Fitch Ratings Inc. is an American credit rating agency and is one of the "Big Three credit rating agencies", the other two being Moody's and Standard & Poor's. It is one of the three nationally recognized statistical rating organizations (NRSRO) designated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 1975.

History
Fitch Ratings is dual headquartered in New York and London. Hearst owns 100 percent of the company following its acquisition of an additional 20 percent for $2.8 billion on April 12, 2018. Hearst had owned 80 percent of the company after increasing its ownership stake by 30 percent on December 12, 2014, in a transaction valued at $1.965 billion. Hearst's previous equity interest was 50 percent following expansions on an original acquisition in 2006.

Hearst had jointly owned Fitch with FIMALAC SA, which held 20 percent of the company until the 2018 transaction. Fitch Ratings and Fitch Solutions are part of the Fitch Group.

The firm was founded by John Knowles Fitch on December 24, 1914, in New York City as the Fitch Publishing Company. In 1989, the company was acquired by a group including Robert Van Kampen. In 1997, Fitch was acquired by FIMALAC and was merged with London-based IBCA Limited, a FIMALAC subsidiary. In 2000, Fitch acquired both Chicago-based Duff & Phelps Credit Rating Co. (April) and Thomson Financial BankWatch (December).

Fitch Ratings is the third largest NRSRO rating agency, covering a more limited share of the market than S&P and Moody's, though it has grown with acquisitions and frequently positions itself as a "tie-breaker" when the other two agencies have ratings similar, but not equal, in scale.

In September 2011, Fitch Group announced the sale of Algorithmics (risk analytics software) to IBM for $387 million. The deal closed on October 21, 2011.

In June 2022, Fitch Group acquired GeoQuant, a AI-driven data and technology company.

Investment scale
Fitch Ratings' long-term credit ratings are assigned on an alphabetic scale from 'AAA' to 'D', first introduced in 1924 and later adopted and licensed by S&P. Like S&P, Fitch also uses intermediate +/− modifiers for each category between AA and CCC (e.g., AA+, AA, AA−, A+, A, A−, BBB+, BBB, BBB−, etc.).

Investment grade
 AAA: the best quality companies, reliable and stable
 AA: quality companies, a bit higher risk than AAA
 A: economic situation can affect finance
 BBB: medium-class companies, which are satisfactory at the moment

Non-investment grade
 BB: more prone to changes in the economy
 B: financial situation varies noticeably
 CCC: currently vulnerable and dependent on favorable economic conditions to meet its commitments
 CC: highly vulnerable, very speculative bonds
 C: highly vulnerable, perhaps in bankruptcy or in arrears, but still continuing to pay out on obligations
 D: has defaulted on obligations, and Fitch believes that it will generally default on most or all obligations
 NR: not publicly rated

Short-term credit ratings
Fitch's short-term ratings indicate the potential level of default within a 12-month period.
 F1+   :    best quality grade, indicating exceptionally strong capacity of obligor to meet its financial commitment
 F1    :    best quality grade, indicating strong capacity of obligor to meet its financial commitment
 F2    :    good quality grade with satisfactory capacity of obligor to meet its financial commitment
 F3    :    fair quality grade with adequate capacity of obligor to meet its financial commitment but near term adverse conditions could impact the obligor's commitments
 B     :    of speculative nature and obligor has minimal capacity to meet its commitment and vulnerability to short term adverse changes in financial and economic conditions
 C     :    possibility of default is high and the financial commitment of the obligor are dependent upon sustained, favorable business and economic conditions
 D     :    the obligor is in default as it has failed on its financial commitments.

Fitch Solutions
Launched in 2008, Fitch Solutions offers a range of fixed-income products and professional development services for financial professionals. The firm also distributes Fitch Ratings' proprietary credit ratings, research, financial data, and analytical tools.

Criticism

The main credit rating agencies, including Fitch, were accused of misrepresenting the risks associated with mortgage-related securities, which included the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market. There were large losses in the CDO market that occurred despite being assigned top ratings by the CRAs.

For instance, losses on $340.7 million worth of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) issued by Credit Suisse Group added up to about $125 million, despite being rated AAA by Fitch.
However, differently from the other agencies, Fitch was warning the market on the constant proportion debt obligations (CPDO) with an early and pre-crisis report highlighting the dangers of CPDOs in 2007.

See also
 FIMALAC
 Kroll Bond Rating Agency
 List of countries by credit rating
 Moody's Investors Service
 Spread Research
 Standard and Poor's

References

External links
 Fitch Ratings
 Fitch Solutions
 Fitch Learning
 U.S. Credit: Fitch Ratings

Credit rating agencies
Financial services companies established in 1914
Financial services companies of the United States
Companies based in New York City
Financial services companies based in New York City
1914 establishments in New York City

Fitch Ratings


Manuela Carmena Castrillo (; born in 1944) is a retired Spanish lawyer and judge who served as Mayor of Madrid from June 2015 to June 2019. She was a member of the General Council of the Judiciary.

Biography

Early life
She was born on 9 February 1944 in Madrid, in the area near the Dehesa de la Villa. Both sides of her family had a background in small business: her father Carmelo (a native of Toledo) ran a shirt shop at the corner of Gran Vía and Chinchilla Street in central Madrid.  Her mother, meanwhile, worked as a cashier. She attended the French School of the Black Ladies. During her time as a student, Carmena served as voluntary worker in a preserves factory run by the Servicio Universitario del Trabajo.

After graduating in law in 1965 from the University of Valencia, she became a legal representative of workers and detainees during the Francoist State and was co-founder of the labour law office where the 1977 Atocha massacre took place.

Carmena, who joined the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) in 1965, married architect Eduardo Leira in 1967; they have had two children: Eva and Manuel. She ran as a candidate in the PCE list for the 1977 general election in the constituency of Madrid. She had left the party by 1981.

Judicial career
After passing public examinations to become a judge, she started her judicial career in January 1981.
As a judge she began an almost solitary fight to prevent corruption in existing courts. In 1986 she received the National Human Rights Award. She was a founding member of the progressive association Judges for Democracy. Judge of Penitentiary Vigilance and head of the Penitentiary Vigilance Court No. 1 of Madrid, she was elected senior judge of Madrid in 1993. She was appointed as member of the General Council of the Judiciary (proposed by United Left) and served from 1996 to 2001.

Activity after retirement

After retiring from the judiciary in 2010, Carmena moved on to become a member of the Patronato de la Fundación Alternativas, a think tank with ties to the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), and whose members included the former Socialist prime ministers Felipe González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Carmena was Chair-Rapporteur of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and as such, she has visited Equatorial Guinea, Honduras, Nicaragua and South Africa, among other countries. In September 2011, Carmena was appointed advisor to the Patxi López cabinet of the Basque Government in the area of assistance to victims of police abuse.

Carmena Castrillo founded the supportive cooperative "Yayos emprendedores" (literally, "entrepreneur grannies"), which manages a small retail business selling children's games, clothing and shoes made by prisoners at the Alcalá de Guadaira jail in Seville.

Mayor of Madrid

Carmena headed Ahora Madrid's ticket in the Madrid local election held on 24 May 2015. After Ahora Madrid made a coalition deal with the PSOE, Carmena was elected as Mayor on 13 June 2015, obtaining the votes of 29 out of 57 councillors and thereby winning a narrow majority.

Carmena reduced Madrid's municipal debt by €5.6 billion (or 38%) in the first 18 months of her mayorship. In this same time period, Carmena also managed to increase social spending by 26%, which led to an investigation by the opposing People Party's Treasury minister in order to examine Madrid's compliance with Cristóbal Montoro's national spending regulations. This feud between the national Ministry and the municipal Department of Economy and Finance forced Carmena to sack Carlos Sánchez Mato from his position as councillor in December 2017. Also in the first half of her mandate, the ayuntamiento organised several public consultations in order to decide on issues, opening up public input on part of the municipal budget as well as on a project for the revitalisation of the Plaza de España. The council's executive board also changed 52 street and place names hanging over from the Francoist dictatorship which did not comply with the 2007 Law of Historical Memory.

Carmena ran for re-election in the 2019 municipal election, but stated that she would retire from the City Council should she not be re-elected as Mayor. In November 2018, the political platform for Más Madrid was unveiled, with Carmena at its centre. In the municipal election held on 26 May 2019, Más Madrid was the most-voted party, obtaining 19 seats in the plenary assembly, but on 15 June 2019, the People's Party's mayoral candidate José Luis Martínez-Almeida, with the support of Citizens and Vox, earned the vote of an absolute majority of councillors (29 out of 57 councillors) and was elected as Mayor. On 17 June 2019, Carmena resigned from her councillor seat.

Since June 2019
In January 2021, she complained that, "We are infected with lies regarding reality.  It is very difficult to develop correct policies for a deformed reality.  One of the issues we must consider is how to combat the systematic lies that deform the social reality."

Electoral history

Books

Decorations
  Great Cross of the Order of St. Raymond of Peñafort (2002)
 Great Cross of the Order of the Sun of Peru (2015)
 Great Cross of the Order of Merit (2018)

References

1944 births
Living people
Madrid city councillors (2015–2019)
Madrid city councillors (2019–2023)
Más Madrid politicians
Mayors of Madrid
Members of the General Council of the Judiciary
Spanish women judges
20th-century Spanish judges
Women mayors of places in Spain
21st-century Spanish judges
20th-century women judges
21st-century women judges

Manuela Carmena


The Reduced-Moderation Water Reactor (RMWR), also referred to as the Resource-renewable BWR, is a proposed type of light water moderated nuclear power reactor, featuring some characteristics of a fast neutron reactor, thereby combining the established and proven technology of light water reactors with the desired features of fast neutron reactors. The RMWR concept builds upon the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor and is under active development in theoretical studies, particularly in Japan. Hitachi and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency are both involved in research.

Even in Generation II PWRs, the neutron spectrum is not fully thermalised. The goal of the RMWR is to depart further from the thermal neutron spectrum in order to achieve a breeder ratio of slightly greater than one, so that after the initial fuel charge no enrichment of the uranium input to the fuel cycle is required. The RMWR concept is dependent on nuclear fuel reprocessing in order to achieve its objective of a resource renewable fuel cycle. Hitachi has proposed the FLUOREX process as reprocessing technology for this purpose, instead of the more conventional Purex technology.

In contrast to regular light water reactors and in order to achieve a harder neutron spectrum, which is optimal for breeding purposes, the RMWR uses hexagonal fuel assemblies and Y-shaped control rods. The fuel is MOX (Mixed Oxide), consisting of 18% plutonium, which is surrounded by depleted uranium in the blanket region.

Another RMWR breeder design intends on closing the nuclear fuel cycle by mixing thorium with reprocessed transuranics, which include plutonium, in a thorium containing MOX fuel. The neutron speed would be in the spectrum that could purportedly transmutate the long-lived fission products like Tc-99 & I-127 and as the neutron spectrum is hard/fast enough, to also be capable of burning the usually troublesome minor actinides quite efficiently.

Hitachi announced a collaboration with three U.S. universities on the development of the RBWR/RMWR in 2014.

See also

 Supercritical water reactor, a similar and perhaps even overlapping concept.
 Clean And Environmentally Safe Advanced Reactor, preliminary work in the 1990s.

References

External links
 IAEA Advanced Reactors Information System: Reduced-Moderation Water Reactor
 Hitachi Power Systems: RMWR and FLUOREX fuel cycle

Light water reactors
Nuclear power reactor types

Reduced moderation water reactor


Éamon de Valera (; 14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) wis a verra important 20t century Erse poleetical feegur. He wis the heid ane for Ireland for mony terms. He wis ane o the leaders o Erse unthirldom an he wis on the anti-Treaty side o the Ceevil War. He foondit the Fianna Fáil pairty, the muckle maist pairty in Ireland.

Bairnheid an youth

De Valera wis born in New York Ceety in 1882, tae a Spainyie-Cuban faither an an Erse mither. Tho this is disputit. His faither dee'd in 1885, an he wis taen tae Ireland wi his Uncle Ned an he wis brocht up in Limerick bi his grandmither, her son, Patrick, an her dochter, Hannie. At 16, he gaed tae Dublin, for tae study at Blackrock College, an thare he stairtit playin Rugby (he gaed on tae play for the Munster rugby team).

In 1903 he wis appyntit teacher o maths at Rockwell College. The neist year he graduatit frae the Royal University o Ireland an syne gaed ontae teach at Blackrock College.

Politics

He becam an acteevist for the Erse leid, an jynt the Conradh na Gaeilge, whaur he met his wife Sinead. In 1913 he jynt the Erse Volunteers, an than the Erse Republican Britherheid.

He wis inrowed in the Easter Risin an efter the surrender he wis reestit an impreesont in Kilmainham Jyle. He wis sentenced tae execution, but public opeenion wis agin executions sae he joukit it.

In 1919 at the meetin o the First Dail, de Valera becam Preses o Dail Eireann. He gaed tae Americae for tae raise siller for tae fund a Republic o Ireland. He raised $5,500,000. In the meantime in Ireland, the Erse War o Unthirldom haed stairtit.

Ceevil War

Efter the War, negotiations stairtit. This led tae the Anglo-Irish Treaty that meant Ireland wad be spleet intae twa kintras wi ane, Northren Ireland, bidin in the Unitit Kinrick an Soothren Ireland becomin a domeenion o Breetain, no a Republic.

De Valera wis agin the treaty, but it wis still passt. This led tae a Ceevil War atween pro-Treaty an anti-Treaty factions. De Valera wis nominally heid ane o the anty-Treaty forces, but haed little pouer.

Fianna Fail an President

Efter the war, he foondit Fianna Fail, a republican pairty an in 1932 he becam Prime Meenister o Ireland. In 1937 he makkit a new consitution o Ireland, the Bunreacht na hÉireann. In 1949 Ireland wis declared a Republic.

De Valera dee'd in 1975 whan 92 year auld.

1882 births
1975 daiths
Alumni o the Ryal Varsity o Ireland
Buirials at Glasnevin Seemetry
Conservatism in the Republic o Ireland
De Valera faimily
Valera, Eamon de
Fianna Fáil TDs
Heids o Erse proveesional govrenments
Erse mathematicians
Erse naitionalists
Erse preesoners o war
Knichts o the Supreme Order o Christ
Leaders o Fianna Fáil
Leaders o Sinn Féin
Members o the 1st Dáil
Members o the 2nt Dáil
Members o the 3rd Dáil
Members o the 4t Dáil
Members o the 5t Dáil
Members o the 6t Dáil
Members o the 7t Dáil
Members o the 8t Dáil
Members o the 9t Dáil
Members o the 10t Dáil
Members o the 11t Dáil
Members o the 12t Dáil
Members o the 13t Dáil
Members o the 14t Dáil
Members o the 15t Dáil
Members o the 16t Dáil
Members o the Erse Republican Britherheid
Members o the Hoose o Commons o Northren Ireland 1921–25
Members o the Hoose o Commons o Northren Ireland 1925–29
Members o the Hoose o Commons o Northren Ireland 1933–38
Members o the Pairlament o the Unitit Kinrick for Clare constituencies
Members o the Pairlament o the Unitit Kinrick for Mayo constituencies
Meenisters for Eddication (Ireland)
Meenisters for Furrin Affairs (Ireland)
Fowk convictit o treason against the Unitit Kinrick
Politeecians frae New York Ceety
Politeecians frae Coonty Limerick
Fowk o the Pace Risin
Fowk o the Erse Ceevil War (Anti-Treaty side)
Fowk o the Erse War o Unthirldom
Politeecians impreesoned in the Erse revolutionary period
Preses o Ireland
Preses o the Executive Cooncil o the Erse Free State
Preesoners sentenced tae daith bi the Unitit Kinrick
Sinn Féin MPs (pre-1921)
Taoisigh
The Irish Press fowk
UK MPs 1910–1918
UK MPs 1918–1922
Warld War II poleetical leaders
Fowk eddicatit at Rockwell College
Fowk eddicatit at Blackrock College
Erse fowk o Spaingie strynd
Members o the Hoose o Commons o Northren Ireland for Doun constituencies
Rugby union players frae Coonty Limerick
Munster Rugby players

Éamon de Valera


The Royal Automobile Club is a group of people. The group has two locations. There is one location in London. There is another location in Woodcote Park in Surrey. At these locations, you can find places to eat, places to sleep, and places to play sports.

The RAC is well known for providing roadside assistance. However, this part of the RAC is no longer a formal part of the club.

Organisations based in London

Royal Automobile Club


Secular liberalism is a form of liberalism in which secularist principles and values, and sometimes non-religious ethics, are especially emphasised. It supports the separation of religion and state. Moreover, secular liberals are usually advocates of liberal democracy and the open society as models for organising stable and peaceful societies.

Secular liberalism stands at the other end of the political spectrum from religious authoritarianism, as seen in theocratic states and illiberal democracies. It is often associated with stances in favour of social equality and political freedom.

Description
Being secularists by definition, secular liberals tends to favour secular states over theocracies or states with a state religion. Secular liberals advocate separation of church and state in the formal constitutional and legal sense. Secular liberal views typically see religious ideas about society, and religious arguments from authority drawn from various sacred texts, as having no special status, authority, or purchase in social, political, or ethical debates. It is common for secular liberals to advocate the teaching of religion as a historical and cultural phenomenon, and to oppose religious indoctrination or lessons which promote religion as fact in schools. Among those who have been labelled as secular liberals are prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Sam Harris.

The label of "secular liberal" can sometimes be confusing as to what it refers to. While the term secular can sometimes be used as an adjective for atheists and non-religious people, chiefly in American usage, in British English it is more likely to refer to people who are secularists, which is to say, people who believe in keeping religion and government apart. The atheist writer Richard Dawkins can be categorised under both definitions, while the British Muslim liberal commentator Maajid Nawaz and liberal Christians who advocate secularism (such as Ed Davey, Tim Farron, and Barack Obama) only meet the latter. The Liberal Democrat party in the United Kingdom is secular liberal in philosophy, but its membership is made up of people from many religions and non-religious approaches.

In a modern democratic society, a plurality of conflicting doctrines share an uneasy co-existence within the framework of civilization.

Contemporary application

Arab Spring
Secular liberalism is sometimes connected with the Arab Spring protests. One commentator labels it as a "secular liberal fantasy". Others have labeled the motivations behind it, and the temporary governments created as a result as secular liberalism.

Secular liberalism has a long and complicated history in Egypt. The history of secular liberalism was represented in early Egyptian political thought and literature, but the ideas were never effectively put into practice by the Wafd party. Liberal constitutional principles failed to gain a consensus of public opinion and were eventually forced to contend with the political realities of Nasserism. Middle Eastern liberalism, already detached from its Classical philosophical foundation, lacked the economic context in which Western liberalism succeeded, and was effectively replaced by secular authoritarianism in Egypt after the 1952 Egypt Revolution, which dealt more harshly with the Brotherhood. The failures of Nasserism and Pan-Arabism contributed to the growing power of an increasingly violent and radicalized Muslim Brotherhood, further weakening the principles of secularism that had long been challenged by certain political factions within Egypt.

See also

 Age of Enlightenment
 Culture war
 Modernism
 Muscular liberalism
 Postchristianity
 Religious liberalism
 Secular ethics
 Secular humanism
 Secularism
 Secular state
 Secularity
 Secularization

References

Liberalism
Economic systems
Political culture
Political ideologies
Political philosophy
Secularism
Secular humanism

Secular liberalism


Roger Le Geyt Hetherington  (1908–1990) was a British civil engineer.

Hetherington was born in London on 20 December 1908, the eldest son of Sir Roger Gaskell Hetherington and his wife Honoria Ford.  In 1921 Hetherington entered Highgate School. Hetherington held a Master of Arts degree and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 22 July 1940. His professional career as a consulting civil engineer was with Binnie and Partners. He was elected a first class member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers in 1960 and later became a member emeritus. He was asked to become the president of the Society in 1979 but declined on the grounds of poor health. Hetherington served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers from November 1972 to November 1973. and was appointed CBE in the 1974 Birthday Honours. He married Katharine Elise Dawson in 1945 and had a single daughter.

References

Bibliography

External links
Roger Hetherington at Rootsweb

British civil engineers
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Presidents of the Institution of Civil Engineers
People educated at Highgate School
1908 births
1990 deaths

Roger Hetherington


The Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences is an academic unit of University of California, Irvine (UCI). The school of ICS consists of three departments: Computer Science, Informatics, and Statistics. It is also the only computer science dedicated school within the UC system.

University of California, Irvine's School of ICS has three departments: Computer Science, Informatics, and Statistics. It's the only computer science school in UC system. In 2004, Donald Bren donated $20 million and in his honor, the school was renamed after his name, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences.

History
The Department of ICS was first established as an independent department back in 1968, and in 2002 it was officially declared as a school.

During 2004, the school received an anonymous donation of $20 million, and the donor was later revealed to be Donald Bren. Because of his generous act, the school was then renamed after him "Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences".

Academics

Undergraduate
Donald Bren offers 8 undergraduate majors-

 Biomedical Computing
 Business Information Management
 Computer Game Science
 Computer Science & Engineering
 Computer Science
 Informatics
 Information and Computer Science
 Software Engineering

ICS school also offers certifies specialization within the major-

 Artificial Intelligence
 Computer System
 Implementation and Analysis of Algorithms
 Information Systems
 Networks and Distributed Systems
 Software Systems

Graduate

The ICS school offers 11 master's and 7 doctorate level graduate programs.

People
Currently, the Dean of the Donald Bren School is Marios Papaefthymiou.

Notable people graduated from the school include: Roy Fielding, Patrick Hanratty, Paul Mockapetris, Steven Joe.

Facilities
The school has three buildings associated with it. The three buildings encompass over 100,000 square feet of space. The three buildings are the Information and Computer Science building, Information and Computer Science 2, and Donald Bren Hall.

References
 https://www.ics.uci.edu/
 http://catalogue.uci.edu/donaldbrenschoolofinformationandcomputersciences/

University of California


The celesta  or celeste , also called a bell-piano, is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. It looks similar to an upright piano (four- or five-octave), albeit with smaller keys and a much smaller cabinet, or a large wooden music box (three-octave). The keys connect to hammers that strike a graduated set of metal (usually steel) plates or bars suspended over wooden resonators. Four- or five-octave models usually have a damper pedal that sustains or damps the sound. The three-octave instruments do not have a pedal because of their small "table-top" design. One of the best-known works that uses the celesta is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskys "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker.

The sound of the celesta is similar to that of the glockenspiel, but with a much softer and more subtle timbre. This quality gave the instrument its name, celeste, meaning "heavenly" in French. The celesta is often used to enhance a melody line played by another instrument or section. The delicate, bell-like sound is not loud enough to be used in full ensemble sections; as well, the celesta is rarely given standalone solos.

The celesta is a transposing instrument; it sounds one octave higher than the written pitch. Instruments of different sizes exist with ranges of three to five and a half octaves. Its four-octave sounding range is generally considered to be C4 to C8. The fundamental frequency of 4186 Hz makes this one of the highest pitches in common use. The original French instrument had a five-octave range, but because the lowest octave was considered somewhat unsatisfactory, it was omitted from later models. The standard French four-octave instrument is now gradually being replaced in symphony orchestras by a larger, five-octave German model. Although it is a member of the percussion family, in orchestral terms it is more properly considered a member of the keyboard section and usually played by a keyboardist. The celesta part is normally written on two braced staves, called a grand staff.

History

The celesta was invented in 1886 by the Parisian harmonium builder . His father, Charles Victor Mustel, had developed the forerunner of the celesta, the typophone, in 1860. This instrument produced sound by striking tuning forks instead of the metal plates that would be used in the celesta. The dulcitone functioned identically to the typophone and was developed concurrently in Scotland; it is unclear whether their creators were aware of one another's instrument. The typophone/dulcitone's uses were limited by its low volume, too quiet to be heard in a full orchestra.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is usually cited as the first major composer to use this instrument in a work for full symphony orchestra. He first used it in his symphonic poem The Voyevoda, Op. posth. 78, premiered in November 1891. The following year, he used the celesta in passages of his ballet The Nutcracker (Op. 71, 1892), most notably in the Variation de la Fée Dragée (commonly known as the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy), in response to instructions from the Balletmaster Marius Petipa that the music should resemble "...drops of water shooting out of fountains...".

However, Ernest Chausson preceded Tchaikovsky by employing the celesta in December 1888 in his incidental music, written for a small orchestra, for La tempête (a French translation by Maurice Bouchor of William Shakespeare's The Tempest).

The celesta is also notably used in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 6, particularly in the 1st, 2nd and 4th movements, in his Symphony No. 8 and Das Lied von der Erde. Karol Szymanowski featured it in his Symphony No. 3. Gustav Holst employed the instrument in his 1918 orchestral work The Planets, particularly in the final movement, Neptune, the Mystic. It also features prominently in Béla Bartók's 1936 Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Ottorino Respighi included it in a number of his works, particularly the "Roman triptych" of tone poems. George Gershwin included a celesta solo in the score to An American in Paris. Ferde Grofe also wrote an extended cadenza for the instrument in the third movement of his Grand Canyon Suite. Dmitri Shostakovich included parts for celesta in seven out of his fifteen symphonies, with a notable use in the fourth symphony's coda.

Twentieth-century American composer Morton Feldman used the celesta in many of his large-scale chamber pieces such as Crippled Symmetry and For Philip Guston, and it figured in much of his orchestral music and other pieces. In some works, such as "Five Pianos" one of the players doubles on celesta.

The celesta is used in Carl Orff's cantata Carmina Burana (1936), and in some 20th-century operas such as the Silver Rose scene in Der Rosenkavalier (1911).

The keyboard glockenspiel part in Mozart's The Magic Flute is nowadays often played by a celesta.

Use in other musical genres

Jazz
Since Earl Hines took it up in 1928, other jazz pianists have occasionally used the celesta as an alternative instrument. In the 1930s, Fats Waller sometimes played celesta with his right hand and piano simultaneously with his left hand. Other notable jazz pianists who occasionally played the celesta include Memphis Slim, Meade "Lux" Lewis, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Buddy Greco, Oscar Peterson, McCoy Tyner, Sun Ra, Keith Jarrett, and Herbie Hancock. A celesta provides the introduction to Someday You'll Be Sorry, a song Louis Armstrong recorded for RCA, and is featured prominently throughout the piece. A celesta is used by the pianist Russ Freeman on tracks from Chet Baker Sings (such as My Ideal and I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)). A number of recordings Frank Sinatra made for Columbia in the 1940s feature the instrument (for instance I'll Never Smile Again), as do many of his albums recorded for Capitol in the 1950s (In the Wee Small Hours, Close to You and Songs for Swingin' Lovers).

Rock and pop

Notable pop and rock songs recorded with the celesta include:
 "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
 "Jethro Tull – The String Quartets" by Jethro Tull
 "Rhythm of the Rain" by The Cascades
 "As If You Read My Mind" by Stevie Wonder
 "Everyday" by Buddy Holly
 "Baby It's You" as recorded by The Beatles
 "Girl Don't Tell Me" by The Beach Boys
 "Cherish" by The Association
 "She's a Rainbow" by The Rolling Stones
 "Sunday Morning" and "Stephanie Says" by The Velvet Underground
 "Wee Baby Blues" by Climax Blues Band
 "Northern Sky" by Nick Drake
 "Maggie May" and "Mine for Me" by Rod Stewart
 "New York City" by Owl City
 "Penetration" by The Stooges
 "Novocaine for the Soul", "Flyswatter", "Trouble with Dreams" and many other songs by Eels
 "Every Single Night" by Fiona Apple
 "Tarkus" by Emerson, Lake & Palmer
 "Here Today" by Illinois Speed Press
 "Love is a Beautiful Thing" by Vulfpeck
 "Queen of Them All" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
"Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush
"Lost Track" by HAIM (band)
"Figure of Eight" by Paul McCartney
 "Too Much Sea Between Us" by Procol Harum
 "Bells of the Evening" by Gordon Lightfoot (celesta played by Nick DeCaro)
 "Love Makes the World Go Round" by Deon Jackson

Icelandic band Sigur Rós included celesta on their album Takk..., as did lead singer Jónsi on Go Quiet, the acoustic version of his solo album Go. Steven Wilson also uses it on various tracks in his solo works.

The Italian 1970s progressive rock band Celeste was named after the instrument.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band used a celesta heavily in their early days, with Danny Federici often playing a Jenco Celestette in the band's live performances throughout the 1970s and 80s.

Sheryl Crow plays celesta on her 2017 album, Be Myself.

The band A-ha used, among other instruments, a Jenco celesta during their MTV Unplugged: Summer Solstice performances, recorded and released in 2017.

Soundtrack
The celesta has been common in cinema for decades. In addition to supplementing numerous soundtrack orchestrations for films from the 1930s through to the 1960s, the celesta has occasionally been spotlighted to invoke a whimsical air. For example, in Pinocchio (1940), a small motif on the celesta is used whenever the Blue Fairy appears out of thin air or performs magic. Celesta also provides the signature opening of Pure Imagination, a song (sung by Gene Wilder) from the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Composer John Williams's scores for the first three Harry Potter films feature the instrument, particularly in the first two films' frequent statements of "Hedwig's Theme".

Another notable use of the celesta was in the music on the children's television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. It was most famously heard in the intro to the theme song of the programme, "Won't You Be My Neighbor", which began with a dreamy sequence on the instrument. The song was sung by Fred Rogers and played by Johnny Costa. It was also used from time to time in other music sequences throughout the programme, such as the one heard as the Neighborhood Trolley moved in and out of the Neighborhood of Make Believe.

A celesta is used in the full orchestral version of the theme song from the TV series The West Wing, composed by W. G. Snuffy Walden.

Manufacturers

Schiedmayer and Yamaha are the only companies currently making celestas. Other known manufacturers that made celestas in the past include:
 Mustel & Company (Paris, France)
 Simone Bros. Celeste MFGS (Philadelphia and New York, US)
 Morley (England)
 Jenco (Decatur, Illinois, US)
 Helmes (New York, US)

Substitutes
If an ensemble or orchestra lacks a celesta, a piano, synthesizer, or sampler and electronic keyboards are often used as a substitute.

See also
 Electric piano
 Voix céleste on organs

Notes

References
 "Celesta", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London, 2001).
 "Celesta", The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, second edition, edited by Barry Kernfeld (London, 2002).

External links

 "The Celesta: The Sound of the Sugar Plum Fairy", by Miles Hoffman. Listen on npr.org.
 "Songs for Celesta", by Marc Sanchez

1886 introductions
C instruments
French inventions
Keyboard instruments
Orchestral instruments
Plaque percussion idiophones
Transposing instruments
Struck idiophones

Celesta


The Greatest Canadian is a 2004 television series consisting of 13 episodes produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to identify one greatest Canadian of all time, according to those who watched and participated in the program.

The series two-hour debut on 17 October 2004 garnered more than one million viewers, with approximately 500,000 to 700,000 viewers per episode thereafter. The initial nomination phase received more than 10,000 names submitted for consideration. The second phase of the process concluded on 28 November at midnight and the following evening the winner from more than 1.2 million votes was revealed to be Tommy Douglas.

The series was inspired by the BBC production the Great Britons and has a spiritual sequel, The Greatest Canadian Invention.

The Greatest Canadian experienced strong initial ratings, some fall-off during its run, and a partial rebound for the finale. The series was credited with bringing the CBC public "buzz" and a younger demographic. Conversely the series was critiqued, by University of Calgary communication professors Bart Beaty and Rebecca Sullivan in their book Canadian Television Today, as middlebrow "nationalist pandering."

Selection process
The "Greatest Canadian" was chosen through a two-step voting process. The first phase beginning on 5 April 2004, involved the collection of data (nominees for consideration) through polls conducted by mail, phone and the internet. Of these nominees the bottom 40 of 50 individuals, in order of popularity, were revealed during the first episode in October.

The eligibility criteria as outlined by the CBC was broad:

To prevent bias during the second round of voting; the top ten nominees, also revealed during the first episode, were presented alphabetically rather than by order of first round popularity. This phase was accompanied by a series of hour-long feature documentaries, where 10 Canadian celebrities acting as advocates each presented their case for The Greatest Canadian. Viewers then submitted votes over the next six weeks supporting their favorite finalists. Importantly, there was no overall limit on the number of times any listener could call in and cast a vote, nor was voting restricted to Canadians.

Top 10
On 17 October 2004 the top 10 nominees were revealed at the end of the first episode in alphabetical order. The winner and all finalists were announced by popularity on 28 November and 29 in a three-hour two part series conclusion.

Top 50
More than 10,000 names were submitted for consideration with the top 100 individuals being revealed online accompanied with a short biography. Of the 100 only the top 50 nominees were featured during the televised broadcast.

At least three* members of the nominees as the direct result of an active mass-mailing campaign among that individual's loyal and well-organized followers. Kin Canada founder Harold A. Rogers, DJ Hal Anderson, and Bahá'í activist Mary Maxwell all benefitted from a grassroots campaign to get their names included in the nominees list. CBC openly admitted this during the broadcast, recognizing that these three esoteric individuals are probably quite unknown to the general public.

Critics have complained there were only four women and three nonwhites in the top 50, that French Canadian participation was very low and that a large number of modern pop culture celebrities made the list like; Bret Hart, Mike Myers, John Candy, Jim Carrey and Avril Lavigne. A recency bias in favour of contemporary icons may be reflective of a youthful voting demographic, as the production was family oriented, or there was unwillingness or confusion distinguishing modern popularity with national historic significance among the participants of all ages. In particular, Don Cherry's inclusion in the top 10 upset many Canadians, especially considering it forced out figures they believe more worthy like Louis Riel and Jean Vanier.

Other editions

Other countries have produced similar shows based on the format originated by the BBC. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and Alexander Graham Bell were also featured on the 100 Greatest Britons list. A two-hour spin-off series called  The Greatest Canadian Invention aired in 2007 with Insulin as the winner.

See also

Canada: A People's History
Canadian Newsmaker of the Year
Heritage Minutes
 List of Canadian awards
List of Canadian Victoria Cross recipients
List of Companions of the Order of Canada
List of inductees of Canada's Walk of Fame
Persons of National Historic Significance

References

2004 Canadian television series debuts
2004 Canadian television series endings
2000s Canadian documentary television series
Canada
Lists of Canadian people
Canadian television series based on British television series

The Greatest Canadian


Year of the Griffin, later The Year of the Griffin in the UK, is a fantasy novel by the British author Diana Wynne Jones, published 2000 simultaneously in the UK and the US It is the sequel to The Dark Lord of Derkholm, set primarily at the University several years after that novel's radical conclusion.

Year is centred on six first-year students of magic, in relation to the administration and teachers, their families and studies, and each other. A review in Publishers Weekly called it a "boisterous spoof of the campus novel"; another in Booklist said that it continues "Jones' spoof of traditional fantasy conventions".

Plot background

The Year is set in a fantasy world several years after the end of its domination by commercial tourism from our world. The University formerly produced large numbers of competent wizards who served as tour guides; current staff aims to produce competent wizards who gradually repair the damage caused by tours. It suffers financially because tuition demand is down, which greatly concerns the faculty, and educationally from its long practical focus, which barely concerns the few who have noticed. The head, wizard Corkoran, is obsessed with becoming the first man to visit the moon and devotes much time to that, but there is little research or innovation generally. The senior wizards have all retired; the middle-age and young know of no other way.

Wizard Corkoran has selected children from wealthy families to fill his own first-year tutorial, hoping that a current appeal for donations will be fruitful. His class turns out to be unusual in other respects too. All six are talented, some in ways they do not yet understand, some encumbered by jinxes. Not one of the families is likely to donate because they have status rather than money, or their fortunes have recently slumped, or their children are here with grudging permission or none. Prince Lukin's father has not permitted him to be at the University, and his kingdom is also very poor; Ruskin is an escaped artisan dwarf, which is the third lowest and here to receive an education so the unjust ranking system can be overthrown; Felim ben Felim is a member of the royal family of Ampersand, whose Emir has vowed to send assassins if he is to attend; and Claudia, the half-sister of Emperor Titus, is here partially hiding from the Senate, who despise her for being half Marsh. Evidently, only one is personally wealthy, the beautiful Olga who does not divulge her name or even her region. Elda is the youngest daughter of Derk, the final Dark Lord before the revolution and head of a most important family now. But she is a griffin, appearing at first glance to be frightening and inscrutable, and her father does not approve of university education.

The classmates quickly become fast friends, and two soon fall in love. They form common opinions of their teachers and courses, and undertake together some undirected extracurricular study. They all run afoul of Wizard Wermacht, a domineering man who teaches multiple subjects in a routine fashion. When Derk visits Elda, he has half a mind to take her home, but actually gives them a reading list strong in magical theory, especially the work of university founder Policant. Educationally that is a success although it does not help their grades.

Every other visit from home is a crisis for the classmates and often for the entire university. From the east a royal family sends seven assassins. Two Imperial Senators and a cluster of ruling class dwarves bring political and economic pressures. Olga's father proves to be the pirate of the Inland Sea. Two royalties arrive leading armies. Prince Lukin trades Ruskin to be his "servant" for the Book of Truth, which Olga had stolen from her father when she fled from an arranged marriage, and from which lies disappear. The Senators are arrested by Emperor Titus.

Eventually, the three more powerful and mature of Elda's six siblings get involved, human brother Blade and griffins Kit and Callette. Chancellor Querida also returns, the former University head who plotted successfully against the tourist industry. Jointly with a few others they secure the University and set it on the right track.

Characters

Classmates
Six new students take Corkoran's tutorial and other first-year courses together. No other students are important.

 Elda is a griffin and the youngest daughter of human wizard Derk. She is much bigger than other university residents although not yet grown up.
 Felim is a brother of the Emir who rules far to the east. By purpose he is a scholar or inventor, not a member of the ruling family. His is the longest running family crisis of the year and to protect him magically from professional assassins the classmates undertake their most important program of self-study.
Ruskin is an adult male dwarf from a fastness in the Central Peaks. He is a runaway slave from the ruling perspective but the chosen representative of his own low caste and others, for magical training at the University, eventually to help overthrow the system.
Olga is a human woman, exceptionally beautiful, intelligent, and rich but keeps her background secret. After years working on board her father's ship, she happily arises at five and she is a find for the school rowing team. She can talk to elementals.
Lukin is the Crown Prince of Luteria, a poor kingdom whose father King Luther forbade him to go study. As a magic-user he suffers from a jinx where he inadvertently opens huge pits magically by accident.
Claudia is a teenage girl, the younger sister Titus, a young Emperor of the South. She suffers from another jinx and is half-Marsh.

Staff at the University –

Wizard Corkoran – The friends tutor at the University, and Head of it. He likes to wear colourful ties, and his aim is to be the first man on the moon. He spends most of his time working on his moon studies, to the point of neglecting the actual University. He is also very bad with money.
Wizard Wermacht – The teacher at the University who takes most of the first-year classes, and also the youngest. He is nasty, strict, and dislikes Elda, Lukin and the others. He particularly dislikes Lukin, after he made the bad mistake on the first day of opening a seemingly bottomless pit in the floor of Wermacht's classroom. The word Wehrmacht, whence apparently derives his name, is the German title for Nazi Germany's unified armed forces. This derivation fits the character of a man who adheres to an inflexible and narrow-minded program of teaching and treats with overbearing nastiness those who seem weak or stand out for their differences. Before learning the divinely-selected but unassuming Wizard Derk's identity, Wermacht insults him and then ejects him from the courtyard. Those suffering from imperfections in the form of jinxes like Claudia and Lukin, meet his ire. Ruskin's identity as a dwarf draws Wermacht's wrath from the first day of class and he refers to Elda as "a monster."

Outside the University –

Wizard Derk: A wizard specialising in genetics, especially the creation of new animals. Father of Shona and Blade (human), Kit, Callette, Lydda and Elda (griffin) and Angelo and Florence (winged humans). He has also created winged horses and intelligent carrier pigeons, among other things.
Querida – One of the most powerful wizards in the world, High Chancellor of the University. However, she leaves the day-to-day running of things to Corkoran, a mistake which she later regrets.
King Luther – King of Luteria. He is not a particularly pleasant person, and treats his sons and daughters as if they were little children, even though they are practically adults already. He forbade Lukin to go to the University.
Emperor Titus – Emperor of the South, and Claudia's half-brother. He is the only person who really liked Claudia when she was small and was kind to her. He has been at war with King Luther for a very long time.
Flurian Atreck – A griffin from the other continent known as Flury. He is one of the four most powerful wizards in the world, and takes over teaching most of Wermacht's classes when Wermacht, for many long and complicated reasons (but deservingly), gets turned into a bar stool.

Notes

References

External links

Diana Wynne Jones wiki

2000 British novels
2000 fantasy novels
Children's fantasy novels
British children's novels
British fantasy novels
Novels by Diana Wynne Jones
Novels set in schools
2000 children's books
Dwarves in popular culture

Year of the Griffin


Harry Markland Molson (August 9, 1856 – April 15, 1912) was a Canadian politician and entrepreneur. A member of the Molson family, he was Mayor of Dorval, Quebec. He died in the sinking of RMS Titanic in April 1912

Molson was born August 9, 1856, son of William Markland Molson (1833–1913) and Helen Augusta Converse (1834–1919), in Montreal, Canada East. Although Harry Molson was not a prominent member of the influential branch of the Molson family, he serendipitously inherited his fortune from his childless uncle, John Henry Robinson Molson (1826–1897), who was former owner of Molson Brewery and President of Molson Bank (1889–1897).

Harry Molson went to England for business in February 1912, and had booked passage to return to Canada at the end of March on the Allan Line ocean liner, SS Tunisian. Molson was persuaded by fellow businessman, Major Arthur Peuchen, to extend his stay in England and sail home with him on Titanic'''s maiden voyage. He occupied First Class stateroom C-30.

He was Governor of Montreal General Hospital, and on the board of directors for the Molson Bank.

Molson was last seen aboard Titanic'', removing his shoes and planning to swim to a ship's light he said he saw off the port bow. His body was never recovered and identified.

See also
RMS Titanic

References

1856 births
1912 deaths
Mayors of places in Quebec
Harry Markland Molson
People from Dorval
Deaths on the RMS Titanic
19th-century Canadian businesspeople
20th-century Canadian businesspeople
19th-century Canadian politicians
20th-century Canadian politicians

Harry Markland Molson


The American Institute of Architects or the AIA is an organization for architects in the United States. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C..

The AIA offers education, government advice, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image. The AIA also works with other members of the design and construction team to help coordinate the building industry.

Other websites
 American Institute of Architects official website
 American Institute of Architects Records at Syracuse University (60 years of primary source material)
 Florida Institute of Architects Publications Digital Collection', including the American Institute of Architects' Florida Association's Florida Architect

Buildings and structures in Washington, D.C.
Organizations in Washington, D.C.
Architectural organizations

American Institute of Architects


Action bias is a phenomenon from psychology. In a given situation, when people have a choice of doing nothing, and doing something (called an action), they will prefer doing something over not doing anything. This is also the case when there is no guarantee that the action would give a better result. It is an automatic response, similar to a reflex or an impulse and is not based on rational thinking. One of the first appearances of the term "action bias" in scientific journals was in a 2000 paper by Patt and Zechenhauser titled "Action Bias and Environmental Decisions", where the authrs looked at the relevance in politics.

References

Bias

Action bias


On June 29, 1948, the Xuzhou Command Headquarters of Republic of China Army reorganized as  General Suppression Headquarters of Xuzhou Garrison (hereinafter referred to GHQ Xuzhou Garrison). Liu Zhi headed as the commander in chief, Du Yuming, Li Yannian, Feng Zhi'an, Liu Ruming, Han Deqin, Sun Zhen as Deputy Commanders in Chief, and Li Su-Cheng served as the Chief of Staff. In the beginning of the Hsuchow-Bengbu Campaign, the GHQ Xuzhou Garrison commanded, with six armies and three pacification zones under its operational jurisdiction, a total of about 800,000 ground troops. Xuzhou Garrison also owned a considerable number of elements of ROC Air Forces stationed in Nanjing, Xuzhou, and Bengbu: either under the direct command of GHQ Xuzhou Garrison, or controlled straight through the mobilization of the Air Force Command authority.

The 2nd Army (commander: Qiu Qingquan)
The 6th Army (commander: Li Yannian)
The 7th Army (commander: Huang Baitao)
The 13th Army (commander: Li Mi, deputy commander: Chen Bing)
The 16th Army (commander: Sun Yuanliang)
The 12th Army (commander: Huang Wei, deputy commander: Hu Lien,  Wu Shao-Chow)
First pacification zone (commander: Chou Lei, deputy commander: Gu Xi-Ju, Li Tianxia)
Third pacification zone (commander: Feng Zhi'an, deputy commander: Zhang Kexia, Ho Kei-Feng)
Fourth pacification zone and The Eighth Army (commander: Liu Ruming, deputy commander: Cao Fulin, Mi Wen-Ho, and Tien Cheng-Nan)
Hsuchow Garrison Command (commander: Li Yannian)

January 19, 1949, because of a devastated defeat of the nationalist forces resulted in "Xuzhou-Bengbu Campaign" (Huaihai Campaign), Suppression General Headquarters of Xuzhou Garrison was indefinitely deactivated.

Notes

References

National Revolutionary Army
Military of the Republic of China
Xuzhou
Chinese Civil War
1948 in China


The Lion Salt Works is the last remaining open pan salt works in Marston, near Northwich, Cheshire, England. It closed as a work in 1986 and is now preserved as a museum.

History
John Thompson Junior and his son Henry Ingram Thompson, a member of a family that had been making salt during the 19th century, started the Lion Salt Works when he built a salt pan in the coal yard of the Red Lion Hotel, Marston, in 1894.

Thompson family

Six generations of the Thompson family were involved with the salt industry, at the site of the Lion Salt Works. John Thompson Senior (1799–1867) was originally a joiner, timber merchant and brickyard owner with premises on Witton Street and London Road in Northwich He entered the salt trade in 1842 when he started a shipping and lighting business along the River Weaver to the ports in Liverpool and Birkenhead. Initially this was in partnership with other salt proprietors but by 1846 he had entered a partnership with his son John Thompson Junior (1824–1899), called Thompson and Son that operated until 1889.  They also  occupied a timber yard and dockyard buildings in Northwich Castle on the River Weaver. The dockyards were sold to cover debts to W. J. Yarwood's in 1887.

They began to sink salt mines and start salt works north-west of Northwich. Platt's Hill Mine, Wincham, was sunk by John Thompson in 1843, and in 1846 was followed by the Dunkirk Works, in Witton-cum-Twambrooks. Several more salt works and mines followed over the next forty years in the districts of Witton, Marston and Wincham north-west of Northwich, and also in Winsford. After the death of John Thompson Senior in 1867, the business was split between John Thompson Junior and his brother Jabez Thompson. After initially running the Alliance Works in Marston (see below), Jabez Thompson went on to run the successful family terracotta and brickworks on London Road, Northwich.  John Thompson Junior continued to run the salt business with his sons Henry Ingram (1851–1937) and Alfred Jabez (1857–1965). In 1888 the majority of the remainder of the business was sold to the Salt Union.

After the sale of the family business in 1888 John Thompson Junior retired to Eddisbury Hall in Macclesfield. His sons were soon involved with the salt business once more. Henry Ingram Thompson started the Lion Salt Works, Marston (see below) whilst Alfred Jabez Thompson became a rival and ran a salt works in Wincham. Both of Henry Ingram's sons, Jack (1875–1966) and Alan Kinsey (1883–1964) joined him to work at the Lion Salt Works and the shipping office in Liverpool. After his death in 1937, his sons ran the business as a partnership. Alan Kinsey's son, Henry Lloyd Thompson (1925–2013) joined the business in 1947 and Jack Thompson's, grandson Jonathan joined the business in 1962. They ran the Lion Salt Works until its closure in 1986.

Alliance Salt Works
The Lion Salt Works was not the first salt works on site. In 1857 John Thompson Senior and John Thompson Junior obtained from John Buckley a 50-year lease for the Outlet Field in Marston where they constructed the Alliance Salt Works. They subsequently bought the site in 1868. In the 1870s the site was run by Jabez Thompson, brother of John Thompson Junior. By the 1880s it was run by Alfred Jabez Thompson, the son of John Thompson Junior.  He sold the site to the Salt Union in 1888 for £17,000.

Lion Salt Works
The Lion Salt Works was built in 1894 when John Thompson Junior and Henry Ingram Thompson purchased the site of the Red Lion Hotel, adjacent to the bridge on the Ollershaw Lane in Marston. John Thompson Junior retired shortly afterward to Eddisbury Hall in Macclesfield. Henry Ingram Thompson sunk a brine shaft built a brine tank and engine house and built the first pan and stove house (number 1) on site around the Red Lion Hotel. By 1899 the Red Lion Hotel had been demolished and two cottages converted to the Red Lion Inn. This allowed them to build two further pan and stove houses (2 and 3). On-site there were also two butter pans and two fishery pans. A Manager's House and Smithy were built at the south-west of the site. By 1906 a mineral railway had been built that extended to the south of the site. Henry Ingram Thompson ran the site with his sons Jack Thompson and Alan Kinsey Thompson. The salt works exported salt to Canada, North America and West Africa. The domestic market saw salt sold to Cheshire, Manchester and Liverpool.

Between the first and the second world wars, the salt works saw little change. New markets were opened up with salt sold to Denmark for salting bacon. However, the advent of the Second World War meant these markets were disrupted. In 1937 Henry Ingram Thompson died. His sons Jack Thompson and Alan Kinsey Thompson ran the business. They dug a new brine borehole and pump.

Henry Lloyd Thompson joined the firm in 1947 after the Second World War. He had just finished his military service in the Royal Navy. He was to run the salt works for the next forty years. After demolishing the butter and fishery pans, he built two more pans and stove house (numbers 4 and 5) in 1954 and 1965.  In the 1950s, 90% of the salt produced was exported to West Africa. It was exported via firms including Paterson Zochonis, John Holt and ICI to ports on the West African coast including Calabar, Lagos and Port Harcourt in Nigeria, Monrovia in Liberia, Conakry in Guinea, and Freetown, Sierra Leone.  The West African market continued to be successful despite open-pan salt being more expensive because it produced a light, flaky grained salt known as 'Lagos Salt'. This was preferred in the West African market because it withstood the high temperatures and very high humidity of the tropics.

Henry Lloyd Thompson was joined by his second cousin Jonathan in the early 1960s. They sought to diversify and modernize the salt works. New techniques were introduced including an automated pan and converting the works to run on reclaimed oil.  The Thompson's produced their own brand salt from the late 1960s in an attempt to create new markets. They eventually opened the Lion Salt Works as a working museum between 1980 and 1986.

During the 20th century, more efficient methods of extracting and refining salt were developed and by the late 1960s the works was the only business continuing to use the open pan process in the country.  The business closed down in 1986 when the West African markets, the major purchaser of 'Lagos Salt', began to decline. This was as a result of the Biafran War in Nigeria (1967–1970), and a series of military juntas that followed.  In addition competition from cheaper imports of solar evaporated salt from Brazil in exchange for oil also affected the market. Henry Lloyd and Jonathan Thompson eventually closed the Lion Salt Works in 1986.

Preservation

The buildings were purchased by Vale Royal District Council to prevent their demolition.  In 1993, the Lion Salt Works Trust was formed as a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. In 2000, a survey showed that the land around the works was stable and during the following years money was raised from DEFRA, English Heritage, Cheshire Rural Recovery and the Northwest Development Agency to enable surveys to be completed and a conservation plan to be written.  In July 2005, an application was made to the Heritage Lottery Fund and a Stage 1 award was made the following March.  In March 2008, it was announced that the Heritage Lottery Fund had made an award of £4.96 million towards the £7 million total cost of the restoration project.

In 2004, Lion Salt Works was a candidate on the BBC's Restoration programme.  The surviving buildings are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as designated Grade II listed buildings.  The specific buildings listed are the canal salt shed, the engine shed and pump house, the office in the works yard, and the pan sheds and stoves and the store shed behind the works.  The buildings are registered as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.  The site is recognised as an Anchor Point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage.

In 2009, the site came into the ownership of Cheshire West and Chester Council. The site was reopened on 5 June 2015 after a major redevelopment project  as a new heritage visitor attraction.   The £10.2 million project was sponsored by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Cheshire West and Chester, Manage +, Historic England, WREN and Wates Foundation. The restoration won the AABC Conservation award at the 2016 Civic Trust Awards, and in August 2016 it was named the best UK Heritage Project by the National Lottery.

Museum

The Lion Salt Works has been restored as a museum and visitor attraction. The museum and its restored buildings have galleries that illustrate how the salt works operated and salt's effect on the economy and landscape of mid-Cheshire. The restored salt-work buildings and structures include a rebuilt stove house with its associated salt pan in situ, the smithy, engine house, a brine tank and the rail tracks used for transporting salt on the site. There is a café, conference facility and play area.

See also

 List of Scheduled Monuments in Cheshire (post-1539)
 Listed buildings in Marston, Cheshire
 History of salt
 Open pan salt making
 Salt in Cheshire
 History of salt in Middlewich
 Weaver Hall Museum and Workhouse, Northwich
 New Cheshire Salt Works, a vacuum salt works in nearby Wincham

References
Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links
Lion Salt Works Trust's Vision for the Future
Lion Salt Works restoration
Lion Salt Works museum homepage

Chemical plants of the United Kingdom
European Route of Industrial Heritage Anchor Points
Food museums in the United Kingdom
Grade II listed buildings in Cheshire
Industrial archaeological sites in England
Industry museums in England
Museums in Cheshire
Salt museums
Saltworks
Scheduled monuments in Cheshire
Tourist attractions in Cheshire
1894 establishments in England

Lion Salt Works


The Jay Leno Show is an American talk show hosted by Jay Leno that was broadcast by NBC from September 14, 2009 to February 9, 2010. The program—which aired on weeknights in a 10:00 p.m. ET/PT timeslot—was modeled heavily upon the format of his late-night talk show The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, opening with a comedic monologue, followed by celebrity interviews and other comedy segments.

The program was the result of a compromise by NBC Universal's then-CEO Jeff Zucker to keep Leno with the network following his retirement from The Tonight Show and succession by Conan O'Brien. NBC hoped to attract Leno's existing fans, as well as a larger prime time audience: the network believed that The Jay Leno Show would not necessarily require high viewership to be profitable, due to its lower production costs in comparison to scripted dramas.

The Jay Leno Show was met with mixed reception from critics, who felt that the series had little differentiation from Leno's Tonight Show. Others were critical of NBC's decision to give up an hour of its weeknight lineup to Leno, due to the network's past success with dramas airing in the time slot. One NBC affiliate (WHDH in Boston owned by Sunbeam Television, now independent) notably planned not to air the show at all, although this decision was retracted due to complaints by the network. Although viewership of The Jay Leno Show was initially on par with NBC's projections, by November, the program's ratings began to fall significantly. NBC's affiliates complained that the declining viewership of The Jay Leno Show also had a ripple effect on the viewership of their late local newscasts.

In an effort to address the concerns, NBC announced in January 2010 that it would, following the 2010 Winter Olympics, shorten The Jay Leno Show to a half-hour, and move it to 11:35 p.m—the timeslot that had been occupied by The Tonight Show for nearly 60 years, and bump Tonight to 12:05 a.m. The decision resulted in a major public conflict between the network and Conan O'Brien, who asserted that the move would damage the highly respected Tonight Show franchise, and that he would not participate in the program if it were moved to 12:05. Despite much support for O'Brien from both the public and media professionals alike, NBC maintained its plan to move Leno to 11:35.

On January 21, 2010, NBC reached a $45 million settlement with O'Brien in order to end his contract. The Jay Leno Show ended on February 9, 2010, after being on the air for only four months, with Entertainment Weekly calling the program television's "Biggest Bomb of All Time." Leno resumed his duties as host of The Tonight Show on March 1, 2010, for a second and final tenure that lasted until his February 2014 succession by Jimmy Fallon.

History
NBC announced in 2004 that Jay Leno would leave The Tonight Show in 2009, with Conan O'Brien as his replacement. Leno—who wanted to avoid a repeat of the acrimonious transition when he inherited Tonight from Johnny Carson—said at the announcement, "You can do these things until they carry you out on a stretcher, or you can get out when you're still doing good." He began to regret his decision to retire in 2007, and several networks and studios including ABC, Fox, Sony, and Tribune expressed interest in his services after leaving Tonight.

Jeff Zucker, then-President and CEO of NBCUniversal, sought to keep Leno from defecting to a competitor. Leno rejected several NBC offers for broadcast network daytime slots or subscription TV slots, a series of recurring specials, and a half-hour show at 8 pm five nights a week featuring Leno's Tonight monologue. The network had in 1981 considered moving The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to 10 pm; Zucker, who in 2007 offered Oprah Winfrey an hour five nights a week at 8 pm, now offered Leno an hour five nights a week at 10 pm. Leno was announced on December 9, 2008.

At least one station, then-affiliate WHDH-TV in Boston, Massachusetts, stated that it would not carry the program, claiming that Leno would be detrimental to the station's 11 pm news and that it would instead launch a local news program in the time slot. NBC said that such plans would amount to a flagrant violation of the network contract—a claim which WHDH disputed—and said that it would immediately remove its programming from WHDH if the station followed through with the plan. WHDH backed down on April 13, 2009, and announced that it would air Leno instead of the proposed program.

Though Leno was the first to move the entire five-day-a-week late night talk show to prime time, he was not the first Tonight alumnus to move from late night to a prime time talk show. Steve Allen hosted Tonight Starring Steve Allen from 1954 to 1957; while still hosting that show, he began hosting the prime-time The Steve Allen Show in 1956 on NBC, and the latter show would run until 1960. Jack Paar, who hosted Tonight from 1957 to 1962, next hosted a weekly talk show known as The Jack Paar Program that ran until 1965, also on NBC.

In January 2010, several news outlets reported that The Jay Leno Show would be shortened to 30 minutes and begin airing weeknights at 11:35 pm ET, with Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon's shows following it beginning at 12:05 am. The scheduling change would have been implemented on February 28 after the 2010 Winter Olympics (which preempted much of NBC's primetime and late-night lineup). Leno himself commented on the rumors during his January 7 monologue, joking that NBC stands for "Never Believe your Contract." According to Broadcasting & Cable, "most [NBC affiliates] are hopeful Jay—and Conan—sticks with NBC, and most, if not all, desperately want to see a change in terms of the lead-in they're getting to their lucrative late news; the affiliates "remain fiercely loyal to Leno and were quick to say the rookie program's struggles don't reflect the funnyman's work ethic or comedic chops. 'This isn't about Jay's popularity,' says WJAR Providence VP/General Manager Lisa Churchville. 'This is about having that kind of show at 10 p.m.'"

NBC announced plans to move Leno to 11:35 pm and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien to 12:05 am. O'Brien refused to participate in the move and, on January 21, 2010, reached an agreement with NBC allowing him to leave the network. Lenos final episode aired on February 9, 2010 and Leno returned to Tonight as host on March 1, 2010.

Content
The Jay Leno Show aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT (9:00 p.m. CT/MT) from Studio 11 of the NBC Studios in Burbank, California with the following format:
 After brief opening credits, a monologue of eight to 12 minutes.
 One celebrity guest, two at the most. The "car-themed" set adjusted to allow guests to get off the couch and participate in antics.
 Musical segments appeared only twice a week, in the middle of the show, and sometimes featured multiple acts performing together.
 Comedy segments were reserved for the last 15 minutes of the show, the only portion of the show where Leno sometimes used a desk. Toward the end of the four-month run certain comedy segments such as "Headlines" were moved up to airing right after Jay's monologue, as opposed to being reserved for the end of the show. They include:
 "Headlines" and "Jaywalking", both from Tonight.
 The "advertiser-friendly 'Green Car Challenge'". Two to three times each week, celebrities drove an electric Ford Focus and tried to set records on a 1,100-foot dedicated outdoor track. The segment was based on the "Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car" segment on the British automotive series Top Gear, which Leno had previously appeared on.
 "Ten at Ten", "in which celebs and other newsmakers . . . answer a rapid-fire series of ten 'ridiculous, celebrity-based questions.' The ten at ten guest would not be in the studio, but would instead appear via satellite from some other location. When the off-site location was in the Central or Mountain Time Zones, the skit would be changed to 9 at 9 (since these time zones have all programming one hour earlier in their local time than the coastal time zones), which was the same except there would only be nine questions."
 Comic "correspondents" such as D. L. Hughley, Dan Finnerty, Mikey Day, Rachael Harris, and Jim Norton did pretaped segments.

One planned segment, "Stories Not Good Enough for the NBC Nightly News" (which would have featured then-NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams), was dropped from the show before it made it to air.

In addition to reserving comedy segments for the end, the network aired no commercials after the show and "urged local affiliates to do the same" so local news could start immediately, retaining as many Leno viewers as possible.

Recurring segments
 "Headlines" (Monday): Humorous print items sent in by viewers. These real-life headlines are usually headlines with typographical errors, or unintentionally inappropriate items. The segment usually starts out with a fake, humorous headline during the introduction for the segment.
 "Jaywalking": A pre-taped segment, "Jaywalking" is a play on the host's name and the illegal practice of jaywalking. Leno asks people questions about current news and other topics in public areas around Los Angeles (usually Hollywood Boulevard, Melrose Avenue or Universal Studios). Most responses are outrageously incorrect; for example, one person believed that Abraham Lincoln was the first president, and another could not identify a picture of Hillary Clinton. Sometimes the questions are of the "What color is the White House?" level, such as asking in what country the Panama Canal is located. Up to 15 people are interviewed in an hour or less for each segment, with about nine interviews used on the air. A similar format was used for the game show Street Smarts.
 JMZ: A parody of TMZ, a segment in which they report on fake celebrity news with such guest stars as Chuck Liddell.
 Ten@Ten: Jay interviews a celebrity via satellite by asking them 10 questions. Some editions have only used 9 questions, calling it the "Nine@Nine" as a reference to the central or mountain time zone.
 Green Car Challenge: A segment in which celebrities go in a car and try to be the fastest in a track with obstacles. Tim Allen had the best record time; Rush Limbaugh had the record worst time (though he did so on purpose), and Leno never tried.
 Photo Booth: A pre-taped segment in which someone goes in a Photo Booth and something is amiss.
 Stuff We Found on eBay: Leno brought up some of the oddest stuff that he and members of the studio audience had supposedly found while searching on eBay.
 Ross the Intern: Ross Mathews, an intern for the show, is sent to participate in special events. As part of a running gag, Leno started introducing Ross as his illegitimate son.

First show
Jerry Seinfeld was the celebrity guest on the debut episode. Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Kanye West performed "Run This Town", in which all three are featured. West sat down for a previously unplanned interview with Leno, discussing West's outburst at the MTV Video Music Awards the previous night. Dan Finnerty was the comic correspondent for the night, and the end of the show featured Headlines.

Reviews for the first show ranged from neutral to negative, with most critics stating that the show was, despite the changes, still very similar to Tonight. Metacritic scores it at 48 out of 100 based on 23 TV critic reviews, and viewers scoring it at a 4.0 out of 10. Media Life described the show as "underwhelming" and felt that Leno "failed to rise to the occasion." The Buffalo News called the show "a mess." The Associated Press noted that "it's not a good sign when the Bud Light commercial is funnier than the comedy show it interrupts," and that "at least Rosie Live took some chances." Jonah Krakow of IGN gave it a 5.5/10 saying that "show felt like they just picked from where they left off three months ago, and I'm not sure that's a good thing".

Final show
The final Jay Leno Show aired on February 9, 2010. The guests were Ashton Kutcher, Gabourey Sidibe and Bob Costas, with unannounced visits from Donald Trump and Kurt Warner. Following the monologue, there was a brief clip reel of highlights from the show's short tenure; otherwise, little mention was made about the fact that it was the final episode of the program. The last moments of the show featured the program's "10 at 10" segment, with its celebrity guest being Bob Costas. When Leno asked Costas how it felt to be the show's final guest, the sportscaster replied, "Kind of like being involved in the last game of a Clippers season, isn't it?" Directly following the interview with Costas, Leno thanked him, told the audience to stay tuned for their local news, and then abruptly went off-air.

Many media outlets criticized Leno's apparent lack of ceremony for the end of his program.New York Times article: "Without Fanfare, Leno's Prime-Time Show Ends ". Variety reported that the lack of fanfare was intentional, as NBC was attempting to rehab the reputation of Leno and The Tonight Show and did not desire to bring any further attention to Leno's transition back to Tonight. The Associated Press noted that the last few weeks of the program, including the final episode, were pervaded by "bad vibes." The Boston Globe wrote that Leno said farewell to his short-lived show "with all the momentousness of a guy taking out the trash." The episode received negative reviews from Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. By comparison, O'Brien's final Tonight Show was treated as a finale, with guests making reference to the show ending and guest Neil Young taking an ironic tone by performing "Long May You Run".

Impact

Financial
Leno had a contract for five years for the show. NBC reportedly had an option to cancel after two years, but had committed to at least one or two years regardless of ratings, although later chose to end the show after less than five months. He could have earned up to $30 million each year depending on ratings for Leno, compared to a $20 million annual salary during his last years at Tonight.

NBC expected to benefit by offering an inexpensive comedic alternative to the procedurals ("100% more comedy and 98% fewer murders!") and other one-hour dramas that typically air at 10 pm, and by offering new episodes 46 weeks each year versus 22.Itzkoff, Dave. "NBC's 'Jay Leno Show' Promises 98 Percent Fewer Murders " The New York Times, 2009-05-04. While Leno was not necessarily expected to be competitive with the higher-rated scripted shows on ABC and CBS in its time slot, its projected cost of production was far lower and thus it was expected to be profitable to the network, and product integration intended to make the show "as DVR-proof as you can be on television in this era". Each airing of Leno cost about $350,000 to $400,000 versus up to $3 million for an hour-long drama, saving NBC $13 million each week without the network needing the show to beat its competitors. Those costs include the services of 22 writers, whom Leno called the "top 5% of the highest-paid . . . in the Guild."

McDonald's became the first buying advertiser for the program; as part of a tie-in with its McDonald's Monopoly promotion, a "Million Dollar Roll" segment hosted by NBC personalities aired nightly during commercial breaks of The Jay Leno Show in October 2009.

Ratings
Leno did not expect his show to beat competing first-run episodes, but to do better than reruns, in part because topical jokes benefit from the "immediacy" of the time slot versus 11:30 pm. A television analyst predicted that Leno would finish in "a safe third place" every night. NBC research before the show's debut indicated that fans of Leno would watch Leno two to three times a week.

NBC saw a 1.5 rating for the show in the 18–49 demographic as "viable" and a 1.8 as a "home run". NBC told Leno that at a 1.5 rating, NBC makes $300 million a year. Tonight at 11:30 pm earned about a 1.3 to 1.5; the television audience at 10 pm is 40% larger than at 11:30 pm, and the network hoped Leno'''s audience would also grow. Industry observers have cited a range of ratings, from 1.7 to 2,"Sternberg calls the fall: 'FlashForward,' 'Community' hit; 'Rivers,' 'Forgotten' miss " The Hollywood Reporter, 2009-08-14. as being necessary for the show to succeed at 10 pm. By comparison, 2.5 is generally necessary for a 10 pm drama to succeed; those that earned a 1.7 or less during the 2008–2009 season were generally cancelled. NBC's prime-time dramas averaged about 2 during 2008–2009.

The first episode of The Jay Leno Show earned "fast national" estimates of 17.7 million viewers, an 11 Nielsen rating (5.1 among persons 18–49) and an 18 share, significantly above both his Tonight finale and the debut of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in all categories. By the second week and competing against season premieres, the audience fell to six million viewers, still on par with or exceeding NBC projections. As of November 1, 2009, The Jay Leno Show has averaged a 1.98 in the adults 18–49 ratings and 6.594 million viewers. During the week before Christmas, the ratings dropped to 1.4 during the week. Prior to the controversy regarding the move of the Jay Leno Show to 11:35 p.m., viewership bottomed out at 4.799 million viewers, although there was a slight bump as word of the controversy broke.

Though the show itself had been meeting the network's projections, it was severely detrimental to the ratings of the late local news on NBC affiliates. As originally feared by WHDH in Boston, several stations across the country saw what was known as the "Leno Effect", where the lower audience for Leno (as compared to NBC's scripted prime time offerings) translated directly into a domino effect of severe audience drops for late local news (on the order of 25–30%) and completely stunted NBC's past successful schedule hammocking strategies, effects that NBC had underestimated.

Dispute over timeslot

In early January 2010, multiple media outlets reported that, following the 2010 Winter Olympics, The Jay Leno Show would be shortened to 30 minutes and begin airing weeknights at 11:35 pm ET, with Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon's shows following it beginning at 12:05 am on March 1, 2010. On January 10, NBC Universal Television Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin confirmed that The Jay Leno Show would indeed move to 11:35.

Leno immediately accepted the return to 11:35 p.m., calling the move "all business." He had made it known in the press in November 2009 that he wished to return to his old timeslot; behind the scenes, Leno had privately indicated that he did not believe the 10:00 experiment would work. On the other hand, O'Brien's contract stipulated that the network could move the show back to 12:05 a.m. without penalty, a loophole put in primarily to accommodate sports preemptions, the network's traditional nightly Wimbledon tournament highlights show, and specials such as New Year's Eve with Carson Daly.

O'Brien did not seriously respond for several days after the announcement, then drafted a press release explaining why he felt it was unfair to him, his staff, Fallon, and the legacy of The Tonight Show to move the show past midnight. He concluded by saying that he "cannot participate in what I honestly believe is [The Tonight Shows] destruction."Huffington Post article: "Conan O'Brien Statement: I Will Not Follow Jay At 12:05 ". O'Brien received an outpouring of celebrity and viewer support for rejecting the move, while Leno received heavy criticism.Huffington Post article: "Patton Oswalt: Jay Leno Is Like Nixon, I Don't Like Him ". On January 21, O'Brien signed a $45 million deal allowing him to leave the network, and aired his final episode of Tonight on January 22; Leno returned as host of Tonight on March 1.

Settlement
On January 19, 2010, multiple media outlets reported that O'Brien and NBC were close to signing a deal between $30 and $40 million for the host to walk away from the network.New York Post article: "NBC near deal to allow Conan to leave network ". One apparent sticking point in the negotiations was the amount his staff and crew were to be paid for leaving the program.Chicago Sun Times article: "Conan negotiations stuck on staff, Triumph ". Reports also said that the contract could prohibit O'Brien from badmouthing NBC in any way, and that he may be able to return to television as early as September 2010.

On January 21, after two weeks of negotiations, it was announced that Conan O'Brien had signed a $45 million deal to leave NBC. The Wall Street Journal reports that O'Brien will receive about $32 million, with his staff receiving around $12 million. The contract contains a clause prohibiting O'Brien from making negative remarks about NBC for a certain amount of time; it does not, however, contain the previously rumored "mitigation clause," in which NBC would be able to keep some of the severance pay after O'Brien finds a new program. It also stipulates that he could have returned to television as early as September 1, 2010. The network confirmed that Leno would officially resume as host of The Tonight Show on March 1. TMZ reported that NBC would rerun episodes from O'Brien's time as host until the network began airing the Olympics on February 12.

O'Brien later reached a deal with cable network TBS to premiere a new late-night talk show, Conan.

Industry impact
NBC became the first large United States network to broadcast the same show every weekday during prime time since ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? marathons in 1999 and only the second since DuMont aired Captain Video and His Video Rangers from 1949 to 1955. More recently, the upstart MyNetwork TV had attempted, upon its launch in 2006, to air the same telenovelas every night of the week, a programming strategy that proved to be very unsuccessful. NBC's executives called the decision "a transformational moment in the history of broadcasting" and "in effect, launching five shows." An industry observer said that Leno, "in all my years, is the biggest risk a network has ever taken." According to former NBC president Fred Silverman, "If the Leno Show works, it will be the most significant thing to happen in broadcast television in the last decade."

Although NBC had not developed a new hit show at 10 pm in years, industry executives criticized the network for abandoning a history of airing quality dramas at that hour such as Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, and ER, which made NBC "the gold standard for sophisticated programming . . . the No. 1 network for affluent and well-educated young viewers" during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition, critics predicted that the decision would hurt NBC by undermining a reputation built on successful scripted shows. Other networks believed NBC's decision created an opportunity, and planned their 2009–2010 schedules accordingly. For example, the show competed with The Mentalist, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, and Numb3rs, four of television's most popular series, on CBS (the first of those four series was moved to 10:00 PM to directly compete with Leno's show, and significantly improved the ratings for that timeslot compared to its predecessor). Leno was also not easily sold overseas.

The January 29, 2010 issue of Entertainment Weekly listed the show at the top of a list of the 50 Biggest Bombs in television history. The comment made by the network executives about "launching five shows" was ultimately transformed into the joke that its removal was like "cancelling five shows." TV Guide similarly listed the show as the biggest blunder in television history in its November 1, 2010 edition.

Boycott by competing networks
Rival networks ABC and CBS had discouraged "their stars" from appearing on The Jay Leno Show in its primetime slot. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (The New Adventures of Old Christine) was the first CBS actor to appear on the show, on September 29, 2009; on that episode, she said "there was a little pressure, because as you know you are now on prime time", but that "Obviously, I committed to doing your show and we're friends". This boycott did not affect The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien nor was it industry-wide. Other TV networks, like Fox, The CW, and HBO, were more encouraging. Hugh Laurie from the Fox TV show House was a guest on the September 25, 2009, telecast. House is produced by Universal Media Studios, a sister company to NBC through NBC Universal, and Fox does not offer any network programming in the 10 p.m. time slots, instead allowing most of its affiliates to go to local news.

In a Broadcasting & Cable interview published in early November 2009, Leno mentioned the boycott again, saying "I'm flattered; like ABC and CBS...none of their stars can appear on the show. What are you so afraid of if we're doing so terrible? It's all part of the game."

Labor union impact
John Wells, the president of the Writers Guild of America, West, and executive producer of prominent NBC shows ER and The West Wing, said, "I wish NBC and Jay Leno well; personally, he's a very nice guy, but I hope he falls flat on his face and we get five dramas back."

Website dispute
In 2004, Guadalupe Zambrano, a Texas real estate agent, registered the domain name thejaylenoshow.com to redirect to his real estate business. After the Leno announcement, Leno accused Zambrano of cybersquatting. Zambrano contended that he had owned the domain for five years, well before the announcement, thus precluding recovery. The UDRP proceedings ruled in favor of Leno, however, stating that Zambrano profited from the value of the Jay Leno trademark in bad faith.

International broadcasting
 In Australia, The Comedy Channel on Pay TV aired the show on a same-day turn around Weeknights at 7.30pm AEST. Free-to-air channel 7Two also aired the program at 6.00pm usually on a 30-hour delay. It moved to middays on January 18, 2010 but ran until September 24, 2010 when 7TWO changed the format to a Best-of British oriented channel following the launch of sister HD channel 7mate.
 In Canada, Citytv simulcast Leno with NBC during the 2009–2010 season, requesting simultaneous substitution where applicable.
 In Portugal, SIC Mulher aired the show Monday and Tuesday at 00.30am.
 In Israel, yes stars Comedy aired the show Sundays-Thursdays at 8.00pm.
 In Finland, The Jay Leno Show aired on MTV3 MAX on weeknights; because of subtitling, the episodes were shown three days after their US broadcast.
 In Sweden, The Jay Leno Show aired on Kanal 9 on weeknights. Episodes were broadcast one week after their original US airing.
 Westwood One provided audio of the monologue as a short-form feature, under the title Last Night on The Jay Leno Show, to radio stations in the United States and Canada, replacing the discontinued Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' feature.

See also
 List of television shows considered the worst

References

External links

2000s American late-night television series
2010s American late-night television series
2000s American sketch comedy television series
2010s American sketch comedy television series
2000s American variety television series
2010s American variety television series
2009 American television series debuts
2010 American television series endings
American television talk shows
Burbank, California
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Jay Leno
English-language television shows
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The Jay Leno Show


Long Beach Plaza was a two-level  shopping mall located in Downtown Long Beach, California. It was designed in the 1970s by The Hahn Company and opened in 1982. The eight-block dumbbell-shaped mall was an enclosed structure and included a two-story deck parking structure on both sides.

The mall was previously anchored by J. C. Penney, Montgomery Ward and Buffums' (which closed in 1991).

Problems with the mall included the fact that the mall structure (which included stores that faced inward) had no connection with the rest of Downtown Long Beach area. The closure of the nearby Naval stations in the 1990s also contributed to the slow demise of the mall.

In 1999, the mall was purchased by DDR Corp., Coventry Real Estate Partners and Prudential Real Estate as a joint venture. In 2000, the mall was demolished except for the parking structure. DDR eventually rebuilt the area and renamed it Long Beach City Place.

References

External links
Aerial view (scroll down to bottom) accessed 21 August 2006
Interior view

Demolished shopping malls in the United States
Downtown Long Beach
Buildings and structures in Long Beach, California
Shopping malls in the South Bay, Los Angeles
Shopping malls established in 1982
Shopping malls disestablished in 2000
1982 establishments in California
2000 disestablishments in California
Demolished buildings and structures in California
Buildings and structures demolished in 2000

Long Beach Plaza


David DiChiera ( ; April 8, 1935 – September 18, 2018) was an American composer and founding general director of Michigan Opera Theatre.

Career
Born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania as son of Italian immigrants, DiChiera was raised in Los Angeles, California, and graduated with highest honors from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in 1956. When he received a Master's degree in composition at UCLA, he was selected to be a Fulbright scholar for studies in Italy where he conducted extensive research on unpublished manuscripts of eighteenth century opera. This led to a series of articles for the world's leading music encyclopedias including Ricordi's Enciclopedia della musica, Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Bärenreiter's Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.

Returning to UCLA, DiChiera worked there as an instructor and received his PhD in Musicology. In 1962, DiChiera joined the faculty of music of the newly established Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. From 1963 to 1965, he also held the post of assistant dean for Continuing Education in the Arts at Oakland University and was thereafter elected Chairman of the Department of Music.

In 1971 DiChiera became the founding General Director of Michigan Opera Theatre. At the same time, he became the founding Artistic Director of the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts. From 1979 to 1983 DiChiera served as president of Opera America. In this role, he developed the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund/Opera for a New America Program which encouraged and supported companies to reach previously under-addressed segments of the population, and served to build bridges into America's increasingly diverse population.

From 1981 to 1993, DiChiera was appointed Artistic Director of the Dayton Opera Association. In 1986 he was appointed founding General Director of the newly formed Opera Pacific in Orange County; he filled that post until 1996, when he resigned to devote more time to the opening of the Detroit Opera House.

In April 1996, opera singer Joan Sutherland cut the ribbon to celebrate the grand opening of the restored Detroit Opera House under DiChiera's stewardship.

During his career, DiChiera has served as a trustee for the National Institute of Music Theatre and as a board member of the American Arts Alliance. He has been a panel member for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and chairman for the Opera/Musical Theater Panel. He has also chaired several national music conferences. DiChiera chaired the second annual conference of the International Association of Lyric Theatre, convened in Verona, Italy, and was twice elected vice president of that organization.

He has two daughters with Karen VanderKloot DiChiera, daughter of Robert VanderKloot, a Detroit amateur musician and himself a founding member of the Michigan Opera Theatre. Karen VanderKloot DiChiera, a composer, educator and stage director, is also a founder and director of Michigan Opera Theatre's Department of Community Programs.

In February 2016, DiChiera announced his retirement, effective in July 2017.

In April 2017, DiChiera was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died at his home in Detroit on September 18, 2018.

Works
His Four Sonnets (1965), to verses by Edna St. Vincent Millay composed for soprano and piano, premiered in 1978 at the Kennedy Center in Washington to critical acclaim. A children's opera, Rumpelstiltskin (1973), composed with Karen VanderKloot DiChiera, and with Joan V. Hill as librettist.  It has been performed nationally. In 2007 his opera Cyrano to a libretto by Bernard Uzan received its world premiere at the Detroit Opera House; this work was successfully presented by Opera Company of Philadelphia in 2008 and premiered at Florida Grand Opera in 2011.

Awards
DiChiera was awarded the Atwater Kent (UCLA) and Gershwin Awards. The Detroit News elected DiChiera "Michiganian of the Year" in 1979. In 2000 he received the Bridge Builder's Award by the Partners for Livable Communities, a Washington–based civic leadership organization. In 2005, the National Association of Negro Musicians honored DiChiera for his continued support of African American artists and in 2016 the President of the Republic of Italy conferred upon him the Commander in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. DiChiera delivered the commencement speech at the University of Michigan's graduation ceremony in 1998 and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree. He received honorary doctorates from Wayne State University, Oakland University and Marygrove College. In 2010, DiChiera received the NEA Opera Honors.

References

External links
David DiChiera, Founder & Artistic Director, Michigan Opera

1935 births
2018 deaths
People from McKeesport, Pennsylvania
UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture alumni
Opera managers
20th-century classical composers
21st-century classical composers
American opera composers
Male opera composers
Musicians from Detroit
Oakland University faculty
21st-century American composers
American male classical composers
American classical composers
20th-century American composers
American people of Italian descent
Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Classical musicians from Michigan
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians

David DiChiera


Green politics is a kind of politics that has been on the rise since the 1970s. The parties and movements that follow these ideas are usually called green:
 The most important idea is that whatever is done has an impact on ecology. The environment needs to be protected; technologies and means of production should therefore be sustainable and protect the environment.
 Environment politics must take into account the needs of the people. The ideas about social politics are mostly left-wing and support social justice.
 Many of these movements advocate greater democracy, oppose centralism and advocate grassroots democracy. If action is taken, it needs the support of most of the people.
 Advocacy for non-violence.

Greens have been most successful in Germany.

Other page
Environmentalism

Green politics