Late Show with David Letterman
Late Show with David Letterman is an American late-night talk show hosted by David Letterman on CBS, the first iteration of the Late Show franchise. The show debuted on August 30, 1993, was produced by Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants, CBS Television Studios; the show's music director and leader of the house band, the CBS Orchestra, was Paul Shaffer. The head writer was Matt Roberts and the announcer was Bill Wendell Alan Kalter. Of the major U. S. late-night programs, Late Show ranked second in cumulative average viewers over time and third in number of episodes over time. In most U. S. markets. Eastern and Pacific Time, recorded Monday through Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. and Thursdays at 3:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time; the second Thursday episode aired on Friday of that week. In 2002, Late Show with David Letterman was ranked No. 7 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. As host of both Late Night and Late Show for more than 30 years, Letterman surpassed Johnny Carson as the longest running late-night talk show host in 2013.
That same year, Late Night and Late Show were ranked at #41 on TV Guide's 60 Best Series of All Time. In 2014, Letterman announced his retirement and the final episode of Late Show aired on May 20, 2015. After Letterman's final Late Show, instead of airing reruns of the show or having guest host episodes of Late Show, CBS opted to put the show on hiatus in between Letterman and Colbert and instead aired reruns of scripted dramas in the 11:35 pm time slot over the summer with the branding CBS Summer Showcase; the show was succeeded by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, hosted by Stephen Colbert, which premiered on September 8, 2015. CBS had attempted late-night talk shows with The Merv Griffin Show and The Pat Sajak Show, but these were unable to compete with NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and were canceled due to poor ratings. For most of the 20 years preceding Late Show, CBS's late night fare consisted of movies and specialty programming packaged under the title CBS Late Night and broadcast to middling ratings.
When David Letterman became available following a conflict with NBC, CBS was eager to lure him and offered him a three-year, $14 million per year contract, doubling his Late Night salary. According to their agreement, the show would spend a month in Hollywood at least once a year. CBS purchased the Ed Sullivan Theater for $4 million; the renovation was supervised by architect James Polshek. CBS' total cost for acquiring the show including renovations, negotiation rights paid to NBC, signing Letterman, announcer Bill Wendell, the writers and the band was over $140 million. A significant issue regarding Letterman's move to CBS was the ownership of long-running comedy bits used on Late Night, as well as the title of the CBS show itself. NBC claimed. Letterman and his attorneys countered that some segments pre-dated Late Night and had first aired on The David Letterman Show, owned by Letterman's production company rather than NBC, others, such as the Top Ten List, were common property and not owned by either Letterman or NBC.
A compromise was reached in key areas: the "Viewer Mail" segment would be called the "CBS Mailbag". NBC gave Letterman the choice of at least two options to name his new show, Late Show with David Letterman or Nightly with David Letterman. On this matter CBS executives stepped in, rejecting Nightly in part because of potential confusion with Nightline on ABC. Thus, Late Show with David Letterman became the official title. After Letterman was introduced on Late Show's first episode, NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw accompanied him on stage and wished him "reasonably well"; as part of a pre-arranged act, Brokaw proceeded to retrieve a pair of cue cards while stating that "These last two jokes are the intellectual property of NBC!" After he carried them off stage, Letterman responded, "Who would have thought you would hear the words'intellectual property' and'NBC' in the same sentence?" In his opening monologue, Letterman said "Legally, I can continue to call myself Dave" but joked that he woke up that morning and next to him in bed was the head of a peacock.
In ratings, Letterman's Late Show dominated Jay Leno's Tonight Show for its first two years. Leno pulled ahead on July 10, 1995, starting with a Hugh Grant interview, after Grant's much-publicized arrest for picking up a Los Angeles prostitute. Leno benefited from the lead-in provided by NBC's popular Must See TV prime time programs of the mid-to-late 1990s; the CBS network was hindered by a weak prime time lineup, along with several large- and major-market network affiliation switches in late 1994 relating to Fox's acquisition of CBS's National Football League rights, stunting the Late Show just as it was beginning to gain traction. Announcer Bill Wendell retired with Alan Kalter taking his place. At times Late Show came in third in its time slot, once prompting Letterman to arrange for a Manhattan billboard proudly declaring himself and his show to be No. 3 in Late Night, aping an older, nearby billboard which promoted Leno and The Tonight Show as No. 1. Letterman attempted to respond by making his show more political, aping the approach taken by The Daily Sho
Goodyear Blimp
The Goodyear Blimp is any one of a fleet of airships operated by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, used for advertising and capturing aerial views of live sporting events for television. The term blimp itself is defined as a non-rigid airship – without any internal structure, the pressure of lifting gas contained within the airship envelope maintains the vessel's shape. From the launch of the Pilgrim in 1925 to the retiring of the Spirit of Innovation in 2017, Goodyear owned and operated non-rigid airships in its global public relations fleet. In 2014, Goodyear began to replace its three U. S. non-rigid airships with three new semi-rigid airships. Although technically incorrect, Goodyear continues to use "blimp" in reference to these new semi-rigid models. Wingfoot One, the first such model in Goodyear's U. S. fleet, was christened on August 2014, near the company's world headquarters in Akron, Ohio. In May 2011, Goodyear announced it was replacing its fleet of non-rigid airships with three semi-rigid airships built by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin.
Goodyear's U. S. fleet consists of three semi-rigid airships: Wingfoot One, based in Pompano Beach, Florida Wingfoot Two, based in Carson, California Wingfoot Three, based in Suffield, OhioThe new airships are 246 feet long, 52 feet longer than Goodyear's old model, the GZ-20. The Zeppelin NT model is slimmer, has a top speed of 70 miles per hour, has a passenger gondola that seats 12; the gondola contains a restroom. Both craft are outfitted with LED sign technology Goodyear calls "Eaglevision." This allows the aircraft to display multi-colored, animated words and images. Goodyear has had blimps operating in other parts of the world; these airships were operated by The Lightship Group of Orlando, Florida. In 2012, The Lightship Group was acquired by Van Wagner Communications LLC, operated as the Van Wagner Airship Group until November 17, 2017, when it was purchased by Airsign Inc, they operate an airship for Goodyear in China. The blimps are filled with helium; the helium is maintained under low pressure, so small punctures do not pose serious consequences for the blimp.
One inspection element of the blimps is to look into the envelope for pinpoints of light which are indicative of small holes. The Goodyear blimps were non-rigid dirigibles. Inside their exterior envelope, the Goodyear blimps are fitted with air–filled ballonets; as the blimp ascends or descends, the internal ballonets expand or contract to compensate for density changes and to maintain uniform pressure in the envelope. The latest craft, a Zeppelin NT is a departure from this tradition, as it is a Semi-rigid airship that makes use of a structural truss inside the envelope to provide some of its structural strength. "GZ" stands for Goodyear-Zeppelin, stemming from the partnership Goodyear had with the German company when both were building airships together. However these models came many years after this partnership had dissolved during the start of World War II; the GZ-1 was the USS Akron, the U. S. Navy's fourth rigid airship used for several tests including as a flying "aircraft carrier". GZ-19: Introduced in 1963 and discontinued in 1978 after the Mayflower was destroyed by a tornado.
The design for this class resembles the U. S. Navy's L class blimp. GZ-20: This class was introduced in 1969, with America and Columbia being the first two; the Europa followed in 1972 and was based in Italy, the first Goodyear blimp operated outside of the United States. These blimps are longer than the GZ-19. Beginning in 2014, Goodyear began retiring the GZ-20 and replacing them with the Zeppelin NT. On February 23, 2014, Spirit of Goodyear was retired in Pompano Beach after the 2014 Daytona 500. On August 10, 2015, the California-based GZ-20, the Spirit of America, was decommissioned; the Spirit of Innovation, took over California operations in September 2015 until its retirement in March 2017 as the last remaining GZ-20. In fall of 2017, Wingfoot Two will be relocated to California. GZ-22: The only airship in this class was the Spirit of Akron. Built in 1987 to show the U. S. Department of Defense that airships were still militarily viable, it was the largest and most technically advanced ship Goodyear had in its public relations fleet, featuring fly-by-wire technology.
However, Spirit of Akron was lost in 1999 and the company has not built one since, most because of the large expense to build and operate one due to its size and advanced technology. LZ N07-101: In May 2011, Goodyear announced that it would be replacing its aging fleet of GZ-20 blimps with Zeppelin NT airships. Construction began in 2012 on the first of three new semi-rigid airships. Wingfoot Two, the name of Goodyear's second semi-rigid airship, was unveiled in April 2016; the third will take to the skies in the summer of 2018. C class blimp 1918–1919 D class blimp 1920–1924 F class blimp/Type FB 1918–1923 Goodyear Type AD 1925–1931 G class blimp 1935–19? H class blimp 1921–1923 J class blimp 1922–1940 K class blimp 1938–1959, WWII anti-submarine, post-war tests K-1 1938–1940, pre-war experimental L class blimp 1930s–1945, WWII M class blimp 1944–1956 N class blimp 1950s–1962 Goodyear ZWG 1950s According to the Goodyear website, the two active GZ-20 blimps are 192 feet long, 59.5 feet tall, 50 feet wide.
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Dan Auerbach
Daniel Quine Auerbach is an American musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, best known as the guitarist and vocalist for The Black Keys, a blues rock band from Akron, Ohio. As a member of the band, Auerbach has recorded and co-produced eight studio albums with his bandmate Patrick Carney. In 2009, Auerbach released a solo album entitled Keep It Hid, he released another solo album in 2017, entitled Waiting on a Song. In addition to winning several Grammy Awards as a member of the Black Keys, Auerbach received the 2013 Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for co-producing his band's 2011 album, El Camino, for producing records by Dr. John and Hacienda. In early 2015, Auerbach announced the Arcs; the group released their debut album, Dreamily, on September 4, 2015, via Nonesuch Records. Alongside with Action Bronson and Mark Ronson, Auerbach created the track "Standing In The Rain", featured in the 2016 movie Suicide Squad. In March 2017, Auerbach released the single "Shine on Me" for his second solo album Waiting on a Song, released in June 2017 on his new label Easy Eye Sound.
Auerbach was born in Ohio, is the son of Mary Little, a teacher of French, Charles Auerbach, an antique dealer. His father is of Polish Jewish descent and his mother is of part Manx descent, his maternal cousin, twice removed, was philosopher and logician Willard Van Orman Quine, his second cousin once removed was the late guitarist Robert Quine. Auerbach grew up in a family with musical roots. Auerbach became infatuated with blues after listening to his father's old vinyl records during his childhood, his first concert was Whitney Houston with his mother at the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, OH, his second concert was a Grateful Dead show with his father at the Richfield Coliseum in Cleveland. He was influenced early-on by his mother's side of the family, notably his uncles who played bluegrass music. Auerbach described himself as a normal teenager in high school who smoked marijuana and captained the soccer team at Firestone High School, he attended University of Akron. During college Auerbach was influenced by Junior Kimbrough resulting in his dropping out to pursue the guitar more seriously.
"I've listened to him so much, it's just how I hear it... I studied him so much... Getting F's in college, when I should've been studying, I was listening to Junior Kimbrough's music instead". Other major influences include: Robert Johnson, R. L. Burnside, Clarence White, Robert Nighthawk, T-Model Ford, Hound Dog Taylor, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Kokomo Arnold, Son House and RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. Auerbach is best known for his work with The Black Keys. Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney first met when they were eight or nine years old while living in the same neighborhood of Akron, Ohio. Carney is the nephew of saxophonist Ralph Carney. While attending Firestone High School and Auerbach became friends, though they were part of different crowds. Auerbach was captain of the high school soccer team. Encouraged by their brothers, the duo began jamming together in 1996, as Auerbach was learning guitar at the time and Carney owned a four-track recorder and a drum set. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the duo revealed that their big start came from a demo-recording session in Carney's basement.
Auerbach went to record a demo with his band at the time but no one showed up. He and Carney decided that they would just play instead. What came out of that session was sent out to several labels to try and secure a record deal. After signing with indie label Alive, they released their debut album, The Big Come Up in 2002, which earned them a new deal with jazz/rock label Fat Possum Records, their third album, Rubber Factory was released in 2004 and received critical acclaim, it boosted the band's profile leading to a record deal with major label Nonesuch Records in 2006. After self-producing and recording their first four records in makeshift studios, in 2008 the duo completed Attack & Release in a professional studio and hired producer Danger Mouse, a frequent collaborator with the band; the group's commercial breakthrough came in 2010 with Brothers, which along with its popular single "Tighten Up", won three Grammy Awards including Best Alternative Album of the Year. Their 2011 follow-up El Camino received strong reviews and reached number two on the Billboard 200 chart, leading to the first arena concert tour of the band's career, the El Camino Tour.
The album and its hit single. In 2014, they released their eighth album, Turn Blue, their first number-one record in the US, Australia; the Black Keys, back in 2011, were one of only a couple bands in Saturday Night Live's history to appear as the musical guest twice in one year. They played the January 8th episode as well as the December 3rd episode. After the touring for Turn Blue was concluded and Carney decided to take a break from The Black Keys. Both Auerbach and Carney have been on record talking about needing a break from the constant working process. Carney said "I love making music with Dan and I'm excited for when we do that next, we will do it, but both of us have PTSD from being on the road constantly". Auerbach added "You can't just keep doing it, because it'll suck your brain dry". Auerbach was a member of a band called The Barnburners before forming The Black Keys in 2001; the Barnburners included Jason Edwards and Kip Amore. The Barnburners were a blues-based band that performed in Northeast Ohio clubs and released a 6-track album called The Rawboogie EP.
The album includes the Junior Kimbrough song
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is an American daily newspaper whose primary market is Boston and its surrounding area. It is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States, it has been awarded eight Pulitzer Prizes in its history, including four for editorial writing and three for photography before it was converted to tabloid format in 1981. The Herald was named one of the "10 Newspapers That ` Do It Right"' in 2012 by Publisher. In December 2017, the Herald filed for bankruptcy. On February 14, 2018, Digital First Media bid $11.9 million to purchase the company in a bankruptcy auction. As of August 2018, the paper employs 110 total employees now, compared to about 225 before the sale; the Herald's history can be traced back through two lineages, the Daily Advertiser and the old Boston Herald, two media moguls, William Randolph Hearst and Rupert Murdoch. The original Boston Herald was founded in 1846 by a group of Boston printers jointly under the name of John A. French & Company; the paper was published as a single two-sided sheet.
Its first editor, William O. Eaton, just 22 years old, said "The Herald will be independent in politics and religion. In 1847, the Boston Herald absorbed the Boston Daily Times. In October 1917, John H. Higgins, the publisher and treasurer of the Boston Herald bought out its next door neighbor The Boston Journal and created The Boston Herald and Boston Journal Even earlier than the Herald, the weekly American Traveler was founded in 1825 as a bulletin for stagecoach listings; the Boston Evening Traveler was founded in 1845. The Boston Evening Traveler was the successor to the weekly American Traveler and the semi-weekly Boston Traveler. In 1912, the Herald acquired the Traveler. For many years, the newspaper was controlled by many of the investors in United Shoe Machinery Co. After a newspaper strike in 1967, Herald-Traveler Corp. suspended the afternoon Traveler and absorbed the evening edition into the Herald to create the Boston Herald Traveler. The Boston Daily Advertiser was established in 1813 in Boston by Nathan Hale.
The paper grew to prominence throughout the 19th century. In 1832 The Advertiser took over control of The Boston Patriot, in 1840 it took over and absorbed The Boston Gazette; the paper was purchased by William Randolph Hearst in 1917. In 1920 the Advertiser was merged with The Boston Record the combined newspaper was called the Boston Advertiser however when the combined newspaper became an illustrated tabloid in 1921 it was renamed The Boston American. Hearst Corp. continued using the name Advertiser for its Sunday paper until the early 1970s. On September 3, 1884, The Boston Evening Record was started by the Boston Advertiser as a campaign newspaper; the Record was so popular. In 1904, William Randolph Hearst began publishing his own newspaper in Boston called The American. Hearst ended up purchasing the Daily Advertiser in 1917. By 1938, the Daily Advertiser had changed to the Daily Record, The American had become the Sunday Advertiser. A third paper owned by Hearst, called the Afternoon Record, renamed the Evening American, merged in 1961 with the Daily Record to form the Record American.
The Sunday Advertiser and Record American would be merged in 1972 into The Boston Herald Traveler a line of newspapers that stretched back to the old Boston Herald. In 1946, Herald-Traveler Corporation acquired Boston radio station WHDH. Two years WHDH-FM was licensed, on November 26, 1957, WHDH-TV made its début as an ABC affiliate on channel 5. In 1961, WHDH-TV's affiliation switched to CBS. Herald-Traveler Corp. operated for years beginning some time after under temporary authority from the Federal Communications Commission stemming from controversy over luncheon meetings the newspaper's chief executive purportedly had with John C. Doerfer, chairman of the FCC between 1957 and 1960, who served as a commissioner during the original licensing process; the FCC ordered comparative hearings, in 1969 a competing applicant, Boston Broadcasters, Inc. was granted a construction permit to replace WHDH-TV on channel 5. Herald-Traveler Corp. fought the decision in court—by this time, revenues from channel 5 were all but keeping the newspaper afloat—but its final appeal ran out in 1972, on March 19 WHDH-TV was forced to surrender channel 5 to the new WCVB-TV.
Without a television station to subsidize the newspaper, the Herald Traveler was no longer able to remain in business, the newspaper was sold to Hearst Corporation, which published the rival all-day newspaper, the Record American. The two papers were merged to become an all-day paper called the Boston Herald Traveler and Record American in the morning and Record-American and Boston Herald Traveler in the afternoon; the first editions published under the new combined name were those of June 19, 1972. The afternoon edition was soon dropped and the unwieldy name shortened to Boston Herald American, with the Sunday edition called the Sunday Herald Advertiser; the Herald American was printed in broadsheet format, failed to tar
Lonely Boy (The Black Keys song)
"Lonely Boy" is a song by American rock band The Black Keys. It is the opening track from their 2011 studio album El Camino and was released as the record's lead single on October 26, 2011; the song is the A-side of a promotional 12-inch single, released in commemoration of Record Store Day's "Back to Black" Friday event. The single was accompanied by a popular one-shot music video of a man dancing and lip-synching the lyrics. "Lonely Boy" became one of the group's most successful singles. It topped several rock radio charts, including the Alternative Songs and Rock Songs charts in the US, the Alternative Rock and Active Rock charts in Canada. On the singles charts, "Lonely Boy" was the group's highest-charting song in several countries, peaking at number 64 on the Billboard Hot 100, number two on the Australian Singles Chart, number 33 on the Canadian Hot 100. At the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, the song won awards for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song, while receiving a nomination for Record of the Year.
"Lonely Boy" is 3:13 in length. The song was written by Patrick Carney with producer Danger Mouse; the song is played with only three chords used throughout the song. "Lonely Boy" is set in the time signature of common time with a tempo of 171 beats per minute. According to Auerbach, the guitar riff was inspired by Johnny Burnette's cover of "Train Kept A-Rollin'"; the guitar line features a dive bomb although Auerbach uses a Boss Super Shifter pedal to achieve the effect. The promotional music video for "Lonely Boy" features actor and part-time security guard Derrick T. Tuggle dancing and lip-syncing to the song in front of the Pepper Tree Motel in North Hollywood, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California; the video, shot in a single take, went viral and garnered more than 400,000 views on YouTube within 24 hours. The video had a script and a cast of more than 40 people, but the group was not pleased with the results. Auerbach said, "it was awful. We sent it back... they sent us another edit and it was terrible.
That's when we said'what about that one guy, the extra who had that one dance scene' and that's the video – the most expensive single shot recorded." Tuggle was cast as an extra who would be handed a set of keys to the band's motel room by Auerbach and Carney. While on set, Tuggle's improvised dancing drew the attention of director Jesse Dylan, he said, "The director just sort of noticed me dancing and asked me,'Can you perform?' I said,'I can dance, anybody can dance,' so I took some moves from everybody: John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction, the Carlton Banks dance from The Fresh Prince and a little bit of Michael Jackson, so it was a smorgasbord of everybody in there." He added, "It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. My acting teacher Mark McPherson, he has us do this thing before we start class called'Song and Dance,' where he'll have us sing one of our favorite songs, while we're singing it, he'll have us do a crazy dance, or a sexy dance, I guess it spawned from that."
The video was nominated for a 2012 MTV Video Music Award for Best Rock Video. Tuggle's performance earned him a cameo appearance in the music video for "Happy" by Pharrell Williams; the cover of the single release features an image of a bulldozer sitting on an empty tract of land. The lot was filled by the factory at which the group's 2004 album Rubber Factory was recorded. Michael Carney, the group's art director, went to take a photo of the factory but found that it had been demolished. Auerbach joked about the cover's significance: "We keep stumbling into these profound artistic expressions. That's how we roll though." "Lonely Boy" became one of the group's most successful singles. It topped several rock radio charts, including the Alternative Songs and Rock Songs charts in the US, the Alternative Rock and Active Rock charts in Canada. On the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, it has become their highest-charting song, peaking at number five. On the singles charts, it became the band's highest charting song in several countries, reaching a peak of number 64 on the US Billboard Hot 100, number two on the Australian Singles Chart, number 33 on the Canadian Hot 100.
The song was certified nine-times platinum in Canada, triple-platinum in Australia, platinum in New Zealand, gold in Denmark. In a review of the single, Rolling Stone gave the song four out of five stars, saying that "Frustrated desire is the song's ostensible theme... but for Keys fans, this is a clean hit of instant gratification." Its review of El Camino praised the song's arrangement the "sugar-crusted keyboard" that, along with the chorus, "chang the swampy chug into a seductive singalong". James Lachno of The Daily Telegraph said the song "blends Steppenwolf's road-tripping aesthetic with the proto-punk of the Modern Lovers" and was an example of how a "broader collage of influences allows the duo to fashion a more distinctive sound". Pitchfork Media reviewer Rob Harvilla called it a "surging opener" and highlighted the "machine-gun surge of Dan Auerbach's gong-banging guitar". Kitty Empire of The Observer wrote, "It's hard to resist the taut and catchy single". Readers of Rolling Stone voted "Lonely Boy" the third-best song of 2011 in an end-of-year poll.
Paste ranked it number 20 on its list of "The 50 Best Songs of 2011". The song placed second on the Triple J Hottest 100, 2011 poll of the most popular songs in Australia. According to AirCheck, "Lonely Boy" was the most-played song on Australian radio in 2012, logging more than 884 hours of playtime. At the 55th Annual Grammy A
Live Free or Die (2006 film)
Live Free or Die is a 2006 American comedy film starring Aaron Stanford, Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, Michael Rapaport, Judah Friedlander, Kevin Dunn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach. It was directed by former Seinfeld writers Gregg Kavet and Andy Robin. A clueless, aspiring criminal named John "Rugged" Rudgate spends his days forging rebate coupons and selling speakers out the back of his van. One day, Rugged runs into an old acquaintance, the dim-witted Jeff Lagrand, who returned home to help his cynical sister run the storage facility that they inherited from their father; when Rugged tries to force his way into the Lagrand family business, things go wrong—and the situation gets more complicated when an unstable cop begins investigating. The film-review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 40% approval rating. Film critic Frank Lovece of Film Journal International praised Aaron Stanford as "the young Steve Buscemi" and wrote that despite the film's "lack of visual click, Live Free or Die manages to be poignant without being maudlin" and that "none of the movie's flaws negate its many remarkable little performances and casually insightful script.'
Live Free or Die Live Free or Die on IMDb
NME
New Musical Express is a British music journalism website and former magazine, published since 1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the edition of 14 November 1952. In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. During the period 1972 to 1976, it was associated with gonzo journalism became associated with punk rock through the writings of Julie Burchill, Paul Morley and Tony Parsons, it started as a music newspaper, moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s and 1990s, changing from newsprint in 1998. An online version, NME.com, was launched in 1996. It became the world's biggest standalone music site, with over sixteen million users per month. With newsstand sales falling across the UK magazine sector, the magazine's paid circulation in the first half of 2014 was 15,830. In 2013, the list of NME's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and the way it was conceived was criticized by the media; the printed magazine NME was relaunched in September 2015 to be distributed nationally as a free publication.
The first average circulation published in February 2016 of 307,217 copies per week was the highest in the brand's history, beating the previous best of 306,881, recorded in 1964 at the height of the Beatles' fame. By December 2017, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, average distribution of NME had fallen to 289,432 copies a week, although its publisher Time Inc. UK claimed to have more than 13m global unique users per month, including 3m in the UK. In March 2018, the publisher announced that the print edition of NME would cease publication after 66 years, leaving it as an online-only title. NME's headquarters are in Southwark, England; the brand's current editor is Charlotte Gunn, replacing Mike Williams, who stepped down in February 2018. The paper was established in 1952; the Accordion Times and Musical Express was bought by London music promoter Maurice Kinn, for the sum of £1,000, just 15 minutes before it was due to be closed. It was relaunched as the New Musical Express, was published in a non-glossy tabloid format on standard newsprint.
On 14 November 1952, taking its cue from the US magazine Billboard, it created the first UK Singles Chart, a list of the Top Twelve best-selling singles. The first of these was, in contrast to more recent charts, a top twelve sourced by the magazine itself from sales in regional stores around the UK; the first number one was "Here in My Heart" by Al Martino. During the 1960s the paper championed the new British groups emerging at the time; the NME circulation peaked under Andy Gray with a figure of 306,881 for the period from January to June 1964. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were featured on the front cover; these and other artists appeared at the NME Poll Winners' Concert, an awards event that featured artists voted as most popular by the paper's readers. The concert featured a ceremony where the poll winners would collect their awards; the NME Poll Winners' Concerts took place between 1959 and 1972. From 1964 onwards they were filmed and transmitted on British television a few weeks after they had taken place.
In the mid-1960s, the NME was dedicated to pop while its older rival, Melody Maker, was known for its more serious coverage of music. Other competing titles included Record Mirror, which led the way in championing American rhythm and blues, Disc, which focused on chart news; the latter part of the decade saw the paper chart the rise of psychedelia and the continued dominance of British groups of the time. During this period some sections of pop music began to be designated as rock; the paper became engaged in a sometimes tense rivalry with Melody Maker. By the early 1970s, NME had lost ground to Melody Maker, as its coverage of music had failed to keep place with the development of rock music during the early years of psychedelia and progressive rock. In early 1972 the paper found itself on the verge of closure by its owner IPC. According to Nick Kent: After sales had plummeted to 60,000 and a review of guitar instrumentalist Duane Eddy had been printed which began with the immortal words "On this, his 35th album, we find Duane in as good as voice as ever," the NME had been told to rethink its policies or die on the vine.
Alan Smith was made editor in 1972, was told by IPC to turn things around or face closure. To achieve this and his assistant editor Nick Logan raided the underground press for writers such as Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent, recruited other writers such as Tony Tyler, Ian MacDonald and Californian Danny Holloway. According to The Economist, the New Musical Express "started to champion underground, up-and-coming music.... NME became the gateway to a more rebellious world. First came glamrock, bands such as T. Rex, came punk....by 1977 it had become the place to keep in touch with a cultural revolution, enthralling the nation's listless youth. Bands such as Sex Pistols, X-Ray Spex and Generation X were regular cover stars, eulogised by writers such as Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, whose nihilistic tone narrated the punk years perfectly." By the time Smith handed the editor's chair to Logan in mid-1973, the paper was selling nearly 300,000 copies per week and was outstripping Melody Maker, Record Mirror and Sounds.
According to MacDonald: I think all the other papers knew by 1974 that NME had become the best music paper in Britain. We had most of the best writers and photographers, the best layouts
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