Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American television host, actress, producer, and philanthropist,best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history.She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century.

Television

In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest rated talk show in Chicago. The movie critic Roger Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies. It was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour, and broadcast nationally beginning September 8, 1986.

Celebrity interviews

In 1993, Winfrey hosted a rare prime-time interview with Michael Jackson, which became the fourth most watched event in American television history as well as the most watched interview ever, with an audience of 36.5 million.In 2006, rappers Ludacris, 50 Cent and Ice Cube criticized Winfrey for what they perceived as an anti-hip hop bias. In an interview with GQ magazine, Ludacris said that Winfrey gave him a "hard time" about his lyrics, and edited comments he made during an appearance on her show with the cast of the film Crash.

Film

In 1985, Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple as distraught housewife, Sofia. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. In late 2008, Winfrey's company Harpo Films signed an exclusive output pact to develop and produce scripted series, documentaries and movies for HBO.[56] Oprah voiced Gussie the goose for Charlotte's Web (2006) and the voice of Judge Bumbleden in Bee Movie (2007) co-starring the voices of Jerry Seinfeld and ReneeZellweger. In 2009, Winfrey provided the voice for the character of Eudora, the mother of Princess Tiana, in Disney's The Princess and the Frog and in 2010, narrated the US version of the BBC nature program Life for Discovery.

Fan base

In 1998, Winfrey's show had an estimated 14 million daily viewers, dropping to approximately 9 million in 2005 and to around 7.3 million viewers in 2008, though it remained the highest rated talk show. In 2008, Winfrey's show was airing in 140 countries internationally and seen by an estimated 46 million people in the US weekly. According to the Harris poll,Winfrey was America's favorite television personality in 1998, 2000, 2002–2006, and 2009. Winfrey was especially popular among women, Democrats, political moderates, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Southern Americans and East Coast Americans.

Philanthropy

Oprah has furthered her reputation for generosity through gifts. In 2004, every person in her Oprah show audience was given a new car (donated by General Motors). Some 302 "ultimate fans" accompanied Oprah to Australia (donated by Australian tourism bodies). In Australia, Oprah gave away $1 million worth of computer gear to a needy school (donated by IBM and Hewlett Packard). She gave away $250,000 to a cancer sufferer and his family (donated by X-Box). She gave away 6000 pearl necklaces (donated by West Australian pearl producer MG Kailis) and 6000 diamond pendants (donated by Rio Tinto).

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948. As one of the Big Three television networks, its programming has contributed to American popular culture.

Creating ABC

From the organization of the first true radio networks in the late 1920s, broadcasting in the United States was dominated by two companies, CBS and RCA's NBC. Before NBC's 1926 formation, RCA had acquired AT&T's New York City station WEAF (later WNBC, now CBS-owned WFAN). With WEAF came a loosely organized system feeding programming to other stations in the northeastern U.S. RCA, before the acquisition of the WEAF group in mid-1926, had previously owned a second such group, with WJZ in New York as the lead station (purchased by RCA in 1923 from Westinghouse)

NAME	American Broadcasting Company (ABC)
TYPE	Radio Network , Television Network
BRAND	America's Broadcasting Company
COUNTRY	United States
LAUNCH  DATE	October 12, 1943 (Radio) , April 19, 1948 (Television)
KEY PEOPLE	Edward Noble ,Robert Iger , Anne Sweeney, David Westin, Paul Lee, George Bodenheim
FORMER NAME	NBC Blue Network
OFFICIAL  WEBSITE	http://abc.go.com

In mid-1944, Noble renamed his network American Broadcasting Company. This set off a flurry of re-naming; to avoid confusion, CBS changed the call-letters of its New York flagship, WABC-AM 880, to WCBS-AM in 1946. In 1953, WJZ in New York and its sister television station took on the abandoned call-letters WABC and WABC-TV. Westinghouse reclaimed the WJZ callsign when it acquired a Baltimore television station in 1959.

1965–1969: Success

Wide World of Sports debuted April 29, 1961 and was the creation of Edgar J. Scherick through his company, Sports Programs, Inc. After selling his company to the American Broadcasting Company, Scherick hired a young Roone Arledge to produce the show. Arledge would eventually go on to become the executive producer of ABC Sports (as well as president of ABC News). Arledge helped ABC's fortunes with innovations in sports programming, such as the multiple cameras used in Monday Night Football. By doing so, he helped to make sports broadcasting into a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Despite its relatively small size, ABC found increasing success with television programming aimed at the emerging "Baby Boomer" culture. It broadcast American Bandstand and Shindig!, two shows that featured new popular and youth-oriented records of the day.

1996–2003: Disney purchase and network decline

In 1996, The Walt Disney Company acquired Capital Cities/ABC, and renamed the broadcasting group ABC, Inc., although the network continues to also use American Broadcasting Companies, such as on TV productions it owns.

Still one asset that ABC lacked in the early 2000s that most other networks had was popularity in reality television. ABC's briefly lived reality shows Are You Hot? and the first American iteration of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! proved to be an embarrassment for the network. By end of the 2003–2004 television season, ABC slumped to fourth place, becoming the first of the original "Big Three" networks to fall to such a ranking.

1996–2003: Disney purchase and network decline

In 1996, The Walt Disney Company acquired Capital Cities/ABC, and renamed the broadcasting group ABC, Inc., although the network continues to also use American Broadcasting Companies, such as on TV productions it owns.

For the 2001-2002 television season, ABC began airing newer scripted programming in High Definition; in addition, the network also converted all of its existing situation comedies and drama programming to HD, making it the first such American television network to produce its entire slate of scripted programming in that format. CBS became the first television network to produce programming in High Definition a year earlier.

Still one asset that ABC lacked in the early 2000s that most other networks had was popularity in reality television. ABC's briefly lived reality shows Are You Hot? and the first American iteration of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! proved to be an embarrassment for the network. By end of the 2003–2004 television season, ABC slumped to fourth place, becoming the first of the original "Big Three" networks to fall to such a ranking.

2007–present: The writers' strike and loss of steam

The writer's strike of 2007-2008 would put a damper on ABC's schedule that season like other networks, and it would be particularly bad on most of its new pilots, in which a lot of them (Dirty Sexy Money, Pushing Daisies, and Samantha Who? among others) wouldn't live to see a third season after the 2008-2009 season.

The writer's strike continued to affect the network in the 2008-2009 season (in a lesser extent though) as more series such as Boston Legal, Kyle XY, and the U.S. version of Life on Mars suffered from low viewership, despite the first two being once highlighted-breakout shows on the network.

The sale of ABC Radio

In March 2007 the Federal Communications Commission approved the transfer of ABC's 24 radio station licenses to Citadel; the $2.6 billion merger closed on June 12, 2007. ABC News – a unit of the ABC Television Network – continues to produce ABC News Radio, which Citadel has agreed to distribute for at least ten years.

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts[specify] that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis.

History

Billboard was founded in Cincinnati on November 1, 1894, by William H. Donaldson and James H. Hennegan. Originally titled Billboard Advertising it was a trade paper for the bill posting industry, hence the magazine's name. Within a few years of its founding, it began to carry news of outdoor amusements,a major consumer of billboard space.From 1961 until 2005, Billboard was devoted entirely to the music industry. In 2005, the magazine and its web sites were repositioned to provide coverage ofall forms of digital and mobile entertainment.Amusement Business prospered for a few decades, but was struggling by the beginning of the new century. Shortly after that its frequency of publication  was reduced to monthly, and it finally ceased publication altogether following its May 2006 issue.

NAME	Billboard
FREQUENCY	Weekly
FIRST ISSUE	1894
COMPANY	Prometheus Global Media
CIRCULATION	16,327
COUNTRY	United States
LANGUAGE	English
WEBSITE	www.billboard.com
SPECIAL	Billboard Hot 100 , Billboard 200

Billboard charts

On January 4, 1936 The Billboard published its first music hit parade, and on July 20, 1940 the first Music Popularity Chart was calculated.Since 1958 the Hot 100 has been published, combining single sales and radio airplay.Billboard currently puts out over 100 charts each week, the most popular ones being Hot 100, Billboard 200, and Hot 100 Airplay.

Radio countdown programs

For many years, the weekly syndicated radio program American Top 40, hosted by Casey Kasem (July 4, 1970 to August 6, 1988), and Shadoe Stevens  (August 13, 1988 to January 28, 1995), played the top 40 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in reverse order; in late November 1991, it switched to using the top 40 portion of the Hot 100 Airplay chart. Later, in early 1993, it began using the Top 40 Mainstream chart until it temporarily went off the air in 1995. When the show returned in 1998, it no longer used Billboard charts as its source.

Billboard today

Billboard Publications became a major trade magazine publisher, acquiring The Hollywood Reporter, Kirkus Reviews, Adweek and Mediaweek. It was acquired by Dutch publisher VNU (later renamed the Nielsen Company) in 1993, but later sold in 2009 along with the other Nielsen Business Media properties to the new company e5 Global Media.

Billboard Books

he group behind the magazine has an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group (itself a part of Random House) known as Billboard Books, who bought theimprint from Nielsen in 2008. Their publishing agency describes itself as "a leading publisher of music and entertainment titles".

Air Force One

Air Force One is the official air traffic control call sign of any United States Air Force aircraft carrying the President of the United States.Air Force One is a prominent symbol of the American presidency and its power,and the aircraft are among the most famous and most photographed in the world.

Air Force One History

On October 11, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to fly in an aircraft, although at the time of the flight in an early Wright Flyer from  Kinloch Field (near St. Louis, Missouri), he was no longer in office, having been succeeded by William Howard Taft. The record-making occasion was a brief. overflight of the crowd at a country fair but was nonetheless, the beginning of presidential air travel.

After Roosevelt died in spring 1945, Vice President Harry S. Truman became President. The legislation that created the U.S. Air Force, the National Security Act of 1947, was signed by Truman while on board the VC-54C.[7] He replaced the VC-54C in 1947 with a modified C-118 Liftmaster,calling it the Independence (also the name of Truman's hometown in Missouri). This was the first aircraft acting as Air Force One that had a distinctive exterior– a bald eagle head painted on its nose.

NO	RANK	NAME	TERM	PREDIDENT
1	Lieutenant Colonel	Henry T. Myers	June 1944 – April 1945	Franklin Roosevelt
1	Lieutenant Colonel	Henry T. Myers	April 1945 – January 1948	Harry Truman
2	Colonel	Francis W.Williams	January 1948 – January 1953	Harry Truman
3	Colonel	William G. Draper	January 1953 – January 1961	Dwight Eisenhower
4	Colonel	James Swindal	January 1961 – November 1963	John F. Kennedy
4	Colonel	James Swindal	November 1963 – July 1965	Lyndon Johnson
5	Colonel	James U. Cross	July 1965 – May 1968	Lyndon Johnson
6	Lieutenant Colonel	Paul Thornhill	May 1968 – January 1969	Lyndon Johnson
7	Colonel	Ralph D. Albertazzie	January 1969 – August 1974	Richard Nixon
8	Colonel	Lester C. McClelland	August 1974 – January 1977	Gerald Ford
8	Colonel	Lester C. McClelland	January 1977 – April 1980	Jimmy Carter
9	Colonel	Robert E. Ruddick	April 1980 – January 1981	Jimmy Carter
10	Lieutenant Colonel	Richard J. Klinker	January 1981 – January 1989	Ronald Reagan
11	Colonel	Robert D. “Danny” Barr[	January 1989 – January 1993	George H. W. Bush
11	Colonel	Robert D. “Danny” Barr[	January 1993 – January 1997	Bill Clinton
12	Colonel	Mark S. Donnelly	January 1997 – January 2001	Bill Clinton
12	Colonel	Mark S. Donnelly	January 2001 – June 2001	George W. Bush
13	Colonel	Mark W. Tillman	June 2001 – January 2009	George W. Bush
14	Colonel	Mark W. Tillman	January 2009 – Present	Barack Obama

Other presidential aircraft

United Airlines was the only commercial airline to have operated Executive One, the designation given to a civilian flight on which the U.S. President is aboard.  

 On December 26, 1973, then-President Richard Nixon flew as a passenger aboard a Washington Dulles to Los Angeles International flight. It was explained by his

staff that this was done in order to conserve fuel by not having to fly the usual Boeing 707 Air Force aircraft.

In November 1999, President Bill Clinton flew from Ankara, Turkey, to Cengiz Topel Naval Air Station outside Izmit, Turkey, aboard a marked C-20C (Gulfstream III)

using the call sign "Air Force One", escorted by three F-16s.

On March 8, 2000, President Bill Clinton flew to Pakistan aboard an unmarked Gulfstream III while another aircraft with the call sign "Air Force One" flew on the

same route a few minutes later. This diversion was reported by several U.S. press outlets.

In May 2009, President Barack Obama took the first lady on a date to New York City in a Gulfstream 500. On July 16, 2010, the Obama family flew to Maine for

vacation in a Gulfstream III painted in presidential colors.

The president also flies in Marine One helicopters operated by the U.S. Marine Corps.