Twelve-inch single

The twelve-inch single (often written as 12-inch or 12″) is a type of vinyl (Polyvinyl Chloride or PVC) gramophone record that has wider groove spacing and shorter playing time with a 'single' or a few related sound tracks on each surface, compared to LPs (long play) which have several songs on each side. This allows for louder levels to be cut on the disc by the mastering engineer, which in turn gives a wider dynamic range, and thus better sound quality. This record type is commonly used in disco and dance music genres, where DJs use them to play in clubs. They are played at either or 45 . The conventional 7‐inch single usually holds three or four minutes of music at full volume. The 12‐inch LP sacrifices volume for extended playing time. In the 1970s, the 12‐inch single was created as a hybrid.
Technical features.
Twelve-inch singles typically have much shorter playing time than full-length LPs, and thus require fewer grooves per inch. This extra space permits a broader dynamic range or louder recording level as the grooves' excursions (i.e., the width of the groove waves and distance traveled from side to side by the turntable stylus) can be much greater in amplitude, especially in the bass frequencies important for dance music. Many record companies in the 1970s began producing 12-inch (30 cm) singles at rpm, although 45 rpm gives better treble response and was used on many twelve-inch singles, especially in the UK.
History.
Pre-vinyl period.
Gramophone records had been introduced in the latter portion of the 19th century, with several pioneers involved in sound reproduction development such as Thomas Edison and Emilie Berliner. Berliner along with Eldridge R. Johnson merged their efforts within the industry to form the Victor Talking Machine Company in New Jersey, USA and perfected the use of 5 and 7-inch rotating shellac discs for sound replay from 1889, with 10-inch records appearing in 1901. In 1903 12-inch discs were introduced by Victor, on their Deluxe label, these able to play for up to four minutes, so increasing what were non-achievable times of the length of a song or speech on the earlier formats. These first twelve-inch releases were all by the Victor Grand Concert Band, led by Frederick W. Hager. During the 1910s discs became the standard sound reproduction format, although the speeds used could vary between manufacturers until 78 rpm became the norm from around 1925. An album would consist of several of these single discs packaged together. These brittle shellac discs remained a popular medium through the first attempt to introduce vinyl records in 1931, the subsequent move towards microgroove formats from 1948, and would survive until the early 1960s.
Vinyl and microgroove formats.
In August 1931, RCA Victor launched the first commercially available vinyl long-playing record, marketed under their 'Program Transcription' series. These revolutionary discs were designed for playback at 331⁄3 rpm (the speed first used on 16-inch Vitaphone soundtrack discs from 1926) and pressed on ten and twelve-inch diameter flexible 'Victrolac' discs, using a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) compound called vinylite which was licensed from Union Carbide. It was marketed initially as being more robust than shellac, with a duration of up to twenty minutes playing time per side. The first twelve-inch LP (containing only one track per side), was Beethoven's "Symphony No. 5 In C Minor" by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. RCA's early introduction of a long-play disc was a commercial failure for several reasons including the lack of affordable, reliable consumer playback equipment and consumer wariness during the Great Depression. Because of financial hardships that plagued the recording industry during that period (and RCA's own parched revenues), Victor's long-playing records were discontinued for public sale by early 1933. However, the technology continued to be used, notably with broadcasters, on larger 16-inch radio transcription discs, and later with the V-Disc program that sent records overseas to US troops during World War II to help boost morale. Wax or lacquered discs, similar to the masters used to press records and sometimes referred to as acetates or reference (ref) discs, were at this time made to create one-time promotional product such as songs or jingles used by radio stations, as well as archiving.
Vinyl as a material for records sold to the public was reintroduced after World War II but with a narrower 'microgroove', first for 78s in 1945 ('Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and Chorus - Prince Igor' 12-inch 5-record set, Asch Recordings), with 12-inch 331⁄3 rpm LPs and 7-inch 45 rpm singles being marketed by Columbia Records and RCA Victor respectively in 1948 and 1949. Intriguingly, although there is a scientific basis behind 45 rpm being an ideal speed for sound quality which was touted by RCA, conveniently the 45 rpm number is also derived by subtracting the then common 78 rpm speed from the then newly introduced 33 rpm LP speed. More lengthier tracks could be accommodated on each side of the 12-inch disc, or shorter but more numerous tracks per side. Indeed, the very first 12-inch vinyl album in 1948, "Mendelssohn's Concerto in E Minor" featured only 3 tracks (one 11-minute long suite on side one, and two tracks on side two taking up 14 minutes in total) and was extended play (EP) in appearance, rather than a typical album with multiple tracks each being on average 2–4 minutes such as the very first 10-inch vinyl album, a reissue of "The" "Voice of Frank Sinatra". While one to two short playing songs being sold to the public were more suited for the seven-inch 45 rpm record, the LP could be anything from 1 track per side, and if in that simplistic configuration it technically could be classed as a twelve-inch single. Over the ensuing years some works, particularly in the classical and jazz genres, and the relatively few tracks on an occasional album could blur the boundaries of what would become considered a twelve-inch single, an EP and an album, with the price, catalogue number, any stylistic aims of the performing artist, marketing by the record label, as well as record industry sales charts rules regulating the differences between formats. "Shakara" by Fela Kuti released in 1972, while containing only two lengthy tracks (one 14-minute track per side) was released as an album by EMI.
Jamaican roots.
The gramophone records cut especially for dance-floor DJs came into existence with the advent of recorded Jamaican mento music in the 1950s. By at least 1956 it was already standard practice by Jamaican sound systems owners to give their "selecter" DJs acetate or flexi disc dubs of exclusive mento and Jamaican rhythm and blues recordings before they were issued commercially. Songs such as Theophilus Beckford's "Easy Snappin'" (recorded in 1956) were played as exclusives by Sir Coxson's Downbeat sound system for years before they were actually released in 1959 – only to become major local hits, also pressed in the UK by Island Records and Blue Beat Records as early as 1960. As the 1960s creativity bloomed along, and with the development of multitrack recording facilities, special mixes of rocksteady and early reggae tunes were given as exclusives to dancehall DJs and selecters. With the 1967 Jamaican invention of remix, called dub on the island, those "specials" became valuable items sold to allied sound system DJs, who could draw crowds with their exclusive hits. The popularity of remix sound engineer King Tubby, who single-handedly invented and perfected dub remixes from as early as 1967, led to more exclusive dub plates being cut. By then 10-inch records were used to cut those dubs. By 1971, most reggae singles issued in Jamaica included on their B-side a dub remix of the A-side, many of them first tested as exclusive "dub plates" on dances. Those dubs basically included drum and bass-oriented remixes used by sound system selecters. The 10-inch acetate "specials" would remain popular until at least the 2000s (decade) in Jamaica. Several Jamaican DJs such as DJ Kool Herc exported much of the hip hop dance culture from Jamaica to the Bronx in the early 1970s, including the common Jamaican practice of DJs rapping over instrumental dub remixes of hit songs (See King Stitt, U Roy, Dennis Alcapone, Dillinger), ultimately leading to the advent of rap culture in the United States. Most likely, the widespread use of exclusive dub acetates in Jamaica also led American DJs to do the same.
In the United States.
The twelve-inch single vinyl gramophone record came into popularity with the advent of disco music in the 1970s after these earlier market experiments. However, at least four known pioneering early vinyl issues predated the middle 1970s discotheque period, with their songs being similar in composition and length to 7-inch or album track releases.
Pre-disco.
In March 1970, Cycle/Ampex Records test-marketed a twelve-inch single by jazz-pop guitarist Buddy Fite, featuring "Glad Rag Doll" backed with "For Once in My Life", both from his self-titled debut album issued in 1969. Subtitled 'The world's first 12 inch single!', the experiment aimed to energize the struggling singles market, offering a new option for consumers who had stopped buying traditional singles. The record was pressed at 33 rpm, with identical run times to the seven-inch 45 rpm pressing of the single and album, but with a large runoff area. Several hundred copies were made available for sale for 98 cents each at two Tower Records stores in California.
Shelter Records evidently liked the format enough to use it a few times to promote artists in the US and Australia - they serviced a test pressing of Leon Russell's "It's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" backed with "Me And Baby Jane" to radio stations in July 1971, the first track from his "Leon Russell and the Shelter People" album, with the flip side from his "Carney" album. Shelter later issued another promotional single "Lowdown in Lodi"/"Me and My Guitar" by Freddie King in 1972 with the tracks taken from his "Texas Cannonball" LP.
Another early twelve-inch single was released in 1973 by soul/R&B musician/songwriter/producer Jerry Williams, Jr. a.k.a. Swamp Dogg. Twelve-inch promotional copies of "Straight From My Heart" were released on his own Swamp Dogg Presents label (Swamp Dogg Presents #501/SDP-SD01, r.p.m.), with distribution by Jamie/Guyden Distribution Corporation. It was manufactured by Jamie Record Co. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The B-side of the record is blank.
Discotheque era.
The disco twelve-inch record came into being from several key developments:
Notably, Tom Moulton, and Scepter Records along with its production chief Mel Cheren (later co-founder of dance label West End Records) were involved in several of these pioneering steps due to their artists and strong base uptempo song material, forward-thinking company executives and innovative remixing. The key city associated with these initial movements was New York, but as word spread other large cities such as Los Angeles and Miami contributed to the rise of the music and vinyl format.
First instrumental side.
This was released by Scepter to the flip side of the Ultra High Frequency "We're on the Right Track" seven-inch single in 1973. This issuing of the backing track enabled DJ's to use two turntables and mix between the vocal and instrumental versions of popular dance records, seguing them so that dancing patrons could enjoy the overall song for longer. A key reason of the time was that very few varispeed turntables existed, so DJ's would only blend into a track with the same drum tempo or BPM, which the instrumental naturally was. This was in comparison to the then occasionally found 'Part 2' B-side of a record, while similar, tended to be the latter half of a lengthy album track, split for seven-inch release, but in many cases this wasn't the full instrumental, so could be more awkward to use. Scepter, from this single onward began to regularly add a non-vocal side, helping to make it an industry standard practice, with several other labels following suit particularly for dance records, and DJs embracing these as a useful tool during their sets.
First extended edit.
While not his very first production work (his first mixing effort was the northern soul track by The Carstairs "It Really Hurts Me Girl" in 1973), in early 1974, during his quest to adapt songs beyond the radio-friendly three-minute mark for his mixtapes, soon-to-be famed disco mixer Tom Moulton went to record labels for material. At Scepter Records, Cheren recalls playing Tom a previously released Scepter single by singer Don Downing called "Dream World". He had an extra copy of the master tape and let Moulton take it home to experiment. When Moulton brought it back a few days later, Cheren writes, "We were amazed: a so-so record was suddenly snappy, upbeat, and ten times better". But the biggest surprise, Cheren continues, was something "so radical I could hardly believe my ears". Moulton had stretched the original track, not even three minutes long, to almost double its time, and in the process debuted what would become known as the disco break. This innovation would eventually be issued on the song's re-release on a 7-inch 45 in July 1974, and earn Scepter a Billboard "Trendsetter of the Year" award in December 1974 for 'being the first label to make specialized mixes for discotheques'.
First segued mixes.
The first was created by Tom Moulton, for the A side of the Gloria Gaynor "Never Can Say Goodbye" album, released in January 1975 on MGM Records. As a development from his mixtapes, three songs (Honey Bee/Never Can Say Goodbye/Reach Out, I'll Be There) were not presented as separate pieces of music, but as an uninterrupted, 18-minute-plus, side-long composition optimised for dancing. There were previous albums that had side-long tracks or suites, and medleys which were usually cover versions or re-recordings, but here was a new piece of music composed out of already recorded pieces of music (albeit containing two cover songs), making it the very first "DJ mix" committed to vinyl, with Moulton admitting it was conceived as a tool for dancefloors.
A followup was the Motown compilation "Disc-O-Tech" series, released mid May 1975 which put together some of the label's most danceable hits onto a number of albums. "Disc-O-Tech #2" however, specifically focused on blending a number of their disco releases into a non-stop medley.
Early acetates 10" & 12".
The first large-format single made specifically for discotheque DJs was a ten-inch acetate used by a mix engineer (José Rodríguez) in need of a Friday-night test copy for a remix created by Tom Moulton in 1974. The song was "I'll Be Holding On" by Al Downing, brother of Don Downing. As no 7-inch (18 cm) acetates could be found, a 10-inch (25 cm) blank was used. Upon completion, Moulton found that such a large disc with only a couple of inches worth of grooves on it made him feel silly wasting all that space. He asked Rodríguez to re-cut it so that the grooves looked more spread out and ran to the normal center of the disc. Rodriguez told him that for it to be viable, the level would have to be increased considerably. Because of the wider spacing of the grooves, not only was a louder sound possible but also a wider overall dynamic range (distinction between loud and soft) as well. This was immediately noticed by them to give a more favorable, 'hotter' sound which would appeal to discothèque play. It also meant that these extended versions being created by Moulton could be given to fellow DJs and tested within a nightclub environment to see how well it worked the dancefloor, with adjustments subsequently made to the remix.
Moulton's position as the premiere mixer and "fix it man" for pop singles ensured that this fortunate accident would instantly become industry practice. This would perhaps have been a natural evolution: as dance tracks became much longer than had been the average for a pop song, and as the DJ in the club wanted sufficient dynamic range, the format would likely have enlarged from the seven-inch single eventually. Ironically, Moulton's mix of Downing would be eventually released by Chess Records for sale to the general public, but only on a standard-issue 7-inch record for sale in October 1974.
Further 10" acetates would be created by Moulton and Rodriguez from late 1974 such as Moment of Truth's "Your Love" on Roulette in October and the aforementioned Don Downing "Dream World".
"I'll be Holding On" would eventually be cut onto a twelve-inch acetate, as chronicled by its usage on the music compilation "A Tom Moulton Mix."
An acetate twelve-inch test pressing single hailed as being a first by Moulton was South Shore Commission "Free Man". Again, it was a disco mix prepared by Moulton, pressed by Rodríguez, with only a handful (around 10) cut and handed out to local DJs. These would have plain white labels, or very sparse printing or typed text. In many cases there would be no logos, and many contained handwritten text only. Test pressings being tried out at discos were reported on in Moulton's weekly column in Billboard during early April 1975. Moulton's effort was eventually issued for commercial release by Scepter in June 1975, but on seven-inch vinyl as a 5:35 min mix. Moulton subsequently created a lengthier 7:15 min mix for the album which appeared in late October.
Another record remixed by Moulton was The Philly Devotions "I Just Can't Make It Without You" on Columbia. Mentioned in his Billboard column in mid April as being 'out soon', a known 10" acetate had a date of 8 May 1975, with twelve-inch acetates and promos also appearing at some stage. It eventually was issued commercially in August on seven-inch 45 only.
A sometimes mentioned candidate among these first acetates is Moment of Truth "So Much For Love", but this effort was commercially released a year later, the band having been signed to Salsoul Records in June 1976, and the song only appearing in disco charts at the end of July of that year.
Promotion through media and DJs.
Many of the above disco era timelines were driven by the DJ necessity to give a better nightclub dancefloor experience to patrons, and as the scene grew, it began to be chronicled in trade press publications such as "Billboard" and "Record World". Tom Moulton began to write for the former from 26 October 1974 in the "Disco Action" column (which changed name as time went on), while Vince Aletti wrote "Disco File" in the latter from November 1974. These over time began to note that the use of these sparse twelve-inch acetates and test pressing runs, already in use internally with record label personnel and Moulton particularly, were being given to some high-profile New York DJs and possibly the odd radio DJ. The next step would be press a much larger number of vinyl twelve-inch records for regional/national distribution to DJs, as word got around record labels of their usefulness.
The DJs would increasingly be expected to report back, much like with radio, with what songs worked on their dancefloors to the record company and mixers such as Moulton and others so that a strategic decision would be made whether to further fine tune or remix the music to enhance the reaction, typically a new edit would be repeatedly created, pressed on acetates and supplied until a good response was had from nightclubs, so creating a buzz which would drive the eventual commercial sales. Record companies would also supply limited stocks of these dubs or promos to key DJ record shops in New York from 1975 such as Colony Records, Downstairs Records and Melody Song Shops, with reports of sales and interest being fed back to the trade press so that they could report trends in the scene, and to record companies as further proof of their marketing and promotional efforts.
Record pools were established, the first in New York in June 1975 for better distribution of pre-release records to bona fide DJs as record labels began to appreciate their role in breaking and selling records. A further development began to see the labels tailor the records specifically towards DJs as a result, with for example Scepter Records publicly announcing via both publications that they were to start servicing '12-inch 45s' to DJs in pools and their national promotional mailouts from June 1975. promoting the format earlier in distributor roadshows they hosted in late May, citing a key benefit of high volume levels being maintained with lengthier tracks. Billboard magazine reported that Atlantic Records were the first major label to issue 12" 33 rpm vinyl promos to DJs in July, under the watchful eye of a DJ as their promotions director Doug Riddick, who took up the post in May 1975.
Early vinyl test pressings 12".
Although primarily pressed for quality control of both the sound and physical attributes before a large run of vinyl is made, when compared to an acetate, test pressings vinyl issues would be far more durable, much more likely to be funded by the record label than the mixer, potentially would have printed centre labels, and are possibly pressed in larger numbers than acetates to include them in promotional runs if the records were deemed suitable for play. These were also much less likely to have picture sleeves, usually depending instead on a generic plain cover.
An early test pressing was Bobby Moore "(Call Me Your) Anything Man", on Scepter. Twelve-inch acetates for this single were pressed in April 1975, and was subsequently produced as twelve-inch vinyl promotional singles with typed labels in June. Moulton, now a regular in-house remixer for the label, was again given label credit for the remix. This was released commercially on 7-inch in May 1975.
First wide scale promotional 12".
A very early disco prototype vinyl 12-inch pressing was a Midland International promo distributed by RCA - this was a Carol Douglas one sided EP with 4 tracks from "The Carol Douglas Album." This was issued in mid February 1975 and was subtitled 'Specially Prepared For Disco Use', but it held same length versions of the selected album tracks. Therefore, it was more akin to an album sampler, and it reused the catalogue code prefix for RCA promotional LPs of the time, which eventually did get used for true 12-inch singles later that year.
The very first wide-scale record company promotional twelve-inch single according to Moulton (considering his then position with Billboard at the time as disco product reviewer, and that most of the very limited 12-inch records up to this point involved his own remixes), was Frankie Valli "Swearin' To God", issued by Private Stock Records in June 1975 with a 10:32 min running time. Bob Crewe, co-writer and producer, personally presented 10-inch test pressings to DJs in April 1975 after high pre-release demand. It was then issued commercially as a 7-inch at the end of April/start of May 1975, with a subsequent 12-inch store release appearing much later in 1977, running for 10:15 minutes. The album cut was 10:09 minutes in length. Although Private Stock distributed nationally, these 10 and 12-inch pressings may have been limited to New York DJs only.
Barrabas "Mellow Blow" became the first 33rpm Atlantic promo to be released in July, but eventually commercially only on an 7" in September. Warner-Spector's Calhoon "(Do You Wanna) Dance, Dance, Dance" had a 10-inch acetate from May, given out as a one sided 10-inch vinyl promo in the same month, and as a 12-inch promo in July 1975.
At first, these special remixed or extended versions were only available as promotional copies to DJs, either given directly to them or issued by record pools who obtained these from record companies' A&R departments. Examples of these promos, released from spring/summer 1975, include:
First 12" retail singles.
Motivation for public sale.
As time went on, a growing number of record labels became aware of the 12-inch format as a useful promotional tool, the benefits it gave for sound fidelity, and started to issue product in response. However, into early 1976 none considered them at first as suitable for sale to the general public. Companies came to appreciate the place of the nightclub and how they helped to break a record, but still considered an extended remix to ultimately facilitate sales of the original 7-inch single version or the artist's album, and not as a sale item in its own right. Pop orientated labels began to use the format to promote commercial artists with dance elements to their music, but not necessarily lengthening their tracks, concentrating instead on its novel aspects instead. The costs for the format were also still prohibitive; one label reported 12-inch singles cost more than it did to press an album.
However, demand was being driven by record shops, particularly those serving disco product, with feedback from buyers. It was particularly noticed that many of the previously released promotional 12-inch singles were attracting a premium in the resellers marketplace, with them in some cases changing hands for the price of an album. Along with research done by labels to get a feel of the interest for the proposed format, a push was finally made by a self-proclaimed 'pioneer' label of the disco business.
Releases.
The first song found on a twelve-inch single commercially issued for public purchase from the disco era onwards was "Ten Percent" by Double Exposure on Salsoul Records in mid May 1976. This was due to the label co-owner Ken Cayre's decision to release the Walter Gibbons remix for dancers who would hear that version in nightclubs but not be satisfied with the shorter versions sold on the 7-inch vinyl or the album. The seven-inch edit had been released a month earlier but sales of this were slow. With renewed interest and high sales weeks after the release, Salsoul were presented with Billboard awards at the 1976 Disco Forum event for disco disk sales to consumers and best record label as a result of the push into the marketplace with the new format. The issue did not contain the 3 min 5 secs 7-inch edit or the 6 mins 51 mins album version; the A side contained the Gibbons 9 min 43 secs remix, while Cayre himself created an extended 7 min 31 secs mix for the B side.
The second twelve-inch release was the double artist single Jesse Green "Nice And Slow" / Sweet Music "I Get Lifted" on Scepter/Wand in mid June 1976.
Third was a disc containing two George Benson sides "Summertime 2001" / "Theme From Good King Bad" in late June 1976 on CTI Records.
Salsoul's second 12-inch record for retail was by Moment of Truth "So Much For Love" / "Helplessly" released in early July 1976.
Amherst Records released a double headed single by The Chicago Gangsters "Gangster Love" / "Feel Like Making Love" in early July 1976 on their Gold Plate subsidiary.
A clutch of releases including Jakki "Sun... Sun... Sun" and Four Below Zero "My Baby's Got E.S.P.", amongst others on Pyramid/Roulette Records was sold from mid July 1976.
Australia.
Two twelve-inch promotional vinyl issues for rock/folk Shelter Records artists were serviced to radio stations in April 1972 by local distributor Tempo Records:
J.J. Cale's "Crazy Mama" backed with "Don't Go To Strangers". This was issued with a promotional sticker stating "we have a very BIG single for you". The sides were the same lengths as the versions on his 1971 Naturally album.
Leon Russell's release was likely to be the same as the US release of "It's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" / "Me And Baby Jane"
France.
Early titles first appeared in 1976 on the Pathe Marconi EMI and Disques Vogue imprints, these included pop releases such as Paul McCartney's first ever extended single internationally, credited as Wings "Let 'Em In"
Jamaica 'discomixes'.
Although as previously mentioned regarding the Jamaican dub influence on the use of 10-inch acetates, the 12-inch single was only born once imports of US disco singles were established from 1976 onwards. The issued twelve-inch-single trend spread to Jamaica quickly, where hundreds of reggae singles were pressed in this format, and commercially issued as "discomixes" to catch on the disco hype. An early 12" pressing, reputedly the first was by The Jayes "Truly" in 1977 on the Channel One label, which was run by the Hoo Kim brothers from their Channel One Studios.
Other early singles included The Maytones' "Creation Time" (GG Records, 1977); and Bob Marley and the Wailers' "Keep on Moving" (Upsetter Records, 1977) produced and remixed by Lee "Scratch" Perry, featuring a dub mix and a rap mix by Wung Chu all gathered on the same side and edited together. Others dated 1976 but possibly pressed later were Derrick Harriott "Solomon And Selassie", Lloyd Charmers "Rhythm In Rhapsody" and Bobby Kalphat "Something Special".
United Kingdom.
The Jamaican reggae and US disco trend also hit London, reggae being popular along with uptempo forms of music such as Motown and northern soul, the seven-inch record being the primary medium in the early 1970s for this material, with the UK following up a little later than the US with 12-inch singles. The reasons were different, the UK jocks did not have the same need to extend records like the US pioneers who wanted longer records for the dancefloor. Although the use of larger temporary singles (primarily 10") started from the Jamaican influence and before (such as the pre-Beatles band The Quarrymen with the one-off "In Spite of All the Danger" in 1958), acetates were also used by the record labels to quality control the eventual product, and not for servicing single songs or exclusive remixes, and then not in the 12-inch format. The usage of the 12-inch vinyl as a medium followed the US promos introduction but was initially seen as a marketing tool to help promote an artist more uniquely. Another emphasis with the new format was the louder sound and better audio quality afforded to the release. It therefore was not exclusively used for disco songs but included pop artists, however it eventually came into its own in the later 1970s with the lengthened versions of US disco songs being promoted in the UK.
Promo UK 12" releases.
Atlantic Records was an early front runner with two 12-inch promo singles: Ben E. King "Supernatural Thing" backed with Osiris "Warsaw Concerto", along with Herbie Mann "Hijack" b/w Jimmy Castor Bunch "The Bertha Butt Boogie", both at 33 rpm and issued in approximately June 1975 (based on the catalogue numbers used), but rumoured to be as late as October. Robert Palmer "Which of Us Is The Fool" was released by Island Records also in October 1975. Virgin started a line of 12-inch promos in November 1975, with the first being Ruan O'Lochlainn "Another Street Gang". Disco singles started to appear in earnest months later, Brass Construction "Changin'" was promoted around March 1976 by United Artists. A later 12-inch promo issue was a double sider The Moments "Nine Times" / The Rimshots "Do What You Feel" on All Platinum Records via Phonogram in the middle of April 1976, however both were released commercially and individually on seven-inch 45s only, in April 1976. Candi Staton followed with "Young Hearts Run Free" in the middle of May from Warner Bros. These early issues usually containing the original 7-inch edit, It took a little later for lengthened versions to begin appearing, with 1970s UK club DJ Greg Wilson recalling promotional 12-inch product being mailed out from August 1976, Lalo Schifrin "Jaws" being his first one, which was in extended form. This was followed by disco acts such as James Wells, The Originals, Ultrafunk, Mass Production, Deodato and The Undisputed Truth, however some of these were not UK pressed vinyl but US promos sent over to the UK and distributed through club promotions businesses and record company A&R departments. While early releases were 33rpm, the UK labels have notably pressed most of their singles since then at 45 rpm.
First UK 12" retail singles.
The first commercially released twelve-inch vinyl was Ernie Bush "Breakaway" / "Chinese Kung Fu" both as Tom Moulton mixes, along with another disc containing The Armada Orchestra "For The Love of Money" / Ultrafunk "Sting Your Jaws (Part 1)". Bush and the latter two acts had Gerry Shury production involvement, and these two releases were issued by John Abbey's Contempo Records from 8 October 1976, these songs having been previously released in either 7-inch format or as album tracks. Abbey likely had the nod from Scepter Records about the use of the twelve-inch single format, as both had released all these titles on their labels and Contempo had cross-licensed the tracks with Moulton mixes. This was closely followed with a single containing re-issues of The Who's "Substitute" with "I'm A Boy" / "Pictures of Lily" on the flip, all originally from 1966 and 1967 by Polydor Records on 22 October 1976.
Later developments.
Core sales period.
Notable 1970 and 1980s releases making use of the new length opportunities of the format included Donna Summer's "Love To Love You Baby" (16 min 50 seconds), "I Feel Love" (15:45), and Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" (15:00). The broad visual spacing of the grooves on the twelve-inch records made it easy for the DJ in locating the approximate area of the "breaks" on the disc's surface in dim club light (without having to listen while dropping and re-dropping the stylus to find the right point). A quick study of any DJs favorite discs will reveal mild wear in the "break points" on the discs' surfaces that can clearly be seen by the naked eye, which further eases the "cueing" task (a club DJs tone-arm cartridge will be heavily weighted and mild wear will seldom spoil the sound quality). Many DJ-only remix services, such as Ultimix and Hot Tracks, issued sets with deliberately visualised groove separations (i.e., the record was cut with narrow and wider spacings that could be seen on the surface, marking the mix points on the often multi-song discs). Motown were one of the first to "eye cue" their 12" disco discs, giving DJs the track's BPM and info on the exact length of the various sections of the song - one of the earliest examples of a record company recognising how important the DJ was to become by making their product more user-friendly. By '79, and very much with the DJ in mind, 12"s such as Diana Ross "The Boss" were being purposely intro'd with mix-friendly drum beats.
Following the lead of the US club DJs, using 12-inch extended versions in the UK as a mixing tool was advocated particularly by James Hamilton of the Record Mirror music weekly paper, with him notably indicating the approximate BPM of late 1970s disco tracks onwards. Increasingly in the 1980s, many pop and even rock artists released twelve-inch singles that included longer, extended, or remixed versions of the actual track being promoted by the single. These versions were frequently labeled with the parenthetical designation "12-inch version", "12-inch mix", "extended remix", "dance mix", or "club mix". before its usage becoming commonplace in the early/mid 1980s developing alongside turntabalism in use for the electro and hip-hop genres, but was regularised with the advent of the late 1980s house music scene. Later musical styles took advantage of this new format and recording levels on vinyl twelve-inch "maxi-singles" have steadily increased, culminating in the extremely loud (or "hot") cuts of drum and bass records of the 1990s and early 2000s.
Many record labels produced mainly twelve-inch singles (in addition to albums) during the 1980s, lots being mostly regular A and B-sides, not remixes. Certain labels such as Factory Records, only ever released a handful of seven-inch singles. One of Factory's resident artists, alternative rock/dance quartet New Order, produced the biggest-selling twelve-inch record ever in the United Kingdom, "Blue Monday", selling about 800,000 copies on the format and over a million copies in total (not counting later remixes). It was somewhat helped by the fact that Factory did not release a seven-inch version of the single until 1988, five years after the single was originally released as a twelve-inch-only release. Besides, the seven-inch version that was released was not the original 1983 version released on twelve-inch, but a re-recording called "Blue Monday 1988". "Blue Monday" came in 76th on the 2002 UK list of all-time best-selling singles.
Decline and ongoing interest.
Singles have followed wider vinyl format sales, withstanding competition from the 1960s and 70s reel-to-reel tape, the 8-track cartridge, and the compact cassette formats. The widespread popularity of Sony's Walkman was a key factor that contributed to vinyl's lessening usage in the 1980s. In 1988, the compact disc surpassed the gramophone record in unit sales. Vinyl records experienced a sudden decline in popularity between 1988 and 1991, when the major label distributors restricted their return policies, which retailers had been relying on to maintain and swap out stocks of relatively unpopular titles. Record companies also deleted many vinyl titles from production and distribution, or simply did not make 12-inch singles for many pop artists, further undermining the availability of the format and leading to the closure of pressing plants. This rapid decline in the availability of records accelerated the format's decline in popularity, and is seen by some as a deliberate ploy to make consumers switch to CDs which were at the time more profitable for the record companies, and more latterly, streaming.
12-inch singles have continued for sales of dance acts or for dance remixes of commercial artists as there was a continued high regard of the format from DJs into the 2000s and 2010s. A growing number of DJs eventually began to use CDJs for their convenience, and later along with a crossover period where turntables could be combined with laptops and used with encoded 12 inch discs and DJ software, which could manipulate MP3 or WAV music files but still allow for a turntablism experience. DJ controller all-in-one decks have in later times become the norm which take up less space than a pair of turntables, reducing DJs dependence on the physical format even further. There is however, a dedicated DJ sub-community that maintain their usage of the format, with retro styled 'vinyl only' nights being a unique selling point. Also, there are some new titles being pressed on the format and available at physical record shops, although many sales take place online. There is also a notable second-hand trade business on online sale and auction marketplaces for collectors, of which some titles are still in demand and can be of some value.
Maxi-singles.
The term "twelve-inch" usually refers to a vinyl single with one or more extended mixes or remixes of a song. In the mid-to-late 1980s, popular artists often used the twelve-inch format to include extra songs that were not included on albums, just as a seven-inch single often included a B-side song that was not found on full-length albums. CD singles grew in popularity in the 1990s, so the term "maxi-single" became increasingly used for these. Many CD singles contain a number of such songs, in a manner similar to the older EP vinyl format. As advances in compact disc player technology in the 1990s made the CD acceptable for mixing by DJs, CD maxi-singles became increasingly popular for the mixes typically found on vinyl twelve-inch singles. Any given release might include both a CD and a twelve-inch maxi-single, which might or might not have the same tracks.
In the days of the seven-inch single, and especially in R&B releases, the single would occasionally be "flipped" by radio DJs who found the B-side song to be better for airplay than the intended A-side. One noteworthy example is "I'll Be Around", the first of the Spinners' Thom Bell-produced hits for Atlantic Records in the mid-1970s. Around the time twelve-inch releases became a standard for pop records, this practice faded, because of the increase in marketing costs, the reliance on video to sell single releases, and the public's expectation of quality packaging with photo or picture sleeves.


Mentally stimulating diversions


Resn

Resn is a digital production company from New Zealand that works within the advertising industry. The company was founded in 2004 by Rik Campbell and Steve Le Marquand. Resn has one office in Wellington, New Zealand, and one in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Clients and recognition.
Resn has created digital productions for brands such as Panasonic, Coke, Ricoh, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, and the All Blacks.
Resn has been the recipient of Webby Awards, Awwwards and is a member of the FWA Hall of Fame.


Phoebe Brand

Phoebe Brand (November 27, 1907 – July 3, 2004) was an American actress.
Life.
Brand was born in Syracuse, New York in 1907 and raised in Ilion, Herkimer County, New York. Her father worked for Remington Typewriter Company as a mechanical engineer.
She moved to New York City and became an actress, appearing first in several revivals of Gilbert and Sullivan musicals beginning at age 18.
In New York in 1931, Brand was one of the founders of the Group Theatre, described by "The New York Times" as "a radical company that dealt with social issues confronting the United States during the Depression." Her roles included Hennie Berger in Clifford Odets's "Awake and Sing!" in 1935 and the role of Anna in his "Golden Boy" in 1937.
She created the role of Minny Belle in Kurt Weill's "Johnny Johnson" in 1936. She summered at Pine Brook Country Club in Nichols, Connecticut, with the Group Theatre in 1936.
She married Morris Carnovsky, an actor and fellow member of the Group Theatre, moved to Hollywood in 1940. They married in 1941. They had one child, Stephen Carnovsky, and she raised a niece as well. She continued to use her maiden name professionally.
In 1952, during the McCarthy era's campaign against Communist influence in the entertainment industry, director Elia Kazan identified the couple as Communists when he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
They were consequently blacklisted and generally unable to work in film and on stage. In 1953, they both appeared off-Broadway in "The World of Sholem Aleichem" as part of a cast of blacklisted actors that was assembled to demonstrate that the New York theater audience would not make them outcasts. It ran for two years. Decades later she recalled this period of her life as a "killingly frightening" time.
Instead she became an acting teacher and taught acting in New York until she died. Her husband returned to work on the stage in the late 1950s, and in the early 1960s she co-founded an acting troupe that presented classic plays in both English and Spanish in New York's poor neighborhoods, Theater in the Street. She served as the group's artistic director.
In 1969, her husband starred and she played a small role in Tyrone Guthrie's production of "Lamp at Midnight" on a U.S. tour.
In 1994, she appeared in Louis Malle's "Vanya on 42nd Street", a film that documents a collaborative effort to stage Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya".
Death.
She died from pneumonia in New York City on July 3, 2004, at the age of 96.


Guy Gaunt

Sir Guy Reginald Archer Gaunt, , (25 May 1869 – 18 May 1953) was an Australian-born officer of the Royal Navy, counter-intelligence officer and a British Conservative Party politician.
Gaunt was born in Ballarat, Australia, to William Henry Gaunt and his wife Elizabeth Mary Palmer. Gaunt's brother-in-law was Alexander Stenson Palmer (banker and M.P. for Victoria). Gaunt's brother Ernest Gaunt was also an admiral. Their sister, Mary Gaunt, was a well-known author in Australia and wrote several travel books. Guy was educated at Melbourne Grammar School from 1881 to 1883.
Naval career.
Gaunt's parents wanted him to become a lawyer, but he chose to go to sea. He began training for the merchant navy, but transferred to the Royal Navy in 1885.
Gaunt served as a lieutenant on several vessels in the Pacific Ocean, and was promoted to the rank of Commander in 1901. He became a Captain in 1907, commanding a series of cruisers and the battleships and . He saw action in the Philippines in 1897 and Samoa in 1901.
In 1914 Gaunt was appointed naval attaché to the United States, and was instrumental in infiltrating the Hindu–German Conspiracy during the First World War. Gaunt headed the intelligence network operated by Courtenay Bennett's intelligence and liaised with the Czech intelligence network operated by E. V. Voska. On learning of the plot from the Czech European network at the outbreak of the war, Voska passed on the information to Gaunt and to Tomáš Masaryk who further passed on the information the American authorities. Voska's American network was a counter-espionage network of nearly 80 members who, as Habsburg subjects, were presumed to be German supporters but were involved in spying on German and Austrian diplomats.
When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Gaunt was appointed as liaison officer. In 1918 he served on convoys across the Atlantic and in June was appointed to the naval intelligence staff at the Admiralty.
Gaunt was promoted on the retired list to rear admiral in October 1918, vice admiral in July 1924 and Admiral in February 1928. He was knighted as in 1918.
Political career.
Gaunt first stood as a candidate for parliament at the 1918 general election. He was the Liberal candidate for Leek and despite receiving the Coalition Coupon, he was unable to hold the seat. Gaunt was elected as Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) for the Buckrose constituency in the East Riding of Yorkshire at the 1922 general election, replacing the Liberal Algernon Moreing.
Gaunt resigned from the House of Commons in 1926, when he was cited as co-respondent in the divorce case between Sir Richard Cruise and his wife.
Family.
Gaunt married a widow, Mrs Margaret Elizabeth Worthington (daughter of Sir Thomas Wardle) at Hong Kong in 1904.
She divorced him in 1927 following the scandal with Lady Cruise, and he retired to Tangier. He later remarried on 1 December 1932 a 35-year-old widow, Sybil Victoria Joseph, "née" Grant White and had two daughters. He returned to live in Cobham, Surrey and died at Woking Hospital on 18 May 1953 and was cremated.
Gaunt's autobiography, "The Yield of the Years", was published in 1940. His brother Ernest Gaunt was also an Admiral of the Royal Navy; his sister, Mary Gaunt, was a novelist.


Howard Machtinger

Howard Norton Machtinger (born April 26, 1946) is a former director of Carolina Teaching Fellows, a student teacher scholarship program at the University of North Carolina. He is an education and civil rights activist, a teacher, a forum leader, and a political commentator. Machtinger is a former member of Students For a Democratic Society and Weatherman.
Early education and activism.
Howard ("Howie") Machtinger was born in the Bronx, New York, on April 23, 1946. Machtinger earned his baccalaureate degree cum laude in Sociology and English from Columbia University, in 1966. He was born to "Harry" Herszla Machtinger and Yetta Migden, who were Polish-Jewish immigrants. His siblings included Barbara, Evelyn and Leonard. Ted Gold was a cousin; his mother Ruth Migden was the sister of Yetta Migden. He became an active SDS member while he was a graduate student in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1968. Machtinger was a regional director of SDS from autumn of 1968 until the SDS Split and made contributions to "New Left Notes", an SDS publication. He was part of a steering committee which took over the administration building at University of Chicago on January 30, 1969. During the takeover, 300 students occupied the university's administration building, protesting the non-renewal of Marlene Dixon's contract with the Sociology department. Students believed the department voted her out because she was a woman with politically radical views.
Weatherman.
Machtinger was one of the founding members of Weatherman (later known as the Weather Underground), an organization that formed as a result of the SDS split in June 1969.
He was a part of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a faction of SDS who believed revolution was imperative. Machtinger, like other members of RYM, criticized members of the Progressive Labor (PL) faction of SDS for placing emphasis on the class struggle rather than focusing on the issue of racism, which he viewed as a dire problem plaguing America. Machtinger was one of the eleven co-authors of the Weatherman statement, which appeared in the issue of "New Left Notes" presented at the 1969 SDS National Convention in Chicago. Machtinger co-wrote "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows" with Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Jeff Jones, Mark Rudd, John Jacobs, Terry Robbins, Jim Mellen, Karin Ashley, Gerry Long, and Steve Tappis. Machtinger participated in the Days of Rage and was present at the Flint, Michigan "War Council" in December 1969. He was among the Weathermen who eventually went underground.
Indictment and life underground.
On April 2, 1970, Machtinger was indicted with twelve other Weatherman members on charges of conspiracy and violation of the Federal Antiriot Act during the Days of Rage. He was accused of leading Days of Rage but the charges were dismissed as electronic surveillance had not been court-ordered. Machtinger was indicted again on July 24, 1970. Along with ten other members of Weather, Machtinger was charged with conspiring to bomb the Detroit Police Officers Association Building. He went underground in the early 1970s and was arrested on East 86th Street in New York in April 1973. Machtinger was released on bail, and subsequently went back underground. Upon averting jail time, Machtinger released a statement to the press explaining his desire to remain underground and to continue working for Weather's Cause. In his letter, written October 16, 1973, Machtinger explores the dilemma of being a revolutionary fugitive in the following excerpt:
"What should I do? Go to jail and do time--for how long?...Do my political work behind steel bars, get out and figure a new way to integrate myself in the revolution? Or, if I had the opportunity, return to what I had been doing: trying to build secret--from the state power--bases of strength as one means of aiding in the overthrow of the imperialist, sexist, racist state.
Resurfacing and recent history.
Machtinger surrendered in Criminal Court on May 11, 1978. Upon resurfacing, he continued to pursue education, earning an A.A.S degree in computer science and business technology from Seattle Central Community College in 1981. He taught high school history from 1993 until he received his master's degree in history from San Francisco State University in 1996. Machtinger's 1995 dissertation, titled "Clearing Away the Debris : New Left Radicalism in 1960s America," further explores the New Left movement of the 1960s. He served on the planning committee for East Chapel Hill High School from 1995-96 and is a former member of the North Carolina Humanities Council Forum Speakers. In 1998, Machtinger helped organize a visit of South African educators and students to the Triangle area to promote cross-cultural communication and understanding of educational issues. He is an activist for educational reform and wrote two articles in 2007 for the "High School Journal," titled "After the Flood: The Impact of Katrina on Education in New Orleans" and "What Do We Know about High Poverty Schools? Summary of the High Poverty Schools Conference at Chapel Hill." Machtinger worked for the School of Education at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from July 19, 1999, to June 30, 2006.


Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003), was a copyright and trademark case of the Supreme Court of the United States involving the applicability of the Lanham Act to a work in the public domain.
Background.
In 1948, Fox obtained the exclusive rights to create a television series, "Crusade in Europe", based on a 1948 book "Crusade in Europe", written by Dwight Eisenhower and published by Doubleday. The 26-episode series showed World War II film footage from the US military and other sources, with a voice soundtrack based on a narration of the book. In 1975, Doubleday renewed the copyright on the book. Fox, however, did not renew the copyright on the TV series and so the show entered the public domain in 1977.
In 1988, Fox reacquired the television rights to the book and licensed it to other companies the right to distribute "Crusade in Europe" on video. In 1995, Dastar purchased Betacam videotapes of the original TV series, copied the tapes, edited them to about half the original length, created new packaging, and sold the TV series as "World War II Campaigns in Europe". The new videotapes and advertising mentioned Dastar and its employees as the producer but did not mention the original "Crusade in Europe" book, TV series, or producers.
Fox sued in 1998 by claiming that Dastar had infringed the copyright to the "Crusade in Europe" book and that under the Lanham Act, it had illegally done a "reverse passing off" by passing off the work of others as its own work. The district court found for Fox and awarded it double the profits that Dastar had made. The Court of Appeals reversed the copyright claim and sent it back to the district court on remand, but it upheld the "reverse passing off" Lanham Act ruling and affirmed the award of double the profits.
Decision.
The U.S. Supreme Court, ruling only on the "reverse passing off" claim, reversed the decisions of the appeals court and district court, ruling 8–0 in favor of Dastar. The Court reasoned that although the Lanham Act forbids a reverse passing off, the rule regarding the misuse of trademarks is trumped by the fact that once a copyrighted work (or even a patented invention) enters into the public domain, anyone in the public may do anything with the work, with or without attribution to the author.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing in the decision, noted that the Court in the past has held that the Lanham Act "does not exist to reward manufacturers for their innovation in creating a particular device; that is the purpose of the patent law and its period of exclusivity." Therefore, claims about authorship cannot be used as an end-run around the underlying philosophy of a time limit on exclusive ownership of a copyright or patent. Allowing such restrictions on a public domain work would serve, Scalia wrote, "to create a species of mutant copyright law that limits the public's 'federal right to "copy and to use"' expired copyrights," and that would effectively create "a species of perpetual patent and copyright, which Congress may not do," according to Article I of the US Constitution.
Scalia noted that if Dastar had instead purchased the post-1988 videotapes and copied them, that would have been a clear copyright infringement.
Analysis.
The decision strengthened the rights of those who wish to make use of works that have passed into the public domain. If the lawsuit had been decided the other way, claims based on trademark or even based on moral rights such as attribution of authorship, could have been used to make it impractical for anyone to use works in the public domain as intended by Article I of the Constitution.
Dastar might have been able to avoid this legal attack entirely if it had credited the original authors. However, as Scalia noted in the opinion, that would have put them in a bind: crediting the original authors might have implied their sponsorship or approval, which could have exposed Dastar to other lawsuits unless the credit had been carefully worded.
Congress has repeatedly extended the term of US copyrights, such as with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
In reconciling this case with the earlier "Eldred v. Ashcroft", Kurt M. Saunders considered "Dastar" a reassurance from the Supreme Court that, although "Eldred" said Congress was free to extend copyright durations, a work outside of copyright was free to use. Years later, "Golan v. Holder" determined that Congress had the authority to take works out of the public domain, however.
Subsequent history.
On remand, the district court, after the Supreme Court's ruling, dismissed Twentieth Century Fox's Lanham Act claims as well as analogous California state law unfair competition claims. The only remaining issue was whether the plaintiffs had a copyright in the underlying work, Eisenhower's book "Crusade in Europe". The district court held a bench trial and determined that the plaintiffs owned a valid copyright in the book and that Dastar had infringed that copyright by including portions of the book's narrative in its film version. Dastar appealed, but the Ninth Circuit affirmed.


William McDonough

William Andrews McDonough is an American architect, designer and author. McDonough is founding principal of William McDonough + Partners, co-founder of McDonough MBDC as well as co-author of "" and "The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability—Designing for Abundance." McDonough's career is focused on creating a beneficial footprint. He espouses a message that we can design materials, systems, companies, products, buildings, and communities that continuously improve over time.
Biography.
McDonough was born in Tokyo, the son of an American Seagram's executive, and trained at Dartmouth College and Yale University. In 1981 McDonough founded his architectural practice, and his first major commission was the 1984 Environmental Defense Fund Headquarters. The EDF's requirement of good indoor air quality in the structure exposed McDonough to the need for sustainable development.
McDonough's architecture practice, William McDonough + Partners, operates in Charlottesville, Virginia. McDonough moved his practice from New York City to Charlottesville in 1994 when he was appointed as the Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. He served as Dean until 1999 and has since served as a professor of business administration and an alumni research professor. He is chief executive of McDonough Innovation, which provides high-level consulting to global companies, organizations and governments and co-founded the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute. He is also co-founder of MBDC, based in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A number of large corporate projects for The Gap, Nike, and Herman Miller, led to his commission for a 20-year, US$2 billion environmental re-engineering of the Ford Motor Company's legendary River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. The project included rolling out the world's largest "living roof" in October 2002. The roof of the 1.1 million square foot (100,000 m²) Dearborn truck assembly plant was covered with more than 10 acres (40,000 m²) of sedum, a low-growing ground cover.
In 1996 McDonough became the first and only individual recipient of the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development. In 1999 "Time" called him "Hero for the Planet". In 2002 he co-authored ". In 2004 he received a National Design Award for environmental design from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.
McDonough was also a senior advisor and Venture Partner at VantagePoint Capital Partners, one of the largest venture capital investors in clean technology.
Design philosophy.
William McDonough and his architecture and urban design firm, William McDonough + Partners, ground their work in Cradle to Cradle Design, a philosophy developed in the 2002 book, ". The goal is to frame design as "a beneficial, regenerative force—one that seeks to create ecological footprints to delight in, not lament." The primary goal of Cradle to Cradle Design is to shift thinking from doing "less bad" to being "more good." McDonough has also articulated the Cradle to Cradle Design framework as The Five Goods™ (Good Materials, Good Economy, Good Energy, Good Water, Good Lives) to help companies focus and evaluate their efforts on becoming "more good." The Five Goods were also designed to offer a streamlined method of addressing each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The design of the firm is often categorized as green architecture or sustainable architecture. The concept, closely linked with green building, is not known for a distinctive visual style, but for minimizing the negative environmental impact of a building. McDonough, however, is often quoted as saying the aspiration is to design something like a tree, something that creates good, like oxygen, rather than minimizing negative impact. McDonough's designs use solar and other passive energy efficiency techniques, as illustrated by the William McDonough + Partners' Flow House designed for the Make It Right Foundation New Orleans. The design incorporates deep overhangs, multiple connections with exterior areas allowing for much daylight and natural ventilation, roof mounted PV panels, water cisterns to harvest rainwater runoff and rain gardens to absorb any storm runoff.
In 1984, McDonough and his colleagues designed the Environmental Defense Fund office in New York City. Since then, William McDonough + Partners has been responsible for other milestones in the movement, such as 901 Cherry Ave in San Bruno, California, completed in 1997 for Gap, Inc.; it is now home to Google's YouTube. The building features a green roof that helps to prevent water runoff, insulates the building from noise and provides a habitat for several species, and received the BusinessWeek/Architectural Record Design Award in 1998. The Bernheim Arboretum Visitor Center for the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, in Clermont, Kentucky, completed in 2005, blurs the line between outdoor and indoor space. This project, like others designed by William McDonough + Partners, draws heavily on the biophilia hypothesis - the study of the human desire and physiological need for contact with nature. The building was awarded the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum rating.
Together with his architecture firm, McDonough developed a master plan for the design of Park 20|20, the first large-scale urban development in the Netherlands that adopts the Cradle to Cradle philosophy.
William McDonough co-founded the Make It Right Foundation New Orleans with Brad Pitt. This is an effort to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans.
Dedicated in 2012, the NASA Ames Research Center's Sustainability Base is designed to harvest more energy than it needs to operate and to cleanse its own water. It was designed to meet a conventional budget and tight timeline, be a test bed for NASA technologies, and it exceeds LEED Platinum metrics. The facility is designed to "learn"—and continuously improve—over time.
McDonough addressed the Arctic Circle China Forum in Shanghai and laid out a framework for how to "bring back breathing cities" in May 2019. This system seeks to avoid focusing on releasing less carbon and fewer toxic chemicals into the air and instead shifts to integrating renewable energy such as geothermal as a transformative solution to air pollution and climate change. This vision encourages cities to break out of the urban linear flow of, “take, make, waste,” and embrace a circular flow of "take, make, retake, remake, restore" to implement a Circular Carbon Economy.
In June 2019 William McDonough delivered a keynote address at Sustainable Brands on "A Bold New Vision for the Collection, Processing, Circularity and Productivity of Plastic Waste". As a step toward solving the plastics crisis, McDonough directed the audience to "refuse refuse", or reject plastics which are not reusable, recyclable, compostable and recoverable.
Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program.
On May 20, 2010 at Google Corporate Headquarters, the Googleplex, McDonough announced the launch of the Green Products Innovation Institute, which was later renamed the "Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute." The Institute builds on the 2008 California state law that establishes the nation's first green chemistry program. The non-profit public/private Institute has received the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program on an exclusive, worldwide basis to accelerate the transition to safe material use and increased material reutilization. Executives from Google, Walmart, YouTube, Shaw Inc. and Herman Miller Inc. joined McDonough for the announcement.
The Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program is based on five attributes, Material Health, Circular Economy, Renewable Energy, Water Stewardship and Social Fairness. On June 18, 2019, McDonough delivered a plenary at GreenBiz's inaugural Circularity '19 conference, where he spoke about the program encouraging a safe then circular economy to prevent recirculating harmful chemicals, which he refers to as retox.
World Economic Forum.
At the January 2014 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting held in Davos, Switzerland, William McDonough led the first CEO workshop that was centered around sustainable design, with an added focus on Cradle and Cradle, The Upcycle, and the circular economy. Prior to the 2014 meeting, McDonough participated in the organizing process in Geneva, when the WEF partnered with the United Nations to review the issue of climate change. It was later determined that climate change and the circular economy would be the main focus of the 2014 WEF meeting.
McDonough was appointed as Chair of the Forum's Meta-Council on Circular Economy in July 2014.
Reception.
In May 2008, Vanity Fair magazine offered an extensive profile of McDonough, which included a close look at several of his clients and projects, in the piece "Industrial Revolution, Take Two." Similar profiles about McDonough and his work have been published by the San Francisco Chronicle, Discover Magazine, and Time Magazine.
In 2013, Stanford University Libraries began the William McDonough “Living Archive".
Stanford University Libraries will also host the William A. McDonough Archive (WAMA).
This will be a first of a kind real-time "Living Archive".
He was recognized at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland as the recipient of the Fortune Award for Circular Economy Leadership for outstanding contribution to the development of a prosperous and sustainable economy.
McDonough was named as one of Fortune Magazine's World's 50 Greatest Leaders in 2019 at number 24 in recognition of his contributions to the green building movement, being a leading proponent of the circular economy and his efforts to redesign plastics.


Godwit Press

Godwit Press is a major New Zealand publisher of non-fiction works, mainly of New Zealand arts, literature, and natural history. Initially founded in Auckland in 1989, the company was taken over by Random House New Zealand in 2000 and has since been its main non-fiction publishing arm in New Zealand.
Godwit Press (frequently simply referred to as Godwit) has won numerous New Zealand book awards, among them the following:


Minolta makes fine photography easier


Andreas Kratky

Andreas Kratky is a media artist and a visiting professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He was born in Berlin, Germany and currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles. His work focuses on memory, database, and new forms of cinema, He is designer and co-director of several award-winning projects including That’s Kyogen (2001), Bleeding Through – Layers of Los Angeles 1920-1986 (2003), Soft Cinema (2004), and Title TK (2006).


Kazutsugi Nami

 is a Japanese businessman and chairman of Tokyo-based bedding supplier Ladies & Gentlemen (L&G). He has been involved in a number of fraudulent schemes since the 1970s, and was arrested most recently on 4 February 2009 on suspicion of orchestrating a massive investor fraud involving the "Enten" quasi-currency.
APO Japan.
In the 1970s, Nami became vice president of APO Japan Co., an auto equipment sales company in Tokyo. The company was involved in a pyramid scheme, collecting investments from about 250,000 people in a scam based on sales of exhaust gas removal devices. The company's operations became a social problem, and it went bankrupt in 1975.
Nozakku.
In 1973, before the bankruptcy of APO Japan, Nami established Nozakku Co., a company which sold "magic stones" that were claimed to turn tapwater into natural water. The company's annual sales reached more than 2 billion yen a year before it too went bankrupt in 1978. Nami was arrested in September 1978 by Mie Prefectural police on suspicion of fraud, and was sentenced to prison.
PHC.
Before his arrest in 1978, Nami also established PHC, a company selling pressure cookers.
L&G and "Enten".
After being released from prison, Nami established the Tokyo-based bedding company L&G in August 1987. The company allegedly derived its income from a pyramid scheme. At L&G, he invented the "Enten" quasi-currency (literally meaning "Divine Money" in Japanese). In February 2007, L&G dividends were distributed in Enten, rather than in cash, resulting in lawsuits and cancellations of accounts. In October 2007, police searched L&Gs headquarters in Tokyo, suspecting that the company had violated investment laws, and the company declared bankruptcy in November 2007. Nami was arrested in Tokyo on 4 February 2009 on suspicion of large-scale investor fraud along with twenty-one of his associates. He insists that he is innocent, and is the victim and not the villain. On March 18, 2010, Nami was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his scheme.


Melissa Coleman

Melissa Coleman (born 1969) is an American author, columnist, and writer best known as the author of "This Life Is in Your Hands", a childhood memoir exploring her iconic family's search for a sustainable lifestyle.
Coleman was born in Brooksville, Maine to parents Sue and Eliot Coleman of the Back-to-the-land movement of the 60s and 70s, and her parents have been referred to as disciples of Scott and Helen Nearing. Coleman is a columnist for Maine and Maine Home and Design magazines, and serves on the board of the Telling Room, a Portland, Maine writing center for kids. Melissa lives in Freeport, Maine, with her twin daughters.


Daniel Quinn

Daniel Clarence Quinn (October 11, 1935 – February 17, 2018) was an American author (primarily, novelist and fabulist), cultural critic, and publisher of educational texts, best known for his novel "Ishmael", which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991 and was published the following year. Quinn's ideas are popularly associated with environmentalism, though he criticized this term for portraying the environment as separate from human life, thus creating a false dichotomy. Instead, Quinn referred to his philosophy as "new tribalism".
Biography.
Daniel Quinn was born in Omaha, Nebraska, where he graduated from Creighton Preparatory School. He went on to study at Saint Louis University, at the University of Vienna, Austria, through IES Abroad, and at Loyola University, receiving a bachelor's degree in English "cum laude" in 1957. He delayed part of this university education, however, while a postulant at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, where he hoped to become a Trappist monk; however his spiritual director, Thomas Merton, prematurely ended Quinn's postulancy. Quinn went into publishing, abandoned his Catholic faith, and married twice unsuccessfully, before marrying Rennie MacKay Quinn, his third and final wife of 42 years.
In 1975, Quinn left his career as a publisher to become a freelance writer. He is best known for his book "Ishmael" (1992), which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991. Several judges disputed giving the entire $500,000 award to Quinn for "Ishmael", rather than dividing the money among several authors, though judge Ray Bradbury, for one, supported the decision. "Ishmael" became the first of a loose trilogy of novels by Quinn, including "The Story of B" and "My Ishmael", all of which brought increasing fame to Quinn throughout the 1990s. He became a well-known author to followers of the environmental, simple living, and anarchist movements, although he did not strongly self-identify with any of these.
Quinn traveled widely to lecture and discuss his books. While response to "Ishmael" was mostly very positive, Quinn's ideas have inspired the most controversy with a claim mentioned in "Ishmael" but made much more forcefully in "The Story of B"'s Appendix that the total human population grows and shrinks according to food availability and with the catastrophic real-world conclusions he draws from this.
In 1998, Quinn collaborated with environmental biologist Alan D. Thornhill in producing "Food Production and Population Growth," a video elaborating in-depth the science behind the ideas he describes in his fiction.
Quinn's book "Tales of Adam" was released in 2005 after a long bankruptcy scuffle with its initial publisher. It is designed to be a look through the animist's eyes in seven short tales; Quinn first explores the idea of animism as the original worldwide religion and as his own dogma-free belief system in "The Story of B" and his autobiography, "".
In February 2018, Quinn died of aspiration pneumonia in hospice care.
Philosophy and themes.
Daniel Quinn was largely a fiction writer who explored the culturally-biased world-view ("mythology", in his terms) driving modern civilization and the destruction of the natural world. He sought to recognize and criticize some of civilization's most unchallenged "myths" or "memes", which he considered to include the following: that the Earth was made especially for humans, so humans are destined to conquer and rule it; that humans are innately and inevitably flawed; that humans are separate from and superior to nature (which Quinn called "the most dangerous idea in existence"); and that all humans must be made to live according to some "one right way".
Other common themes included ecology, environmental ethics, and an in-depth look at human population dynamics. Although Quinn himself regarded the following associations as coincidental, his philosophy is sometimes compared with deep ecology, dark-green environmentalism, or anarcho-primitivism. Quinn notably claimed that the total population of humans, like all living things, grows and shrinks according to a basic ecological law: an increase in food availability for any population yields an accompanying increase in the population's overall size. Quinn worried that popular cultural thinking ignores this reality, instead regarding civilized humans as separate from and above any such law. He identified the Neolithic Revolution as the start of human overpopulation, when civilized peoples began to practice an imperialistic world-view that denigrates nature and that relies entirely upon expansionist farming ("totalitarian agriculture"), the human population growing in proportion to the decline of the rest of the world's biomass. Quinn's warnings about population, especially in relation to food availability, have often been compared to the warnings of 19th-century economist Thomas Robert Malthus. However, while Malthus warned that excess human population precariously motivates an excess of food in order to sustain that population, Quinn considered this assessment backwards. He instead warned that excess population is the "result" of excess food. According to Quinn, the success of totalitarian agriculture is causing a catastrophic loss of biodiversity, and, even more directly, overshoot towards an eventual population crash, of which the civilized mainstream shows very little anticipation or interest.
Quinn's conclusions on population also imply the controversial notion that sustained food aid to starving nations is merely delaying and dramatically worsening massive starvation crises, rather than resolving such crises, as is commonly assumed. Quinn claimed that reconnecting people to the food made available through their local habitats is a proven way to avoid famines and accompanying starvation. Some have interpreted this to mean that Quinn was resolving to let starving people in impoverished nations continue starving, which he repeatedly refuted.
Quinn described civilization as primarily a single global economy and culture, whose total dependence on agriculture requires ever-more expansion, in turn generating ever-more population growth (an escalating vicious cycle he identifies as the "food race"). As a result, he viewed modern civilization, by definition, as unsustainable. He commonly analyzed and defended the effectiveness of traditional indigenous tribal societies—regarded by anthropological research as fairly egalitarian, ecologically well-adapted, and socially secure—as role models for developing a new diversity of workable human social structures in the future.
Quinn self-admittedly avoided presenting simplistic or universal solutions, though he strongly encouraged a worldwide paradigm shift away from the self-destructive memes of civilization and towards the values and organizational structures of a "new tribalism". He clarified that this did not refer to the old style of ethnic tribalism so much as new groupings of individuals as equals trying to make a living communally, while still subject to evolution by natural selection. He eventually named this hypothetical, gradual shift the "New Tribal Revolution". Quinn cautioned that his admiration for the sustainable lifestyles of indigenous tribes is not intended to encourage a massive "return" to hunting and gathering. Rather, he intended merely to acknowledge the enormous history of relative ecological harmony between humans and the rest of the environment (from which humans are never separate) and embrace the basic unit of a tribe as an effective model for human societies (just as the pack works for wolves, the hive for bees, etc.).
Quinn was influential in developing a vocabulary for his philosophy; he coined or popularized a variety of terms, including the following:
Influence.
"Ishmael" directly inspired the 1998 Pearl Jam album "Yield" (and particularly the song "Do the Evolution"), and the Chicano Batman song "The Taker Story" on their 2017 album "Freedom is Free". In 2019 The Mammals, Mike Merenda & Ruth Ungar, released "Nonet" with many of the songs on it inspired by "Ishmael" and other Quinn books, most especially "Beyond Civilization". More information and the backstories behind these songs can be found in the Inspired section on the Ishmael website.
Quinn's writings have also influenced the filmmaker Tom Shadyac (who featured Quinn in the documentary "I Am"), the entrepreneur Ray C. Anderson, founder of Interface, Inc. (the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet), who began transforming Interface with more green initiatives, as well as some of the ideology behind the 1999 drama film "Instinct", and the 2007 documentary film "",
Actor Morgan Freeman's interest in the "Ishmael" trilogy inspired his involvement with nature documentaries, such as ' and "Born to Be Wild", both of which he narrated, while adopting from Quinn the phrase "the tyranny of agriculture". Punk rock band Rise Against includes "Ishmael" on their album "The Sufferer & the Witness reading list, and its sequel, "My Ishmael", inspired the name of the band Animals as Leaders.


Obsidian Energy

Obsidian Energy Ltd. (previously known as Penn West Exploration Ltd., Penn West Petroleum and Penn West Energy Trust) is a mid-sized Canadian oil and natural gas production company based in Calgary, Alberta.
For a while it was one of the S&P/TSX 60, the sixty largest companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange. From 2005-2011 it was a Canadian royalty trust (CANROY), and reached a peak market capitalization in January 2008 of approximately US $9.5 billion. In the 2012 Forbes Global 2000, Penn West Petrpoleum, Obsidian Energy's predecessor, was ranked as the 1086th largest public company in the world.
The company experienced operational and financial difficulties when crude oil prices fell significantly in 2014. As a result, the company underwent a significant restructuring with the majority of the assets sold over the next two years to reduce debt.
Obsidian's oil and gas fields are located in Alberta, along the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, a region which is one of the world's largest petroleum reserves. Production comes from three key areas in Alberta: the Pembina Cardium, the Peace River oil sands, and the Alberta Viking. Total production in 2017 is expected to average approximately 31,000 bbl equivalent per day.
On 26 June 2017, Penn West Petroleum changed its name to Obsidian Energy.
Current operations.
The formal name change from Penn West Petroleum Ltd. (TSX – PWT; NYSE – PWE) to Obsidian Energy Ltd. (TSX – OBE; NYSE – OBE) took place on June 26, 2017 at the shareholders meeting. The board of directors was elected with David L. French as CEO and board members including George H. Brookman, John Brydson, Raymond D. Crossley, David L. French, William A. Friley, Richard L. George, Maureen Cormier Jackson, and Jay W. Thornton.
In 2017, the 2017 Capex budget for Obsidian was C$160 million. In spite of the pressure from the low price of oil in general and the record low prices of Canada's heavy oil, benchmark Western Canadian Select (WCS), which is complicated by the lack of pipeline capacity, Obsidian's is "heavily weighted towards gas which resulted in relatively small impact from WCS differentials".
By December 2017, Obsidian set a target production for 2018 at 31,500 boe/d. with heavy oil accounting for about 20% of Obisidian's production. Obsidian's heavy oil, because of its specifications, has a bigger discount than the benchmark Western Canadian Select (WCS).
History.
In 1995 Penn West, then an independent exploration and production company called Penn West Petroleum Ltd, was the operator and licensee of a well in Saddle Hills Field, Alberta, where they held rights to an entire DSU.
In May 2005, Penn West under the new trade name "Penn West Energy Trust" operated as a Canadian royalty trust (CANROY). According to a 2004 article in "The New York Times", the Canadian royalty trusts (CANROY) were "much larger, both in production and in market capitalization", than those in the United States. They produce about 11 percent of the oil and 23 percent of the natural gas in Canada and have a combined market capitalization of 34 billion Canadian dollars, or about $27 billion." Penn West was already one of the top ten Canadian oil and gas companies in terms of after tax profits from 2003 through 2007. Penn West Petroleum (PWT) was a Canadian royalty trust (CANROY) from 2005-2011, and as such did not pay federal income taxes.
Calgary-based Penn West Energy Trust acquired publicly-traded trust companies—Petrofund Energy Trust in June 2006, Canetic Resources Trust, a "smaller rival" for $3.6-billion in 2007, Vault Energy Trust in January 2008, and Endev Energy Inc. in July 2008. According to a 2007 "CBC News" article, Penn West became the largest oil and gas energy trust in North America after its acquisition of Canetic.
On January 1, 2011, the government cracked down on Penn West, one of a group of oil and gas producers, who from 2005 to 2011, through Canadian royalty trusts (CANROYs), did not pay "federal income taxes if they distributed their income to shareholders."
In response to the government crackdown, in January 2011, Penn West converted from a CANROY to a conventional corporation, a "newly-incorporated entity named Penn West Petroleum Ltd." From 2012 to June 2014, Penn West cut back its work force by almost 50%.
The 2013 CBR company listings reported that by 2012, Penn West Petroleum Ltd. was operated as Penn West Exploration, "engaged in the business of acquiring, developing, exploiting and holding interests in petroleum and natural gas properties and assets". The board of directors in the fiscal year 2013 included David E. Roberts as President & CEO and David A. Dyck as Senior Vice President & CFO. In July 2014, Dyck had discovered and reported irregularities in the company's accounting practices that "misclassified nearly $300-million in expenses."
Penn West reported that preliminary findings revealed irregularities totaling "$381-million in 2013 and 2012." Penn West notified Canadian and U.S. regulators about the irregularities and expanded their own investigation to review results going back to 2007. Lawsuits tied to the accounting irregularities include those in Canada and a class action lawsuit in the United States. According to CBC News, by the end of July 2014, independent auditors contracted by Penn West to review its books uncovered that "$70 million worth of operating expenses that were reclassified as capital expenditures on things like property, plant and equipment in fiscal 2013; $110 million of similar expenses incorrectly classified in fiscal 2012; $100 million in operating expenses that were incorrectly reclassified as royalty expense" in 2012 and 2013. The 2012, 2013, and 2014 financial statements were audited by KPMG who were replaced by Ernst & Young (EY) for the audit of the 2015 financial statements.
Penn West's profit in the second quarter of 2014 was $143-million, or 29 cents per share. Rick George who was Suncor's CEO from 1991 to 2012, served as Penn West's CEO from 2013 to 2014. The company laid off 1350 of its 2350 employees since Dave Roberts became CEO.
According to a May 2015 "CBC News" article, at their May 2015 annual general meeting, Penn West's chair, Richard George, reassured shareholders of the company's viability in spite of a drop of 80% in the value of their shares in 2014/2015 as it struggled with low WTI benchmark prices of $60 US a barrel. At that time the company was facing "six different lawsuits from investors in Canada and one consolidated lawsuit in the United States." In response to the decline in oil prices, on September 2, 2015, Penn West announced cuts of about 400 full-time employees and contractors mainly from the company's headquarters in Calgary which represents 35 per cent of the total workforce at Penn West. Penn West also suspended "dividend payments to its shareholders after its next payment in October [2015] and reduc[ed] compensation for its board of directors."


Virtual Bartender

Virtual Bartender (virtualbartender.beer.com) was a viral marketing campaign launched in 2004 by beer.com, which featured an online interactive "virtual bartender", played by "Playboy" model Tammy Plante. When a request, such as "pour me a beer," "dance on the bar" or "fight like a Jedi", was recognized the "virtual bartender" carried out the task before returning to her idling position to await another request. There were over 120 different actions and thousands of different words and phrases that produced a response. The company claimed that the site received over 10 million visits and 200 million page views in its first month of release.
In the spring of 2005, the campaign released a second Virtual Bartender game, featuring two models instead of one.
History.
The site was launched on Thursday 4 November 2004 (between 9:00 p.m. and Midnight Eastern Standard Time). Ten emails were sent out to friends of beer.com from their office to beta test “Virtual Bartender”. No other form of marketing was used and there were not any links from the home page or any other sites. No search engine marketing, banner ads or offline media were used to promote the campaign.
Virtual Bartender won 'Best Interactive Viral' at the 2004 Viral Awards. The creative director of the campaign was Rick Brown.
By 2008, the site was no longer active.
Beer.com.
The url "beer.com" was bought in 1998 for $80,000 by domain speculators Andrew Miller and Michael "Zappy" Zapolin, operating as the "Internet Real Estate Group". They reportedly "built an audience for the site by giving out free e-mail addresses and having fans rate different brews," but the real pay day came when they sold it for $7 million to mega-brewer Interbrew less than a year later.
The "Beer.com" which came up with the Virtual Bartender then came online (in 1999), with Interbrew executive Rocco Rossi named president, and was touted as an online community directed to males age 18-34.


Segol (trope)

Segol (   also known as Segolta, with variant English spellings), is a cantillation mark found in the Torah, Haftarah, and other books of the Hebrew Bible. The Segol occurs together with a preceding Zarka, sometimes with a Munach preceding one or both.
The Segol group is considered to be a disjunctive. It occurs in place of the Katan group or a Zakef gadol. It is the strongest disjunctive group ahead of the Etnachta group.
The Hebrew word סְגוֹל֒ translates into English as "bunch", referring to a bunch of grapes. This is reflected in its appearance as a three-dot symbol.


WGTV

WGTV, virtual channel 8 (VHF digital channel 7), is a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station serving Atlanta, Georgia, United States that is licensed to Athens, a legacy of the station's early years as a service of the University of Georgia there. Owned by the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission (technically under the Georgia Board of Regents, along with the University System of Georgia), it is the flagship station of the statewide Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) television network.
WGTV's studios are located at GPB's headquarters on 14th Street in Midtown Atlanta, and its transmitter is located atop Stone Mountain in state-owned Stone Mountain Park, just east of Atlanta in Stone Mountain, Georgia. (It shares this short broadcast tower with NOAA Weather Radio station KEC80, and formerly with WABE [90.1 FM].) It is considered the primary ("parent") station for one (originally two) low-power translators, in the north Georgia mountains. Eight other full-power stations also simulcast the network across the state, originally relayed via microwave radio towers and now via communications satellite. There is no local insertion; all station identification is done on a single screen for all stations.
History.
WGTV began broadcasting on May 23, 1960. It was licensed to the University of Georgia and operated out of the Georgia Center for Continuing Education. The station's VHF allocation was originally occupied by WSB-TV, which at that time was owned by the "Atlanta Journal". The "Journal"s competitor in Atlanta, the "Atlanta Constitution", had applied for and received from the FCC a construction permit for channel 2, which was to be called WCON-TV. When the "Journal" and "Constitution" merged, media ownership rules of the day did not permit one entity to own two television stations in the same market. Plans for WCON-TV were scrapped and WSB-TV moved to channel 2 from channel 8 in 1951. The ABC affiliate WLTV broadcast on channel 8 from 1951 to 1953, when the station moved to channel 11 (now NBC affiliate WXIA-TV) to avoid radio interference with newly launched WROM-TV Rome, operating on adjacent channel 9.
Cox Enterprises, owner of the "Journal" and "Constitution", donated the channel 8 license to UGA for an educational television station, but it took seven more years to get the station on the air. In 1965, WGTV merged with a group of four stations owned by the state board of education to form Georgia Educational Television, later known as Georgia Public Television and the forerunner of today's GPB television network. In 1982, ownership of the license was transferred from the University of Georgia to the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission.
From 1965 to 1982, WGTV often broke from the main GETV/GPTV signal to broadcast programs of local interest to the Atlanta and Northeast Georgia areas. However, since all of the GPTV licenses were consolidated with the GPTC, network programming airs on WGTV at all times.
Programming.
Prior to 2001, both stations went off the air at midnight; WPBA still goes off the air on Sunday nights. GPB used to sign off with Ray Charles' version of "Georgia On My Mind" which is the official state song, while showing scenes from the north Georgia mountains to the Georgia coast.
Digital television.
Analog-to-digital conversion.
WGTV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 8, on February 17, 2009, at 11:59 p.m., to conclude the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition VHF channel 12 to channel 8. The station played a farewell video of outdoor scenes around Georgia set to the tune of "Georgia On My Mind" before permanently ceasing transmission. A final message at the end of the video read "In fond remembrance of the era of analog television broadcasting on Georgia Public Television." The transition to digital ended nearly 49 years of analog broadcasting by WGTV.
WGTV's analog signal was the strongest of the GPB TV network, covering most of the northern part of Georgia, extending in about a radius from the transmitter site. WGTV's digital/HDTV facility began broadcasting on December 20, 2007, on channel 12. However, it was at very low power, unable to be received through much (if not most) of metro Atlanta. It moved from channel 12 to full power on channel 8 after the analog shutdown in February 2009, using the same digital transmitter re-tuned to use the channel 8 antenna. This selection, made without conflict in the first-round digital channel election, is due to WDEF-TV in Chattanooga opting to stay digital on channel 12. WGTV was originally assigned channel 22 for DTV operations, but requested the frequency allotment change to channel 12 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), also allowing a change to 22 (from 59) by WSKC-CD. "Distant" viewers can receive two other GPB digital TV stations: WNGH-TV 4 (18."x") in the northwest metro area, and WJSP-TV 5 (28."x") in the southwest, though these stations are now on VHF (formerly UHF 33 and 23) and therefore require a larger antenna.
The analog station had an effective radiated power (ERP) of 316 kilowatts (the maximum for high VHF), at height above average terrain (HAAT). The temporary digital station had an ERP of only 16 kW at . The previous 21 kW and current 17.3 kW are still well below the limit of 63 kW for digital stations on high VHF (channels 7 to 13), which would also be legally equivalent to what it had on analog. Because of this, reception is still difficult in much of metro Atlanta. This was expected to improve once the station changed to physical channel 7 in 2020, after May 1 (when other stations in phase 9 finish) but no later than July 3 (the end of phase 10, the final phase of the national repacking of all stations to below channel 37). The omnidirectional signal will increase to 62 kW toward the north-northwest with a directional antenna, but areas south and southeast of a line from Carrollton to Athens will not see an improvement in signal strength. The lowest signal strengths (18 kW) will be in slight nulls toward the southwest (to protect Alabama Public Television station WCIQ TV 7) and toward the east. Despite the channel change at noon on July 3, the station is still difficult to receive, as it has actually dropped to 17.3 kW under special temporary authority (STA), which expires at the end of 2020. The temporary antenna model listed is different from both the old channel 8 antenna and the channel 7 model listed in its permit, but all are at the same height, indicating that the old antenna must be removed before the new permanent one can be installed, tested, and switched over to for full-power operation.


Henry Blankfort

Henry Blankfort (December 25, 1902 – June 16, 1993) was an American screenwriter. He wrote the films "Youth on Parole", "Klondike Fury", "Rubber Racketeers", "Tales of Manhattan", "Harrigan's Kid", "I Escaped from the Gestapo", "She's for Me", "Reckless Age", "The Singing Sheriff", "Night Club Girl", "Swing Out, Sister", "I'll Tell the World", "Easy to Look At", "The Crimson Canary", "Open Secret", "Joe Palooka in the Counterpunch", "Joe Palooka Meets Humphrey", "Joe Palooka in the Squared Circle", "G.I. Jane", "The Highwayman" and "Joe Palooka in Triple Cross".
Due to his political beliefs, Blankfort was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and his film career ended when he refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951. He wrote his last three films ("G.I. Jane", "The Highwayman" and "Joe Palooka in Triple Cross") under the pseudonym Jan Jeffries. After leaving Hollywood, he started a second career in public relations.
Henry Blankfort died of cardiac arrest on June 16, 1993, in Los Angeles, California at age 90.


The Outdoor Room

The Outdoor Room was an Australian lifestyle television program hosted by Jamie Durie on the Seven Network in 2008 with repeats broadcast on 7Two. "The Outdoor Room" is a backyard improvement show that saw Durie design a new backyard for a worthy family, similar to his previous show "Backyard Blitz". He was seen travelling to various countries around the world to seek inspiration and gain new ideas before coming home to start work on the design with his team. Along with reuniting with former "Backyard Blitz" horticulturist Jody Rigby, each week Durie was also joined by a prominent Australian chef who serves up a dish from each episode's country of inspiration.
It did not return for a second season due to budgetary constraints to produce each episode but an American version of the show was produced. HGTV picked up the series with Jamie Durie, produced by Scout Productions, Emmy Award-winning producers of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy". Running for four seasons and 52 episodes, the series was produced by showrunner Michael Hauser.
Episodes.
Ratings are based on the average of the total ratings for Australian mainland capital cities.

This episode was a one-hour series premiere.

This episode aired half an hour later at 7pm due to a Seven News special in its regular timeslot.


Cathy Campbell

Catherine Elizabeth "Cathy" Campbell (1962 – 23 February 2012) was a New Zealand broadcaster, journalist and public relations consultant. She worked as a presenter and reporter on radio and television, and in 1989 became the first woman to anchor a New Zealand sports show. Later she launched her own public relations company, Cathy Campbell Communications.
Campbell was married to television producer Ric Salizzo. She died in 2012 from a brain tumour.


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