.


title: Telemundo

text: As of September 1, 2018, Telemundo has converted its presentation to a 16:9 presentation. "Al Rojo Vivo" became the first program to be presented in a 16:9 format, beginning Telemundo's transition to such presentation.


title: Telemundo

text: On February 9, 2016, NBC Universal, Telemundo's parent company, faced claims by SAG-AFTRA of operating under a double standard between its Spanish-language and English-language talent at NBC and Telemundo. In their response, the network released a statement claiming they are “committed to making Telemundo a great place to work for our employees and will continue to invest in them to ensure their salaries and working conditions are competitive with the rest of the broadcasting industry in accordance with market size and station revenues.”


title: Telemundo

text: A few days later on February 13, 2016, SAG-AFTRA came back and added that Telemundo had been treating its employees like “second-class professionals” given that many actors do not receive basic workplace guarantees that SAG-AFTRA contracts provide, such as fair pay, water breaks, health insurance and residuals. At that time, Telemundo president Luis Silberwasser responded saying that SAG-AFTRA asked for recognition of the union as the bargaining agent for employees — rather than seeking a vote by employees. However, SAG-AFTRA claimed that intimidation tactics had been taking place within the network to keep employees from unionizing and that they believe “there is no such thing as a ‘fair vote’ when workers are afraid for their careers and livelihoods, and live with the fear of retaliation if they are seen as actively wanting to unionize. SAG-AFTRA wants to ensure full protection for workplace democracy and performers’ rights to choose through a truly fair process.”


title: Telemundo

text: In August 2016, Telemundo once again found itself up against the union when the network refused to air an ad placed by SAG-AFTRA detailing the unfair wage gap and lack of benefits Telemundo employees face as opposed to unionized performers at NBCUniversal. The ad was set to air during the network’s premiere people’s choice awards Premios Tu Mundo but was never placed into rotation. A Telemundo spokesperson responded saying, "After legal review, we have concluded the ad did not pass legal standards for issue-based advertisement." Meanwhile, other Spanish-language networks such as MegaTV and Estrella TV aired the ad nationwide.


title: Telemundo

text: SAG-AFTRA continued to stand its ground, stating that "Telemundo's decision to censor 30 seconds of truthful commentary about its working conditions shows just how averse it is to having a transparent discussion about its refusal to fairly compensate Spanish-speaking performers."


title: Telemundo

text: On May 28, 2016, filmmaker Andrew Marcus caught a cameraman from Telemundo filming a #NeverTrump protest in San Diego. According to the filmmaker, the protest was staged. L. Brent Bozell III, the president of Media Research Center responded by demanding Telemundo to apologize to Donald Trump and to fire the crew involved with the incident. Meanwhile, Ken Oliver-Méndez, the director of MRC Latino, described that the incident as a "self-inflicted wound on Telemundo's credibility." Telemundo responded to Oliver-Méndez by claiming that "the integrity of the broadcast was not compromised since the material was not used by the Network news team." Telemundo also claimed that the network is "known for its balance and accuracy," and that it "did not, nor would it ask any full-time or temporary worker to stage events."


title: Telemundo

text: Telemundo programming is available in Mexico through affiliates in markets located within proximity to the Mexico–United States border (such as owned-and-operated stations KHRR/Tucson, Arizona, KUAN/San Diego, KTLM/Rio Grande City, and KTDO/El Paso and other afiflates; KESE-LD-KECY-DT4/Yuma, and KGNS-DT3/Laredo), whose signals are readily receivable over-the-air in border areas of northern Mexico.


title: Telemundo

text: On March 18, 2008, Grupo Televisa and NBC Universal announced a ten-year multiplatform agreement that would allow 1,000 hours of Telemundo programming, including news; entertainment; specials and sports, to be broadcast over both Televisa's free-to-air channels, as well as its co-owned cable provider SKY México starting that April. The deal also included plans to launch a Telemundo channel that would be operated as a joint venture between both companies; the Mexican cable-satellite version of the network launched in August 2009. NBC Universal had considered launching a Mexican version of Telemundo as early as 2005, which led to a legal battle between it and TV Azteca over allegations that Azteca "engaged in the wrongful use of force" to shut down production of the Telemundo-produced reality singing competition series "Quinceañera: Mama Quiero Ser Artista" ("Sweet 15: Mom, I Want to Be an Artist") in Mexico and a news story featured on an Azteca news program that accused then-NBC Universal parent General Electric and Grupo Casa Saba of fraud and corporate corruption with the intent to torpedo the approval of a license application by Telemundo and Grupo Xtra to operate a television network in Mexico.


title: Porsche 993

text: The Porsche 993 is the internal designation for the Porsche 911 model manufactured and sold between January 1994 and early 1998 (model years 1995–1998 in the United States), replacing the 964. Its discontinuation marked the end of air-cooled 911 models.


title: Porsche 993

text: The 993 was much improved over and quite different from its predecessor. According to Porsche, every part of the car was designed from the ground up, including the engine and only 20% of its parts were carried over from the previous generation. Porsche refers to the 993 as "a significant advance, not just from a technical, but also a visual perspective." Porsche's engineers devised a new light-alloy subframe with coil and wishbone suspension (an all new multi-link system, Weissach axle), putting behind the previous lift-off oversteer and making significant progress with the engine and handling, creating a more civilized car overall and providing an improved driving experience. The 993 was also the first 911 to receive a six speed transmission.


title: Porsche 993

text: The 993 had several variants, as its predecessors, varying in body style, engines, drivetrains, and included equipment. Power was increased by the addition of the VarioRam system, particularly in the midranges, and also resulted in more throttle noise at higher revolutions; as a consequence, it resulted in a 15% increase in power over its predecessor.


title: Porsche 993

text: The external design of the Porsche 993, penned by English designer Tony Hatter, retained the basic body shell architecture of the 964 and other earlier 911 models, but with revised exterior panels, with much more flared wheel arches, a smoother front and rear bumper design, an enlarged retractable rear wing, and teardrop mirrors.


title: Porsche 993

text: A major change was the implementation of all alloy multilink rear suspension attached to an alloy subframe, a completely new design derived from the 989, a four-door sedan that never went into production. The system later continued in the 993's successor, the 996, and required the widening of the rear wheel arches, which gave better stability. The new suspension improved handling, making it more direct, more stable, and helping to reduce the tendency to oversteer if the throttle were lifted during hard cornering, a trait of earlier 911s. It also reduced interior noise and improved ride quality.


title: Porsche 993

text: The 993 was the first generation of the 911 to have a six-speed manual transmission included as standard; its predecessors had four- or five-speed transmissions. In virtually every situation, keeping the engine at its best torque range above 4,500 rpm was possible. The Carrera, Carrera S, Cabriolet, and Targa models (rear-wheel drive) were available with a "Tiptronic" four-speed automatic transmission, first introduced in the 964. From the 1995 model year, Porsche offered the Tiptronic S with additional steering wheel-mounted controls and refined software for smoother, quicker shifts. Since the 993's introduction, the Tiptronic is capable of recognising climbs and descents. The Tiptronic-equipped cars suffer as compared to the manual transmission equipped cars in both acceleration and also top speed, but the differences are not much notable. Tiptronic cars also suffered a increase in weight.


title: Porsche 993

text: The 993's optional all-wheel drive system was refined over that of the 964. Porsche departed from the 964's setup consisting of three differentials and revised the system based on the layout from its 959 flagship, replacing the centre differential with a viscous coupling unit. In conjunction with the 993's redesigned suspension, this system improved handling characteristics in inclement weather and still retained the stability offered by all-wheel drive without having to suffer as many compromises as the previous all-wheel drive system. Its simpler layout also reduced weight, though the four-wheel drive Carrera 4 weighs more than its rear-wheel drive counterpart (at vs. ).


title: Porsche 993

text: Other improvements over the 964 include a new dual-flow exhaust system, larger brakes with drilled discs, and a revised power steering.


title: Porsche 993

text: The Carrera was available in rear- and all-wheel drive versions. It was equipped with the naturally aspirated 3.6-liter M64 engine, further developed from the 964, and combined with a new dual-flow exhaust system now incorporating two catalytic converters. The 993 Carrera originally was equipped with orange turn indicators on the front, side, and rear, black brake calipers, black Carrera logo on the rear, and 16-inch alloy wheels with black Porsche logos on the center wheelcaps. The 1994 coupé version had a curb weight of (basic unladen weight of ). This model's ground clearance was 110 mm, except for the US version, which had a ground clearance of 120 mm. This was further lowered with the M030 sport chassis option to 90 mm. The coupé is the stiffest, tightest, most solid, yet lightest of the 993 models.


title: Porsche 993

text: The Cabriolet, introduced simultaneously alongside the coupé in April 1994 for the 1995 model year, featured a fully electrical and hand-stitched soft top reinforced with metal sheets and an automatic wind blocker. On the rear of the Cabriolet, a small spoiler was mounted with the third braking light. The 993 Cabriolet was slightly heavier than the coupé variant and has a curb weight of . A high percentage of the total Cabriolets produced ended up in the US. Both the coupé and convertible variants of the 993 were available with all-wheel drive.


title: Porsche 993

text: Porsche also offered the 993 Carrera as an all-wheel drive version called the Carrera 4. In contrast with the 964, Porsche deleted the "2" from the rear-wheel drive "Carrera" name tag. Among enthusiasts, though, to differentiate between the rear-wheel and all-wheel drive variants of the Type 993 Carrera, they were (and still are) commonly referred to as "C2" and "C4". The Carrera 4 has an automatic braking differential; it brakes the inner wheel when accelerating out of a corner. On the exterior, the Carrera 4 is visually distinguishable by clear front and side turn indicators and rear red turn indicators. The brake calipers are painted silver, as is the Carrera 4 badge on the engine cover. The center wheel-caps carry the Carrera 4 logo instead of the Porsche crest. The Carrera 4 has a curb weight of , same as the standard Carrera cabriolet, and in both instances more than the Carrera coupé. Key feature on the 993 Carrera 4 is the weight saving in the all-wheel-drive system as compared to the 964, a lower maintenance viscous coupling unit that transfers 5-50% of power to the front wheels and changes the driving behavior of the car compared to the standard Carrera. The 993 Carrera 4 all-wheel drive is suited to cope with bad weather conditions, which provides extra security in rain or snow, though on a dry circuit, the C2 is the faster car, and the C4 is of course heavier than the C2. There was no Tiptronic option available on the Carrera 4.


title: Porsche 993

text: The options list for the 993 Carrera (and most other variants) offered many choices, including up to five different styles of wheels, various suspension set-ups, and three different seat styles (comfort, sport, racing). In addition, many upholstery options were offered and various sound systems including digital sound processing. Further, customers had the option of any colour other than standard shades. Even more, the Tequipment and Exclusive-Programs added further options and built to order almost any specific wishes of customers such as special consoles, fax machines, or even brightly coloured interior upholstery.


title: Porsche 993

text: In contrast with most of the other variants, production of the Carrera coupé and Cabriolet ceased with the end of 1997 model year, except for a very few produced in a shortened 1998 model year.


title: Porsche 993

text: The Targa version of the 993 was introduced in the 1996 model year and was the debut of the so-called "greenhouse" system - a retractable glass roof, a design continued on the 996 and 997 Targa. The glass roof retracts underneath the rear window, revealing a large opening. This system was a complete redesign, as previous Targa models had a removable roof section and a wide B-pillar functioning as a roll bar. The new glass-roof design allowed the 993 Targa to retain the same side-on profile as the other 911 Carrera variants and finish without the inconvenience of storing the removed top of the old system. The Targa is based on the 993 Carrera cabriolet with the Targa glass roof replacing the fabric roof.


title: Porsche 993

text: The Targa was equipped with distinctive two-piece wheels, which could be ordered as an option on all cars not having standard wheels. Common problems with the Targa include excessive heat in the cabin, creaking noises on rough roads, and a very complicated and unreliable roof mechanism. In addition, the Targa roof is heavier than the coupé's roof, and that extra weight is at the top of the car, raising its center of gravity and decreasing handling performance.


title: Porsche 993

text: The 993 Turbo coupé was introduced in 1995. It featured a new twin-turbocharged engine displacing 3.6 liters and generating a maximum power output of . Air-to-air intercoolers, electronic engine management, redesigned cylinder heads, and other modified engine internals completed the new engine. The 993 Turbo was the first 911 Turbo with all-wheel drive, taken from the 959 flagship model. The Turbo's bodywork differs from the Carrera by widened rear wheel arches (about 6 cm), redesigned front and rear bumper moldings, and a fixed "whale tail" rear wing housing the intercoolers. New alloy wheels with hollow spokes were standard.


title: Porsche 993

text: The 993 Turbo was one of the first production cars in the world to have an OBDII diagnostics system (the 3.8-litre and GT versions did not have that system, and the normally aspirated 993 variants did not receive it until 1996 model year). The successors of the 993 Turbo since have had water-cooled heads. The car also had larger brakes than those on the base Carrera model.


title: Porsche 993

text: Throughout the production run of the Turbo, two distinct differences existed. The 1997 and 1998 cars had these differences from the 1996 cars:


title: Porsche 993

text: During the second-to-last year of production of the 993 (1997), Porsche offered the 993 Turbo S, which was manufactured by Porsche Exclusiv department. The Turbo S is a high-specification Turbo including a power upgrade to 450 hp (DIN) (424 hp (SAE) for the American market) achieved by larger Triple K K-24 turbochargers, an additional oil cooler, and a modified Motronic engine management system. The inclusion of extras including carbon fibre decoration in the interior makes it different from the earlier lightweight, spartan 964 Turbo S. The 993 Turbo S is recognized by yellow brake calipers, a slightly larger rear wing, a quad-pipe exhaust system, a front spoiler with brake-cooling ducts (on European market cars), carbon fibre door sills with 'Turbo S' badging, and air scoops behind the doors. This was the last of the air-cooled 911 Turbos. The curb weight of the car amounted to . Performance figures include a 0– acceleration time of 3.6 seconds, 0– acceleration time of 8.9 seconds and a top speed of .


title: Porsche 993

text: The Carrera 4 S (1996) and the later rear-wheel drive Carrera S (1997) shared the Turbo model's bodyshell, but housed the naturally aspirated engine in the rear. Both of the S models had slightly lowered suspension as compared to standard Carrera models. The all-wheel drive 4S is heavier than the S due to the former's all-wheel drive system, resulting in a curb weight of for the C4S vs. for the C2S. Due to this, the S has a quicker acceleration time and a slightly greater top speed than the 4S. Although a Carrera S Cabriolet was never officially offered by the factory, a small number (believed to be five) were specially ordered through the Porsche Exclusiv department in 1997 and sold as 1998 models by Beverly Hills Porsche in California and only one was ordered by a VIP client through Porsche Exclusiv department for the European market. The wide bodywork is widely acclaimed for its rear looks; it creates more aerodynamic drag, leading to slightly lower top speeds compared to the narrower siblings (about 5 km/h), but the wider tyres result in excellent road holding. The Carrera S is one of the most valuable 993 variants. Production of the Carrera S amounted to 1,752 examples for all of North America during the entire 993 series production run (in part because they were manufactured only for the 1997 model year, together with a very brief stub period later in 1997 denominated as 1998 models), though the special extremely limited run models such as the 993 RS, GT, and Turbo S are rarer and more expensive.


title: Porsche 993

text: The Carrera RS is a lightweight variant of the Carrera. It features a naturally aspirated 3.8-liter engine generating a maximum power output of achieved by the use of lightweight forged pistons, dual oil coolers, big intake valves, Varioram variable-length intake manifold, a modified Bosch Motronic engine management system, and lightened rocker arms. The six-speed G50/31 manual gearbox with a short shifter used on the Carrera RS had modified gear ratios for the first three gears. The larger 322 mm cross drilled and ventilated discs brakes front and aft with four piston calipers were shared with the 911 Turbo and limited-slip differential was included as standard equipment. The exterior is easily distinguishable from a normal Carrera by a large fixed rear wing, small front flaps, and three-piece aluminum wheels. The headlight washers were deleted for weightsaving reasons. A seam-welded body shell with an aluminum bonnet supported with a single strut was used along with thinner glass. On the interior, the rear seats were removed, and special racing seats along with spartan door cards were installed. Sound proofing was also reduced to a minimum. The suspension system used Bilstein dampers and the ride height was lowered for improved handling. Adjustable front and rear antiroll bars and an under-bonnet strut brace further increased handling. The final weight of the car was .


title: Porsche 993

text: The Carrera RS Clubsport (also referred to as the RSR or RSCS in some countries) was a track-oriented iteration of the Carrera RS with relatively limited road usability. The Clubsport came equipped with a welded roll cage. Certain comfort features such as carpets, power windows, air conditioning, and radio were deleted. The exterior wise sports a larger rear wing and a deeper chin spoiler than the standard RS.


title: Porsche 993

text: The Carrera RS was produced in model years 1995 and 1996. It was street legal in European and many other countries around the world, but was not approved for export to the United States. Production amounted to 1,014 cars, including 213 Clubsport variants.


title: Porsche 993

text: The GT2 was the racing version of the 993 Turbo made to compete in the FIA GT2 class racing. By the mid-1990s, most of the sanctioning bodies of road racing had placed severe limitations, if not outright bans on the use all-wheel drive systems, due in part to Audi's earlier success in campaigning their various "Quattro" cars in touring car races around the globe, to Porsche's 959 and its racing version the 961, and in part to the Nissan Skyline. In this atmosphere, to take their turbo-engined 993 racing, Porsche developed the rearwheel drive GT. The deletion of the all-wheel drive also brought with it the benefit of significant weight savings to the competition car. To qualify the car for racing, a few street-legal variants were created for homologation purposes, which are now highly prized and valued by collectors. The interior treatment of the GT2 is similar to that of the sibling Carrera RS. The fenders of the Turbo have been cut back and replaced with bolt-on plastic pieces to accommodate large racing tyres and to help ease the repairs of damage to the fenders that are an often recurring event in auto racing.


title: Porsche 993

text: Until 1997, the street-legal version of GT2 racecar, named GT, had almost the same engine as the Turbo, but operated with higher boost pressure and generated a maximum power output of . In 1998 model year, a dual ignition system was added; power was raised to at 6,000 rpm and of torque at 3,500 rpm. Only 57 road-legal variants were built.


title: Porsche 993

text: The racing variants have different engine set-ups depending on the applicable racing series. By 1996, the factory-quoted power rating was at 5,700 rpm and torque of of torque at 5,000 rpm. Power output was as high as in an "Evo" version designed for the GT1-series, of which only 11 cars were built before it was ultimately replaced by the midengine 911 GT1.


title: Porsche 993

text: Additionally, the rear deck lid of the street-legal version of the GT2 also sported "911 GT" instead of "911 GT2".


title: Porsche 993

text: In contrast to the G-model and the 964, Porsche never officially offered the 993 in a Speedster body style. However, two were built by the factory - a dark green Speedster equipped with Tiptronic S and wheels for Ferdinand Alexander Porsche (for his 60th anniversary) in 1995 and another wide-body, silver Speedster with manual transmission and wheels for American TV star Jerry Seinfeld in 1998. The Seinfeld speedster was originally delivered as a cabriolet model and later sent back to the factory Exclusiv department to be "rebuilt" as a speedster. Additionally, a few 993 convertibles were converted to the Speedster body style by aftermarket coach builders.


title: Porsche 993

text: After the 3.3-liter G-model Turbo convertible (1987–89), Porsche never officially offered an air-cooled Turbo convertible again. However, in 1995, a small number (believed to be 14) 993 Turbo Cabriolets were sold before the introduction of the 993 Turbo coupé. They featured the single-turbo engine of the 964 Turbo 3.6, a five-speed manual transmission, rear-wheel drive and the rear wing of the 964 Turbo 3.6. This cost a premium of DM 89,500 (or plus 62%) over the standard 993 Cabriolet's price.


title: Porsche 993

text: The 993 generation of the 911 is often referred to as the best and most desirable of the 911 series, not only because of its beauty, but also because of its great performance, even by modern standards. The 993 is quoted as "the last complete 'modern classic'"; "the 993 was and forever will be that last fresh breath of air that Porsche gave the world; elegance and muscle all in one package." The book "Porsche 993 - Essential Companion" refers to the 993 as the "King of Porsche," and it is generally acknowledged as "The purists' Holy Grail."


title: Porsche 993

text: In its 12 April 2017 article entitled "The Porsche 993 Actually Lives up to the Hype," "Road & Track" writes that the 993 is "something truly special," with "a combination of old-school feel and modern usability that isn't found in many other cars," with "great steering, great brakes, and a wonderfully composed package." It also states that "The 993 is also beautifully built -- it's a relic from the time when Porsche didn't cut corners anywhere."


title: Porsche 993

text: The 993 was replaced by the 996. This represented a dramatic change for the 911. As many enthusiasts agree, "the 993 is one of the sweetest spots in the 911's half-century of existence," and while "more modern versions might be more dynamically capable, they're bloated behemoths in comparison to the lean 993."


title: B-tree

text: In computer science, a B-tree is a self-balancing tree data structure that maintains sorted data and allows searches, sequential access, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic time. The B-tree generalizes the binary search tree, allowing for nodes with more than two children. Unlike other self-balancing binary search trees, the B-tree is well suited for storage systems that read and write relatively large blocks of data, such as databases and file systems.


title: B-tree

text: B-trees were invented by Rudolf Bayer and Edward M. McCreight while working at Boeing Research Labs, for the purpose of efficiently managing index pages for large random-access files. The basic assumption was that indices would be so voluminous that only small chunks of the tree could fit in main memory. Bayer and McCreight's paper, "Organization and maintenance of large ordered indices", was first circulated in July 1970 and later published in "Acta Informatica".


title: B-tree

text: Bayer and McCreight never explained what, if anything, the "B" stands for: "Boeing", "balanced", "broad", "bushy", and "Bayer" have been suggested. McCreight has said that "the more you think about what the B in B-trees means, the better you understand B-trees."


title: B-tree

text: According to Knuth's definition, a B-tree of order "m" is a tree which satisfies the following properties:


title: B-tree

text: Each internal node's keys act as separation values which divide its subtrees. For example, if an internal node has 3 child nodes (or subtrees) then it must have 2 keys: "a" and "a". All values in the leftmost subtree will be less than "a", all values in the middle subtree will be between "a" and "a", and all values in the rightmost subtree will be greater than "a".


title: B-tree

text: A B-tree of depth "n"+1 can hold about "U" times as many items as a B-tree of depth "n", but the cost of search, insert, and delete operations grows with the depth of the tree. As with any balanced tree, the cost grows much more slowly than the number of elements.


title: B-tree

text: Some balanced trees store values only at leaf nodes, and use different kinds of nodes for leaf nodes and internal nodes. B-trees keep values in every node in the tree except leaf nodes.


title: B-tree

text: Bayer and McCreight (1972), Comer (1979), and others define the order of B-tree as the minimum number of keys in a non-root node. points out that terminology is ambiguous because the maximum number of keys is not clear. An order 3 B-tree might hold a maximum of 6 keys or a maximum of 7 keys. Knuth (1998) avoids the problem by defining the order to be the maximum number of children (which is one more than the maximum number of keys).


title: B-tree

text: The term leaf is also inconsistent. Bayer and McCreight (1972) considered the leaf level to be the lowest level of keys, but Knuth considered the leaf level to be one level below the lowest keys. There are many possible implementation choices. In some designs, the leaves may hold the entire data record; in other designs, the leaves may only hold pointers to the data record. Those choices are not fundamental to the idea of a B-tree.


title: B-tree

text: For simplicity, most authors assume there are a fixed number of keys that fit in a node. The basic assumption is the key size is fixed and the node size is fixed. In practice, variable length keys may be employed.


title: B-tree

text: In B-trees, internal (non-leaf) nodes can have a variable number of child nodes within some pre-defined range. When data is inserted or removed from a node, its number of child nodes changes. In order to maintain the pre-defined range, internal nodes may be joined or split. Because a range of child nodes is permitted, B-trees do not need re-balancing as frequently as other self-balancing search trees, but may waste some space, since nodes are not entirely full. The lower and upper bounds on the number of child nodes are typically fixed for a particular implementation. For example, in a 2–3 tree (sometimes referred to as a 2–3 B-tree), each internal node may have only 2 or 3 child nodes.


title: B-tree

text: Each internal node of a B-tree contains a number of keys. The keys act as separation values which divide its subtrees. For example, if an internal node has 3 child nodes (or subtrees) then it must have 2 keys: formula_1 and formula_2. All values in the leftmost subtree will be less than formula_1, all values in the middle subtree will be between formula_1 and formula_2, and all values in the rightmost subtree will be greater than formula_2.


title: B-tree

text: Usually, the number of keys is chosen to vary between formula_7 and formula_8, where formula_7 is the minimum number of keys, and formula_10 is the minimum degree or branching factor of the tree. In practice, the keys take up the most space in a node. The factor of 2 will guarantee that nodes can be split or combined. If an internal node has formula_8 keys, then adding a key to that node can be accomplished by splitting the hypothetical formula_12 key node into two formula_7 key nodes and moving the key that would have been in the middle to the parent node. Each split node has the required minimum number of keys. Similarly, if an internal node and its neighbor each have formula_7 keys, then a key may be deleted from the internal node by combining it with its neighbor. Deleting the key would make the internal node have formula_15 keys; joining the neighbor would add formula_7 keys plus one more key brought down from the neighbor's parent. The result is an entirely full node of formula_8 keys.


title: B-tree

text: The number of branches (or child nodes) from a node will be one more than the number of keys stored in the node. In a 2–3 B-tree, the internal nodes will store either one key (with two child nodes) or two keys (with three child nodes). A B-tree is sometimes described with the parameters formula_18—formula_19 or simply with the highest branching order, formula_19.


title: B-tree

text: A B-tree is kept balanced after insertion by splitting a would-be overfilled node, of formula_12 keys, into two formula_7-key siblings and inserting the mid-value key into the parent. Depth only increases when the root is split, maintaining balance. Similarly, a B-tree is kept balanced after deletion by merging or redistributing keys among siblings to maintain the formula_7-key minimum for non-root nodes. A merger reduces the number of keys in the parent potentially forcing it to merge or redistribute keys with its siblings, and so on. The only change in depth occurs when the root has two children, of formula_7 and (transitionally) formula_15 keys, in which case the two siblings and parent are merged, reducing the depth by one.


title: B-tree

text: This depth will increase slowly as elements are added to the tree, but an increase in the overall depth is infrequent, and results in all leaf nodes being one more node farther away from the root.


title: B-tree

text: B-trees have substantial advantages over alternative implementations when the time to access the data of a node greatly exceeds the time spent processing that data, because then the cost of accessing the node may be amortized over multiple operations within the node. This usually occurs when the node data are in secondary storage such as disk drives. By maximizing the number of keys within each internal node, the height of the tree decreases and the number of expensive node accesses is reduced. In addition, rebalancing of the tree occurs less often. The maximum number of child nodes depends on the information that must be stored for each child node and the size of a full disk block or an analogous size in secondary storage. While 2–3 B-trees are easier to explain, practical B-trees using secondary storage need a large number of child nodes to improve performance.


title: B-tree

text: The term B-tree may refer to a specific design or it may refer to a general class of designs. In the narrow sense, a B-tree stores keys in its internal nodes but need not store those keys in the records at the leaves. The general class includes variations such as the B+ tree, the B tree and the B tree.


title: B-tree

text: Usually, sorting and searching algorithms have been characterized by the number of comparison operations that must be performed using order notation. A binary search of a sorted table with records, for example, can be done in roughly comparisons. If the table had 1,000,000 records, then a specific record could be located with at most 20 comparisons: .


title: B-tree

text: Large databases have historically been kept on disk drives. The time to read a record on a disk drive far exceeds the time needed to compare keys once the record is available. The time to read a record from a disk drive involves a seek time and a rotational delay. The seek time may be 0 to 20 or more milliseconds, and the rotational delay averages about half the rotation period. For a 7200 RPM drive, the rotation period is 8.33 milliseconds. For a drive such as the Seagate ST3500320NS, the track-to-track seek time is 0.8 milliseconds and the average reading seek time is 8.5 milliseconds. For simplicity, assume reading from disk takes about 10 milliseconds.


title: B-tree

text: Naively, then, the time to locate one record out of a million would take 20 disk reads times 10 milliseconds per disk read, which is 0.2 seconds.


title: B-tree

text: The time won't be that bad because individual records are grouped together in a disk block. A disk block might be 16 kilobytes. If each record is 160 bytes, then 100 records could be stored in each block. The disk read time above was actually for an entire block. Once the disk head is in position, one or more disk blocks can be read with little delay. With 100 records per block, the last 6 or so comparisons don't need to do any disk reads—the comparisons are all within the last disk block read.


title: B-tree

text: To speed the search further, the first 13 to 14 comparisons (which each required a disk access) must be sped up.


title: B-tree

text: A B-tree index creates a multi-level tree structure that breaks a database down into fixed-size blocks or pages. Each level of this tree can be used to link those pages via an address location, allowing one page (known as a node, or internal page) to refer to another with leaf pages at the lowest level. One page is typically the starting point of the tree, or the "root". This is where the search for a particular key would begin, traversing a path that terminates in a leaf. Most pages in this structure will be leaf pages which ultimately refer to specific table rows.


title: B-tree

text: A significant improvement in performance can be made with a B-tree index. Because each node (or internal page) can have more than two children, a B-tree index will usually have a shorter height (the distance from the root to the farthest leaf) than a Binary Search Tree. In the example above, initial disk reads narrowed the search range by a factor of two. That can be improved substantially by creating an auxiliary index that contains the first record in each disk block (sometimes called a sparse index). This auxiliary index would be 1% of the size of the original database, but it can be searched more quickly. Finding an entry in the auxiliary index would tell us which block to search in the main database; after searching the auxiliary index, we would have to search only that one block of the main database—at a cost of one more disk read. The index would hold 10,000 entries, so it would take at most 14 comparisons. Like the main database, the last six or so comparisons in the auxiliary index would be on the same disk block. The index could be searched in about eight disk reads, and the desired record could be accessed in 9 disk reads.


title: B-tree

text: The trick of creating an auxiliary index can be repeated to make an auxiliary index to the auxiliary index. That would make an aux-aux index that would need only 100 entries and would fit in one disk block.


title: B-tree

text: Instead of reading 14 disk blocks to find the desired record, we only need to read 3 blocks. This blocking is the core idea behind the creation of the B-tree, where the disk blocks fill-out a hierarchy of levels to make up the index. Reading and searching the first (and only) block of the aux-aux index which is the root of the tree identifies the relevant block in aux-index in the level below. Reading and searching that aux-index block identifies the relevant block to read, until the final level, known as the leaf level, identifies a record in the main database. Instead of 150 milliseconds, we need only 30 milliseconds to get the record.


title: B-tree

text: The auxiliary indices have turned the search problem from a binary search requiring roughly disk reads to one requiring only disk reads where is the blocking factor (the number of entries per block: entries per block in our example; reads).


title: B-tree

text: In practice, if the main database is being frequently searched, the aux-aux index and much of the aux index may reside in a disk cache, so they would not incur a disk read. The B-tree remains the standard index implementation in almost all relational databases, and many nonrelational databases use them too.


title: B-tree

text: If the database does not change, then compiling the index is simple to do, and the index need never be changed. If there are changes, then managing the database and its index becomes more complicated.


title: B-tree

text: Deleting records from a database is relatively easy. The index can stay the same, and the record can just be marked as deleted. The database remains in sorted order. If there are a large number of lazy deletions, then searching and storage become less efficient.


title: B-tree

text: Insertions can be very slow in a sorted sequential file because room for the inserted record must be made. Inserting a record before the first record requires shifting all of the records down one. Such an operation is just too expensive to be practical. One solution is to leave some spaces. Instead of densely packing all the records in a block, the block can have some free space to allow for subsequent insertions. Those spaces would be marked as if they were "deleted" records.


title: B-tree

text: Both insertions and deletions are fast as long as space is available on a block. If an insertion won't fit on the block, then some free space on some nearby block must be found and the auxiliary indices adjusted. The hope is that enough space is available nearby, such that a lot of blocks do not need to be reorganized. Alternatively, some out-of-sequence disk blocks may be used.


title: B-tree

text: In addition, a B-tree minimizes waste by making sure the interior nodes are at least half full. A B-tree can handle an arbitrary number of insertions and deletions.


title: B-tree

text: Let be the height of the classic B-tree (see for the tree height definition). Let be the number of entries in the tree. Let "m" be the maximum number of children a node can have. Each node can have at most keys.


title: B-tree

text: It can be shown (by induction for example) that a B-tree of height "h" with all its nodes completely filled has entries. Hence, the best case height (i.e. the minimum height) of a B-tree is:


title: B-tree

text: Let formula_7 be the minimum number of children an internal (non-root) node must have. For an ordinary B-tree, formula_28


title: B-tree

text: Searching is similar to searching a binary search tree. Starting at the root, the tree is recursively traversed from top to bottom. At each level, the search reduces its field of view to the child pointer (subtree) whose range includes the search value. A subtree's range is defined by the values, or keys, contained in its parent node. These limiting values are also known as separation values.


title: B-tree

text: Binary search is typically (but not necessarily) used within nodes to find the separation values and child tree of interest.


title: B-tree

text: All insertions start at a leaf node. To insert a new element, search the tree to find the leaf node where the new element should be added. Insert the new element into that node with the following steps:


title: B-tree

text: If the splitting goes all the way up to the root, it creates a new root with a single separator value and two children, which is why the lower bound on the size of internal nodes does not apply to the root. The maximum number of elements per node is "U"−1. When a node is split, one element moves to the parent, but one element is added. So, it must be possible to divide the maximum number "U"−1 of elements into two legal nodes. If this number is odd, then "U"=2"L" and one of the new nodes contains ("U"−2)/2 = "L"−1 elements, and hence is a legal node, and the other contains one more element, and hence it is legal too. If "U"−1 is even, then "U"=2"L"−1, so there are 2"L"−2 elements in the node. Half of this number is "L"−1, which is the minimum number of elements allowed per node.


title: B-tree

text: An alternative algorithm supports a single pass down the tree from the root to the node where the insertion will take place, splitting any full nodes encountered on the way preemptively. This prevents the need to recall the parent nodes into memory, which may be expensive if the nodes are on secondary storage. However, to use this algorithm, we must be able to send one element to the parent and split the remaining "U"−2 elements into two legal nodes, without adding a new element. This requires "U" = 2"L" rather than "U" = 2"L"−1, which accounts for why some textbooks impose this requirement in defining B-trees.


title: B-tree

text: Each element in an internal node acts as a separation value for two subtrees, therefore we need to find a replacement for separation. Note that the largest element in the left subtree is still less than the separator. Likewise, the smallest element in the right subtree is still greater than the separator. Both of those elements are in leaf nodes, and either one can be the new separator for the two subtrees. Algorithmically described below:


title: B-tree

text: Rebalancing starts from a leaf and proceeds toward the root until the tree is balanced. If deleting an element from a node has brought it under the minimum size, then some elements must be redistributed to bring all nodes up to the minimum. Usually, the redistribution involves moving an element from a sibling node that has more than the minimum number of nodes. That redistribution operation is called a rotation. If no sibling can spare an element, then the deficient node must be merged with a sibling. The merge causes the parent to lose a separator element, so the parent may become deficient and need rebalancing. The merging and rebalancing may continue all the way to the root. Since the minimum element count doesn't apply to the root, making the root be the only deficient node is not a problem. The algorithm to rebalance the tree is as follows:


title: B-tree

text: While freshly loaded databases tend to have good sequential behavior, this behavior becomes increasingly difficult to maintain as a database grows, resulting in more random I/O and performance challenges.


title: B-tree

text: A common special case is adding a large amount of "pre-sorted" data into an initially empty B-tree. While it is quite possible to simply perform a series of successive inserts, inserting sorted data results in a tree composed almost entirely of half-full nodes. Instead, a special "bulk loading" algorithm can be used to produce a more efficient tree with a higher branching factor.


title: B-tree

text: When the input is sorted, all insertions are at the rightmost edge of the tree, and in particular any time a node is split, we are guaranteed that no more insertions will take place in the left half. When bulk loading, we take advantage of this, and instead of splitting overfull nodes evenly, split them as "unevenly" as possible: leave the left node completely full and create a right node with zero keys and one child (in violation of the usual B-tree rules).


title: B-tree

text: At the end of bulk loading, the tree is composed almost entirely of completely full nodes; only the rightmost node on each level may be less than full. Because those nodes may also be less than "half" full, to re-establish the normal B-tree rules, combine such nodes with their (guaranteed full) left siblings and divide the keys to produce two nodes at least half full. The only node which lacks a full left sibling is the root, which is permitted to be less than half full.


title: B-tree

text: In addition to its use in databases, the B-tree (or ) is also used in filesystems to allow quick random access to an arbitrary block in a particular file. The basic problem is turning the file block formula_30 address into a disk block (or perhaps to a cylinder-head-sector) address.


title: B-tree

text: Some operating systems require the user to allocate the maximum size of the file when the file is created. The file can then be allocated as contiguous disk blocks. In that case, to convert the file block address formula_30 into a disk block address, the operating system simply adds the file block address formula_30 to the address of the first disk block constituting the file. The scheme is simple, but the file cannot exceed its created size.


title: B-tree

text: Other operating systems allow a file to grow. The resulting disk blocks may not be contiguous, so mapping logical blocks to physical blocks is more involved.


title: B-tree

text: MS-DOS, for example, used a simple File Allocation Table (FAT). The FAT has an entry for each disk block, and that entry identifies whether its block is used by a file and if so, which block (if any) is the next disk block of the same file. So, the allocation of each file is represented as a linked list in the table. In order to find the disk address of file block formula_30, the operating system (or disk utility) must sequentially follow the file's linked list in the FAT. Worse, to find a free disk block, it must sequentially scan the FAT. For MS-DOS, that was not a huge penalty because the disks and files were small and the FAT had few entries and relatively short file chains. In the FAT12 filesystem (used on floppy disks and early hard disks), there were no more than 4,080 entries, and the FAT would usually be resident in memory. As disks got bigger, the FAT architecture began to confront penalties. On a large disk using FAT, it may be necessary to perform disk reads to learn the disk location of a file block to be read or written.


title: B-tree

text: TOPS-20 (and possibly TENEX) used a 0 to 2 level tree that has similarities to a B-tree. A disk block was 512 36-bit words. If the file fit in a 512 (2) word block, then the file directory would point to that physical disk block. If the file fit in 2 words, then the directory would point to an aux index; the 512 words of that index would either be NULL (the block isn't allocated) or point to the physical address of the block. If the file fit in 2 words, then the directory would point to a block holding an aux-aux index; each entry would either be NULL or point to an aux index. Consequently, the physical disk block for a 2 word file could be located in two disk reads and read on the third.


title: B-tree

text: Apple's filesystem HFS+ and APFS, Microsoft's NTFS, AIX (jfs2) and some Linux filesystems, such as btrfs and Ext4, use B-trees.


title: B-tree

text: A B-tree grows slower with growing data amount, than the linearity of a linked list. Compared to a skip list, both structures have the same performance, but the B-tree scales better for growing "n". A T-tree, for main memory database systems, is similar but more compact.


title: B-tree

text: Lehman and Yao showed that all the read locks could be avoided (and thus concurrent access greatly improved) by linking the tree blocks at each level together with a "next" pointer. This results in a tree structure where both insertion and search operations descend from the root to the leaf. Write locks are only required as a tree block is modified. This maximizes access concurrency by multiple users, an important consideration for databases and/or other B-tree-based ISAM storage methods. The cost associated with this improvement is that empty pages cannot be removed from the btree during normal operations. (However, see for various strategies to implement node merging, and source code at.)


title: B-tree

text: United States Patent 5283894, granted in 1994, appears to show a way to use a 'Meta Access Method' to allow concurrent B+ tree access and modification without locks. The technique accesses the tree 'upwards' for both searches and updates by means of additional in-memory indexes that point at the blocks in each level in the block cache. No reorganization for deletes is needed and there are no 'next' pointers in each block as in Lehman and Yao.


title: B-tree

text: Since B-trees are similar in structure to red-black trees, parallel algorithms for red-black trees can be applied to B-trees as well.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. On December 8, the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a statewide recount of all undervotes, over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed. The Bush campaign immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision and halt the recount. Justice Antonin Scalia, convinced that all the manual recounts being performed in Florida's counties were illegitimate, urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately. On December 9, the five conservative justices on the Court granted the stay for Bush, with Scalia citing "irreparable harm" that could befall Bush, as the recounts would cast "a needless and unjustified cloud" over Bush's legitimacy. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that "counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm." Oral arguments were scheduled for December 11.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: In a 5-4 "per curiam" decision, the Court ruled, strictly on equal protection grounds, that the recount be stopped. Specifically, the use of different standards of counting in different counties violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution; the case had also been argued on the basis of jurisdictional grounds, which found favor with only Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and William Rehnquist. The Court then ruled as to a remedy, deciding against the remedy proposed by Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter to send the case back to Florida to complete the recount using a uniform statewide standard before the scheduled December 18 meeting of Florida's electors in Tallahassee. Instead, the majority held that no alternative method could be established within the discretionary December 12 "safe harbor" deadline set by Title 3 of the United States Code (3 U.S.C.), , which the Florida Supreme Court had stated that the Florida Legislature intended to meet. That deadline arrived two hours after the release of the Court's decision. The Court, stating that not meeting the "safe harbor" deadline would therefore violate the Florida Election Code, rejected an extension of the deadline.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: The Supreme Court decision allowed the previous vote certification made by Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, to stand for Bush, who thereby won Florida's 25 electoral votes. Florida's votes gave Bush, the Republican candidate, 271 electoral votes, one more than the 270 required to win the Electoral College. This meant the defeat of Democratic candidate Al Gore, who won 267 electoral votes but received 266, as a "faithless elector" from the District of Columbia abstained from voting. Media organizations later analyzed the ballots and found that, under specified criteria, the originally pursued recount of undervotes of several large counties would have confirmed a Bush victory, whereas a statewide recount would have revealed a Gore victory. Florida later retired the punch card voting machines that produced the ballots disputed in the case.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: In the United States, each state conducts its own popular vote election for president and vice president. The voters are actually voting for a slate of electors, each of whom pledges to vote for a particular candidate for each office, in the Electoral College. of the U.S. Constitution provides that each state legislature decides how electors are chosen. Referring to an earlier Supreme Court case, "McPherson v. Blacker", the Court noted that early in U.S. history, most state legislatures directly appointed the slate of electors for each of their respective states.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Today, state legislatures have enacted laws to provide for the selection of electors by popular vote within each state. While these laws vary, most states, including Florida, award all electoral votes to the candidate for either office who receives a plurality of the state's popular vote. Any candidate who receives an absolute majority of all electoral votes nationally (270 since 1963) wins the presidential or vice presidential election.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: On November 8, 2000, the Florida Division of Elections reported that Bush won with 48.8% of the vote in Florida, a margin of victory of 1,784 votes. The margin of victory was less than 0.5% of the votes cast, so a statutorily-mandated automatic machine recount occurred. On November 10, with the machine recount apparently finished in all but one county, Bush's margin of victory had decreased to 327 votes.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: According to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, later analysis showed that a total of 18 counties—accounting for a quarter of all votes cast in Florida—did not carry out the legally mandated machine recount, but "No one from the Gore campaign ever challenged this view" that the machine recount had been completed. Florida's election laws allow a candidate to request a county to conduct a manual recount, and Gore requested manual recounts in four Florida counties: Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade, which are counties that traditionally vote Democratic and would be expected to garner more votes for Gore. Gore did not, however, request any recounts in counties that traditionally vote Republican. The four counties granted the request and began manual recounts. However, Florida law also required all counties to certify their election returns to the Florida secretary of state within seven days of the election; and several of the counties conducting manual recounts did not believe they could meet this deadline.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: On November 14, the statutory deadline, the Florida Circuit Court ruled that the seven-day deadline was mandatory but that the counties could amend their returns at a later date. The court also ruled that the secretary of state, after "considering all attendant facts and circumstances," had discretion to include any late amended returns in the statewide certification. Before the 5 p.m. deadline on November 14, Volusia County had completed its manual recount and certified its results. At 5 p.m. on November 14, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced that she had received the certified returns from all 67 counties, while Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties were still conducting manual recounts.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Harris issued a set of criteria by which she would determine whether to allow late filings, and she required any county seeking to make a late filing to submit to her, by 2 p.m. the following day, a written statement of the facts and circumstances justifying the late filing. Four counties submitted statements, and after reviewing the submissions, Harris determined that none justified an extension of the filing deadline. She further announced that after she received the certified returns of the overseas absentee ballots from each county, she would certify the results of the presidential election on November 18. However, on November 17, the Florida Supreme Court enjoined Harris from certifying the election while it heard appeals from the various cases in progress. On November 21, it allowed continuation of the manual recounts and delayed certification until November 26.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: By December 8, 2000, there had been multiple court decisions regarding the presidential election in Florida. On that date the Florida Supreme Court, by a 4–3 vote, ordered a statewide manual recount of undervotes. On December 9, ruling in response to an emergency request by Bush, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the recount. The Court also decided to treat Bush's application for relief as a petition for a writ of "certiorari", , requested briefing from the parties by 4 p.m. on December 10, and scheduled oral argument for the morning of December 11.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Although opinions are rarely issued in connection with grants of certiorari (a minimum of four of the nine justices must vote in favor of the grant), Justice Scalia filed an opinion concurring in the Court's decision, noting that "a brief response is necessary to [Justice Stevens's] dissent". According to Scalia,


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Justice Stevens's dissenting opinion was joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. According to Stevens,


title: Bush v. Gore

text: A number of legal scholars have agreed with the dissenters' argument that Bush failed to carry the "heavy burden" of demonstrating a "likelihood of irreparable harm".


title: Bush v. Gore

text: The oral argument in "Bush v. Gore" occurred on December 11. Theodore Olson, a Washington, D.C., lawyer, delivered Bush's oral argument. New York lawyer David Boies argued for Gore.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: During the brief period when the U.S. Supreme Court was deliberating on "Bush v. Gore", the Florida Supreme Court provided clarifications of its November 21 decision in "Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I)", which the U.S. Supreme Court had requested on December 4 following arguments in the case of "Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board". Because of the extraordinary nature and argued urgency of the case, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in "Bush v. Gore" on December 12, 2000, a day after hearing oral argument.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is the U.S. Constitutional provision on which the decision in "Bush v. Gore" was based.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: This clause arguably gives power to only one branch of Florida's state government (i.e., the state legislature).


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Section 2 of the Electoral Count Act, now codified in , regulates the "determination of controversy as to appointment of electors" in presidential elections. Of particular relevance to this case was the so-called "safe harbor" provision, which assures Congress' deference to states in their appointments of electors if done by a specified deadline:


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Since the electors were set to meet December 18, the discretional "safe harbor" deadline was December 12, just one day after the Court heard oral arguments in this case.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Three days earlier, the five-Justice majority had ordered the recount stopped, and the Court had to decide whether to restart it.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Bush argued that recounts in Florida violated the Equal Protection Clause because Florida did not have a statewide vote recount standard. Each county was on its own to determine whether a given ballot was an acceptable one. Two voters could have marked their ballots in an identical manner, but the ballot in one county would be counted while the ballot in a different county would be rejected, because of the conflicting manual recount standards.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Gore argued that there was indeed a statewide standard, the "intent of the voter" standard, and that this standard was sufficient under the Equal Protection Clause. Furthermore, Gore argued that the consequence of ruling the Florida recount unconstitutional simply because it treated different voters differently would effectively render "every" state election unconstitutional and that each voting mechanism has a different rate of error in counting votes. Voters in a "punch-card" county have a greater chance of having their votes undercounted than voters in an "optical scanner" county. If Bush prevails, Gore argued, every state would have to have one statewide method of recording votes to be constitutional.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: This was the most closely decided issue in the case. The arguments presented by counsel did not extensively address what the Court should do if the Court were to find an equal protection violation. However, Gore did argue briefly that the appropriate remedy would not be to cancel all recounts, but rather would be to order a proper recount.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Bush also argued that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling violated of the U.S. Constitution. Essentially, Bush argued that the Florida Supreme Court's interpretation of Florida law was so erroneous that its ruling had the effect of making new law. Since this "new law" had not been directed by the Florida legislature, it violated Article II. Bush argued that Article II gives the federal judiciary the power to interpret state election law in presidential elections to ensure that the intent of the state legislature is followed.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Gore argued that Article II presupposes judicial review and interpretation of state statutes, and that the Florida Supreme Court did nothing more than exercise the routine principles of statutory construction to reach its decision.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: The Supreme Court, in a "per curiam" opinion, ruled that the Florida Supreme Court's decision, calling for a statewide recount, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Kennedy has since been identified as the primary author of the opinion. In addition to writing the opinion, Kennedy also decided to include Souter, Breyer and Stevens as agreeing that there were equal protection "problems" without consulting them. Stevens demanded his name be removed from the draft opinion, which Kennedy agreed to only after Stevens pulled his name from Breyer's dissent. Breyer also objected in private. The New York Times reported that Kennedy's opinion "later caused some confusion by its reference to 'seven justices of the court' who 'agree that there are constitutional problems with the recount.' That was true, but it was also beside the point." Later interviews by "Vanity Fair" indicated that Breyer and Souter were trying to appeal to Kennedy to join them on the remedy, rather than actually agreeing that an equal protection violation had occurred. Jack Balkin, writing in Yale Law Journal, considered this to be a cheap trick to construct the illusion of a larger majority, likening it to "saying that two doctors agree that a patient is sick, but one wants to use leeches, and the other wants to prescribe antibiotics".


title: Bush v. Gore

text: The Court held that the Equal Protection Clause guarantees to individuals that their ballots cannot be devalued by "later arbitrary and disparate treatment". Even if the recount was fair in theory, it was unfair in practice. The record, as weighed by the Florida Supreme Court, suggested that different standards were seemingly applied to the recount from ballot to ballot, precinct to precinct, and county to county, even when identical types of ballots and machines were used.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: According to the Court, the statewide standard (that a "legal vote" is "one in which there is a 'clear indication of the intent of the voter'") could not guarantee that each county would count the votes in a constitutionally permissible fashion. The Court stated that the "per curiam" opinion's applicability was "limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities." However, the Court did not state what those complexities were, nor did it explain (or apparently consider) why the absence of a constitutionally acceptable standard for counting votes, which was the basis for the Court's ruling, would not have invalidated the entire presidential election in Florida.


title: Bush v. Gore

text: Critics would later point out that the court had denied certiorari on equal protection grounds when Bush first sought Supreme Court review. Law clerks who worked for Kennedy and O'Connor at the time would later state their belief that the justices settled on equal protection as grounds for their decision, rather than Article II, because they thought it would seem more fair.