WarnerMedia
Warner Media, LLC, doing business as WarnerMedia, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by AT&T and headquartered in New York City. It was formed in 1990 as Time Warner Inc. from the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications. The company has film, television and publishing operations, consists of the assets of the former Warner Communications, HBO, Turner Broadcasting System, its assets include Warner Bros. WarnerMedia Entertainment and WarnerMedia News & Sports, as well as a 10% ownership stake in Hulu. On October 22, 2016, AT&T announced an offer to acquire Time Warner for $108.7 billion. The proposed merger was confirmed on June 12, 2018, after AT&T won an antitrust lawsuit that the U. S. Justice Department filed in 2017 to attempt to block the acquisition; the merger closed two days with the company becoming a subsidiary of AT&T. Despite spinning off Time Inc. in 2014, the company retained the Time Warner name until AT&T's acquisition in 2018. The company's previous assets included Time Inc.
AOL, Time Warner Cable, Warner Books, Warner Music Group. The company ranked No. 98 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. Time magazine, the first weekly news magazine in the United States, debuted in 1923. Four years in 1927, Warner Bros. released the world's first feature-length talking picture, The Jazz Singer. In 1963, recommendations from Time Inc. based on how it delivered magazines led to the introduction of ZIP codes by the United States Post Office. In 1972, Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets due to a financial scandal over its parking operations, renamed itself Warner Communications Inc, it was the holding company for Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Music Group during the 1970s and 1980s, it owned DC Comics and Mad, as well as a majority stake in Garden State National Bank. Warner's initial divestiture efforts led by Garden State CEO Charles A. Agemian were blocked by Garden State board member William A. Conway in 1978.
In 1975, Home Box Office became the first TV network to broadcast nationally via satellite, debuting with the "Thrilla in Manila" boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. In 1975, Warner expanded under the guidance of CEO Steve Ross, formed a joint venture with American Express, named Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, which held cable channels including MTV, The Movie Channel. Warner Bros. bought out American Express's half in 1984, sold the venture a year to Viacom, which renamed it MTV Networks. In 1976, the Turner–owned WTCG originated the "superstation" concept, transmitting via satellite to cable systems nationwide and pioneering the basic cable business model. WTCG was renamed WTBS in 1979. In 1976, Nolan Bushnell sold Inc. to Warner Communications for an estimated $2 -- 12 million. Warner made considerable profits with Atari, which it owned from 1976 to 1984. While part of Warner, Atari achieved its greatest success, selling millions of Atari 2600s and computers. At its peak, Atari accounted for a third of Warner's annual income, was the fastest-growing company in the history of the United States at the time.
In 1980, Warner purchased The Franklin Mint for about $225 million. The combination was short lived: Warner sold The Franklin Mint in 1985 to American Protection Industries Inc. for $167.5 million. However, Warner retained Franklin Mint's Eastern Mountain Sports as well as The Franklin Mint Center, which it leased back to API. In 1980, Turner launched CNN, the first 24-hour all-news network, redefining the way the world received breaking news. In January 1983, Warner expanded their interests to baseball. Under the direction of Caesar P. Kimmel, executive vice-president, bought 48 percent of the Pittsburgh Pirates for $10 million; the company put up its share for sale in November 1984 following losses of $6 million due to its failed attempt to launch a cable sports package. The team's majority owner, John W. Galbreath, soon followed suit after learning of Warner's actions. Both Galbreath and Warner sold the Pirates to local investors in March 1986. In 1984, due to major losses spurred by subsidiary Atari Inc.'s losses, Warner sold Atari Inc.'s Consumer Division assets to Jack Tramiel.
It kept the rest of the company and named it Atari Games reducing it to just the Coin Division. They sold Atari Games to Namco in 1985, repurchased it in 1992, renaming it Time Warner Interactive, until it was sold to Midway Games in 1996. In a long-expected deal, Warner Communications acquired Lorimar-Telepictures. Plans to merge Time Inc. and Warner Communications were made public on March 4, 1989. During the summer of that same year, Paramount Communications launched a $12.2 billion hostile bid to acquire Time, Inc. in an attempt to end a stock-swap merge
O'Grady
O'Grady is an American animated television show created by Tom Snyder and Carl Adams and developed for TV by co-star Holly Schlesinger. The series was produced by Soup2Nuts, who produced Dr Katz, Professional Therapist for Comedy Central, Home Movies for Adult Swim It stars Melissa Bardin Galsky and H. Jon Benjamin, among other Soup2nuts Productions alumni, as high school students Abby, Beth and Kevin, chronicles their lives along with those of other residents of O'Grady, a fictional town, periodically plagued by "The Weirdness." The Weirdness affects its residents in strange ways such as projecting their private thoughts in bubbles over their heads, or producing clones of themselves every time they get angry. Abby Wilde is a vain average teenager. Kevin and she have feelings between them, her main love interest is Pete Klesko. Kevin Harnisch is a slacker teenager, who never wants to do hard work, has a tendency to find a way to use the weirdness for his own gain in various ways, he is in a band with Harold and Iris.
He has a crush on Abby, although he would never admit it. Beth Briggs is a blue-haired environmentalist vegetarian, the classic concerned hippie with big ideas, she has good intentions as she is the opposite of Kevin, but she is very naive. She's Abby's best friend. Harold Oscar Jenkins works at Eets-A-Pizza, is Kevin's best friend, he can be a little nerdy and is uncomfortable with Kevin's various schemes. Iris is a devoted fan of techno music, she speaks with an accent, is one of the show's breakout characters, her humorous statements make her popular with fans. She is quoted, she is very obsessive with chocolate and enjoys licking spoons. Pete Klesko is the most popular guy in school, he plays on the lacrosse team, Abby has had a crush on him for a long time, despite him not being able to remember her name. He has a dull personality but is still nice. Phillip Demorio is one of their classmates, is smart, a total mama's boy, he is wealthy, speaks aristocratically, is always wearing a tie. Donald Alan Lipschitz is a monotone-speaking substitute teacher.
He says "Oh Lord" whenever something bad happens. He seems to suffer a reverse effect to every weirdness, he has to teach classes whenever the staff become victims to The Weirdness and is teaching every class the main characters attend. Dr. Myers is the school principal. He's shown as not intelligent and has braces, he and Mr. Lipschitz have a somewhat unnatural friendship, with both being a little annoyed of the other. Tom Kenny Sirena Irwin Todd Barry Rachel Dratch Jon Glaser Conan O'Brien Amy Poehler Alonzo Bodden David Cross Dannah Feinglass Phirman Mark Rivers Rob Corddry Dina Pearlman Paula Plum Sam Seder Matt Walsh It used to air on The N in the US, MTV in Latin America, Nickelodeon in the United Kingdom, Family Channel in Canada and on 2x2 in Russia. Although O'Grady has never been released on DVD, some episodes are available for purchase through iTunes, as well as Amazon Video. In 2013, TeenNick aired reruns of the show, in 2014, Nick released "Best of O'Grady" in iTunes; the intro has the word O'grady going through some type of change which explains the Weirdness for the episode Many episodes have a penguin in them somewhere.
One is on a sign during the opening, one was at the top of the food pyramid in "Sugar Hill", Another one in "Sugar Hill" appeared on Kevin's suit, One was on the hood of the car in "Old Cold", one was in the opening of "A Stronger O'Grady" and with the O'Grady opening title in "The Fly", One was on the newspaper in "Sign Language", one can be seen on a Flea Market table in "Bubbleheads", Another is seen in Abby's Bathroom in "Vacation",Also a penguin could be seen on someone's shirt in "Party Gong" and was expressed verbally in the episode "Frenched" when Chip said "Like a penguin's nuts." O'Grady on IMDb O'Grady at TV.com
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio, founded in 1957 by Tom and Jerry creators and former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, in partnership with film director George Sidney. The studio was a prominent force and a leader in American television animation for over three decades in the mid-20th century as it created a wide variety of popular animated characters and produced a succession of cartoon series, including The Flintstones, The Yogi Bear Show, The Jetsons, Wacky Races, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Smurfs. Hanna and Barbera's cartoons won them seven Academy Awards, eight Emmy Awards, a Governors Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. With their studio now established as a successful company, the two men and original investor Sidney sold it to Taft Broadcasting on December 29, 1966. Taft would run it for the next quarter-century. By the mid-1980s, when the profitability of Saturday-morning cartoons was eclipsed by weekday afternoon syndication, Hanna-Barbera's fortunes had declined.
Turner Broadcasting System purchased the studio from Taft in late 1991 and used much of its back catalog as programming for its new channel, Cartoon Network. After Turner purchased the company and Barbera continued to serve as creative consultants and mentors; the studio became a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Animation in 1996 following Turner Broadcasting's merger with Time Warner, was absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation in 2001; as of 2019, Warner Bros. now distributes subsequent Hanna-Barbera cartoons, as well as now owning the rights to its back catalogue. William Hanna, a native of Melrose, New Mexico and Joseph Barbera, born of Italian heritage in New York City, first met at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio in 1939, while working at its animation division and thus began a partnership that would last for six decades, their first cartoon together, the Oscar-nominated Puss Gets the Boot, featuring a cat named Jasper and an unnamed mouse, was released to theaters in 1940 and served as the pilot for the long-running short subject theatrical series Tom and Jerry.
Hanna and Barbera served as directors of the shorts for over 20 years, with Hanna supervising the animation and Barbera in charge of the stories and pre-production. Hanna did the screams, yelps and yells of Tom. In addition being nominated for twelve Oscars, seven of the cartoons won seven Academy Awards for Best Short Subject between 1943 and 1953, awarded to producer Fred Quimby, not involved in the creative development of the shorts; the pair served as animation directors for the hybrid animated/live-action musical sequences in MGM's feature films Anchors Aweigh, Dangerous When Wet and Invitation to the Dance and wrote and directed a handful of one-shot cartoons for MGM: Gallopin' Gals, Officer Pooch, War Dogs and Good Will to Men, a 1955 remake of the 1939 MGM cartoon Peace on Earth. With Quimby's retirement in 1955, Hanna and Barbera became the producers in charge of the MGM animation studio's output, supervising the last seven shorts of Tex Avery's Droopy series and directing and producing a short-lived Tom and Jerry spin-off series and Tyke, which ran for two entries.
In addition to their work on the cartoons, the two men moonlighted on outside projects, including the original title sequences and commercials for the CBS sitcom I Love Lucy. With the rise of television, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer decided in early 1957 to close its cartoon studio, as it felt it had acquired a reasonable backlog of shorts for re-release. While contemplating their future and Barbera began producing animated television commercials and during their last year at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, they had developed a concept for a new animated TV program about a dog and cat duo in various misadventures. After they failed to convince the studio to back their venture, live-action director George Sidney, who had worked with Hanna and Barbera on several of his theatrical features for MGM, offered to serve as their business partner and convinced Screen Gems, a television production subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, to make a deal with the producers. A coin toss would determine. Harry Cohn and head of Columbia Pictures, took an 18% ownership in Hanna and Barbera's new company, H-B Enterprises, provided working capital.
Screen Gems became the new studio's distributor and its licensing agent, handling merchandizing of the characters from the animated programs. The duo's cartoon firm opened for business in rented offices on the lot of Kling Studios on July 7, 1957, two months after the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studio closed down. Sidney and several Screen Gems alumni became members of the studio's board of directors and much of the former MGM animation staff — including animators Carlo Vinci, Kenneth Muse, Lewis Marshall, Michael Lah and Ed Barge and layout artists Ed Benedict and Richard Bickenbach — became the new production staff for the H-B studio. Conductor and composer Hoyt Curtin was in charge of providing the music while many voice actors came on board, such as Daws Butler, Don Messick, Julie Bennett, Mel Blanc, Howard Morris, John Stephenson, Hal Smith and Doug Young. H-B Enterprises was the first major animation studio to produce cartoons for television. Animated programming was rebroadcasts of theatrical cartoons.
Its first animated TV original The Ruff and Reddy Show, premiered on NBC in December 1957. The
Voice acting
Voice acting is the art of performing voice-overs or providing voices to represent a character or to provide information to an audience or user. Examples include animated, off-stage, off-screen or non-visible characters in various works, including feature films, dubbed foreign language films, animated short films, television programs, radio or audio dramas, video games, puppet shows, amusement rides and documentaries. Voice acting is done for small handheld audio games. Performers are called voice artists or voice talent, their roles may involve singing, although a second voice actor is sometimes cast as the character's singing voice. Voice acting is recognised in Britain as a specialized dramatic profession, chiefly owing to the BBC's long tradition of radio drama. Voice artists are used to record the individual sample fragments played back by a computer in an automated announcement; the voices for animated characters are provided by voice actors. For live action productions, voice acting involves reading the parts of computer programs, radio dispatchers, or other characters who never appear on screen.
With a radio drama or Compact Disc drama, there is more freedom in voice acting, because there is no need to match a dub to the original actors, or to match an animated character. Producers and agencies are on the look out for many styles of voices such as booming voices, which may be perfect for more dramatic productions or cute, young sounding voices that are perfect for trendier markets; some just sound like regular, everyday people and all of these voices have their place in the Voiceover world, provided they are used and in the right context. In the context of voice acting, narration is the use of spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. A narrator is a personal character or a non-personal voice that the creator of the story develops to deliver information to the audience about the plot; the voice actor who plays the narrator is responsible for performing the scripted lines assigned to the narrator. In traditional literary narratives, narration is a required story element. One of the most common uses for voice acting is within commercial advertising.
The voice actor is hired to voice a message associated with the advertisement. This has different subgenres; the subgenres are all different styles in their own right. For example, television commercials tend to be voiced with a narrow, flat inflection pattern, whereas radio commercials tend to be voiced with a wide inflection pattern in an over-the-top style. Markerters and advertisers use voiceover all over their projects, from radio, to TV, to online and more! Total advertising spend in the UK is forecast to be £21.8 billion in 2017. Voiceover used in commercial adverts is the only area of voice acting where de-breathing is used. De-breathing means artificially removing breaths from the recorded voice; this is done to stop the audience being distracted in any way from the commercial message, being put across. Dub localization is a type of voice-over, it is the practice of voice-over translation altering a foreign language film, art film or television series by voice actors. Voice-over translation is an audiovisual translation technique, in which, unlike in Dub localization, actor voices are recorded over the original audio track, which can be heard in the background.
This method of translation is most used in documentaries and news reports to translate words of foreign-language interviewees. Automated dialogue replacement is the process of re-recording dialogue by the original actor after the filming process to improve audio quality or reflect dialogue changes. ADR is used to change original lines recorded on set to clarify context, improve diction or timing, or to replace an accented vocal performance. In the UK, it is called "post-synchronization" or "post-sync". Voice artists are used to record the individual sample fragments played back by a computer in an automated announcement. At its simplest, each recording consists of a short phrase, played back when necessary, e.g. the "Mind the gap" announcement introduced by London Underground in 1969. In a more complicated system, such as a speaking clock, the announcement is re-assembled from fragments such as "minutes past" "eighteen" and "p.m." For example, the word "twelve" can be used for both "Twelve O'Clock" and "Six Twelve."
Automated announcements can include on-hold messages on phone systems and location-specific announcements in tourist attractions. Seiyū occupations include performing roles in anime, audio dramas and video games, performing voice-overs for dubs of non-Japanese movies, providing narration to documentaries and similar programs; because the animation industry in Japan is so prolific, voice actors in Japan are able to have full-time careers as voice-over artists. Japanese voice actors are able to take greater charge of their careers than voice actors in other countries. Japan has 130 voice acting schools and troupes of voice actors, who work for a specific broadcast company or talent agency, they attract their own appreciators and fans, who watch shows to hear their favorite actor or actress. Many Japanese voice actors branch into music singing the opening or closing themes of shows in which their character stars, or become involved in non-animated side projects such as audio dram
Animation
Animation is a method in which pictures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most animations are made with computer-generated imagery. Computer animation can be detailed 3D animation, while 2D computer animation can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth or faster real-time renderings. Other common animation methods apply a stop motion technique to two and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts, puppets or clay figures; the effect of animation is achieved by a rapid succession of sequential images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon and beta movement, but the exact causes are still uncertain. Analog mechanical animation media that rely on the rapid display of sequential images include the phénakisticope, flip book and film. Television and video are popular electronic animation media that were analog and now operate digitally.
For display on the computer, techniques like animated GIF and Flash animation were developed. Animation is more pervasive. Apart from short films, feature films, animated gifs and other media dedicated to the display of moving images, animation is heavily used for video games, motion graphics and special effects. Animation is prevalent in information technology interfaces; the physical movement of image parts through simple mechanics – in for instance the moving images in magic lantern shows – can be considered animation. The mechanical manipulation of puppets and objects to emulate living beings has a long history in automata. Automata were popularised by Disney as animatronics. Animators are artists; the word "animation" stems from the Latin "animationem", noun of action from past participle stem of "animare", meaning "the action of imparting life". The primary meaning of the English word is "liveliness" and has been in use much longer than the meaning of "moving image medium"; the history of animation started long before the development of cinematography.
Humans have attempted to depict motion as far back as the paleolithic period. Shadow play and the magic lantern offered popular shows with moving images as the result of manipulation by hand and/or some minor mechanics. A 5,200-year old pottery bowl discovered in Shahr-e Sukhteh, has five sequential images painted around it that seem to show phases of a goat leaping up to nip at a tree. In 1833, the phenakistiscope introduced the stroboscopic principle of modern animation, which would provide the basis for the zoetrope, the flip book, the praxinoscope and cinematography. Charles-Émile Reynaud further developed his projection praxinoscope into the Théâtre Optique with transparent hand-painted colorful pictures in a long perforated strip wound between two spools, patented in December 1888. From 28 October 1892 to March 1900 Reynaud gave over 12,800 shows to a total of over 500.000 visitors at the Musée Grévin in Paris. His Pantomimes Lumineuses series of animated films each contained 300 to 700 frames that were manipulated back and forth to last 10 to 15 minutes per film.
Piano music and some dialogue were performed live, while some sound effects were synchronized with an electromagnet. When film became a common medium some manufacturers of optical toys adapted small magic lanterns into toy film projectors for short loops of film. By 1902, they were producing many chromolithography film loops by tracing live-action film footage; some early filmmakers, including J. Stuart Blackton, Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, Segundo de Chomón and Edwin S. Porter experimented with stop-motion animation since around 1899. Blackton's The Haunted Hotel was the first huge success that baffled audiences with objects moving by themselves and inspired other filmmakers to try the technique for themselves. J. Stuart Blackton experimented with animation drawn on blackboards and some cutout animation in Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. In 1908, Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie was released with a white-on-black chalkline look created with negative prints from black ink drawings on white paper; the film consists of a stick figure moving about and encountering all kinds of morphing objects, including a wine bottle that transforms into a flower.
Inspired by Émile Cohl's stop-motion film Les allumettes animées, Ladislas Starevich started making his influential puppet animations in 1910. Winsor McCay's Little Nemo showcased detailed drawings, his Gertie the Dinosaur was an early example of character development in drawn animation. During the 1910s, the production of animated short films referred to as "cartoons", became an industry of its own and cartoon shorts were produced for showing in movie theaters; the most successful producer at the time was John Randolph Bray, along with animator Earl Hurd, patented the cel animation process that dominated the animation industry for the rest of the decade. El Apóstol was a 1917 Argentine animated film utilizing cutout animation, the world's first animated feature film. A fire that destroyed producer Federico Valle's film studio incinerated the only known copy of El Apóstol, it is now considered a lost film. In 1919, the silent animated short Feline Follies was released, marking the debut of Felix the Cat, being the first animated character in the silent film era to win a high level of popularity.
The earliest extant feature-length animated film is The Adve
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist is an American animated series that ran on Comedy Central from May 28, 1995, to February 13, 2002; the series starred the voice talents of Jonathan Katz, Jon Benjamin, Laura Silverman. The show was created by Burbank, California production company Popular Arts Entertainment, with Jonathan Katz and Tom Snyder and first made by Popular Arts for HBO Downtown Productions. Boston-based Tom Snyder Productions became the hands-on production company, the episodes were produced by Katz and Loren Bouchard, it won a Peabody Award in 1998. The show was computer-animated in a crude recognizable style produced with the software Squigglevision in which all persons and animate objects are colored and have squiggling outlines, while most other inanimate objects are static and gray in color; the original challenge Popular Arts faced was. To do so, they based Dr. Katz's patients on stand-up comics for the first several episodes having them recite their stand-up acts; the secondary challenge was.
Snyder had Squigglevision, an inexpensive means of getting animation on cable, which could not afford traditional animation processes. A partnership between Popular Arts, Tom Snyder Productions and Jonathan Katz was formed, thus, Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist was born; the first episode of Dr. Katz aired on May 28, 1995. A total of 81 episodes were produced, with the sixth and final season beginning on June 15, 1999. Only the first six of the final season episodes were aired on Comedy Central though they did air in international markets. After a five-month delay, another nine episodes ran during a Christmas Eve marathon; the final three episodes were broadcast for the first time in the United States on February 13, 2002, during an event dubbed "Dr. Katz goes to the Final Three." A comic strip of the same name was produced by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate from March 1997 to January 2000. One book collection was published. Writers included Bill Braudis and Dave Blazek, with artwork by Dick Truxaw.
In 2007, Comedy Central presented An Evening with Dr. Katz: Live from the Comedy Central Stage, a live-action special taped in front of a live audience at the Hudson Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, featuring Jonathan Katz reprising his role as Dr. Katz. Comedians Maria Bamford, Kathy Griffin, Andy Kindler and Paul F. Tompkins appeared in person as celebrity "clients"; this special was included in the "Complete Series" DVD compilation. In January 2008, live performances were presented over two nights as part of SF Sketchfest in San Francisco, California. On the first night, Jonathan Katz' guest list included Brian Posehn and Bob Odenkirk; the surprise guest that evening was Robin Williams. At the end of the "session" Katz revealed. On the second night, the clients were Jon Benjamin, reprising his role as Katz' son, Andy Kindler and Eugene Mirman. Show co-creator, Tom Snyder appeared as Dr. Snydor. B. J. Novak was not on the announced list; the show returned to SF Sketchfest in January 2015.
This performance, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the program, featured Katz with Jon Benjamin and Tom Snyder again portraying his son and therapist, respectively. The patients for this production were Pete Holmes, Morgan Murphy and Emo Philips. In 2015, live performances took place at the Moontower Comedy & Oddity Festival in Austin, Texas on April 23 and 24. Staged therapy sessions included Andy Kindler, Emo Philips, Maria Bamford, Dom Irrera, Dana Gould, Eddie Pepitone; the show was again staged at SF Sketchfest in January 2016. The patients who booked "appointments" that night included Janeane Garofalo, Andy Kindler, Maria Bamford, The Sklar Brothers, Chelsea Peretti; as part of the 16th Annual SF Sketchfest, in San Francisco, California there was a live performance on January 20, 2017. Katz did a short stand up comedy set Guest "patients" included Kevin Pollak, Natasha Leggero, Tom Papa, Moshe Kasher and Scott Aukerman. Leggero joined Kasher's session midway through for couples therapy.
The two are married in real life. An audio-only version of the show was produced for Audible; the first three episodes were released Thursdays. It ran for 15 episodes. Guests have included Ray Romano, Sarah Silverman, Ted Danson. A full-length audiobook titled Dr. Katz: The Audiobook was released as an Audible exclusive in 2018 featuring all-new content. Dr. Katz is a professional psychotherapist, he is a laid-back, well-intentioned man who enjoys playing the guitar and spending time at the bar with his friend Stanley and bartender Julie. His patients are famous comedians and actors two per episode, the show is oriented around these sessions. Therapy sessions that feature comedians consist of onstage material while Dr. Katz offers insights or lets them talk. Therapy sessions that feature actors offer more interpersonal dialogue between Dr. Katz and his patient. Interspersed between therapy sessions are scenes involving Dr. Katz's daily life, which includes his aimless, childish 24-year-old son Ben, his uninterested and unhelpful secretary and his two friends: Stanley and bartender Julie, voiced by one of the show's producers, Julianne Shapiro.
In episodes, Todd (Todd Barry
Scholastic Corporation
Scholastic Corporation is an American multinational publishing and media company known for publishing and distributing books and educational materials for schools, teachers and children. Products are distributed to schools and districts, to consumers through the schools via reading clubs and fairs, through retail stores and online sales; the business has three segments: Children Book Publishing & Distribution and International. Scholastic holds the perpetual US publishing rights to the Harry Potter and Hunger Games book series. Scholastic is the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books and print and digital educational materials for pre-K to grade 12. In addition to Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, the company is known for its school book clubs and book fairs, classroom magazines such as Scholastic News, popular book series: Clifford the Big Red Dog, The Magic School Bus, Captain Underpants, I Spy. Scholastic publishes instructional reading and writing programs, offers professional learning and consultancy services for school improvement.
Clifford the Big Red Dog serves as the mascot for Scholastic. In 1920, Maurice R. "Robbie" Robinson founded the business he named Scholastic Publishing Company in his hometown of Wilkinsburg, right outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a publisher of youth magazines, the first publication was The Western Pennsylvania Scholastic, it covered high school sports and social activities and debuted on October 22, 1920. In the 1960s, international publishing locations were added in New Zealand and Sydney. In February 2012, it bought Weekly Reader Publishing from Reader's Digest Association, announced in July that year that it planned to discontinue separate issues of Weekly Reader magazines after more than a century of publication, co-branded the magazines as "Scholastic News/Weekly Reader". Founded in 1923 by Maurice R. Robinson, The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, administered by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, have recognized more than 9 million young artists and writers, provided more than $25 million in awards and scholarships and are the nation's longest-running art and writing awards.
Recipients of The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards include Richard Anuszkiewicz, Richard Avedon, Harry Bertoia, Mel Bochner, Truman Capote, Paul Davis, Frances Farmer, Red Grooms, Robert Indiana, Bernard Malamud, Joyce Maynard, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Pearlstein, Peter S. Beagle, Sylvia Plath, Robert Redford, Jean Stafford, Mozelle Thompson, Ned Vizzini, Kay WalkingStick, Andy Warhol, Charles White, all of whom won when they were in high school. In March 2018, author James Patterson announced an increase in his annual donations for classroom libraries from $1.75 million to $2 million, in a program run in conjunction with the Scholastic Book Clubs. Patterson is distributing 4,000 gifts of $500 each to teachers around the country. Trade Publishing Imprints include: Arthur A. Levine Books, which specializes in fiction and non-fiction books for young readers; the imprint was founded at Scholastic in 1996 by Arthur Levine in New York City. The first book published by Arthur A. Levine Books was When She Was Good by Norma Fox Mazer in autumn of 1997.
The imprint is most notable as the publisher for the American editions of the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. In March 2019, Levine left Scholastic to form his own new publisher. Scholastic will retain Levine's back catalogue; the Chicken House Four Winds Press Klutz Press Orchard Books Scholastic Australia made up of Koala Books, Margaret Hamilton Books, Omnibus Books, Scholastic Press. Children's Press. Founded in 1945 and based in Chicago, this press published the Rookie Read-About series and has a secondary imprint, Franklin Watts. In 1996, Children's Press became a division of Grolier, which became an imprint of Scholastic Corporation in 2000. Scholastic Media is a corporate division led by Deborah Forte since 1995, it covers "all forms of media and consumer products, is comprised of four main groups – Productions, Marketing & Consumer Products and Audio." Weston Woods is its production studio, acquired in 1996, as was Soup2Nuts from 2001–2015 before shutting down. Scholastic has produced audiobooks such as the Caldecott/Newbery Collection.
It will produce the 39 Clues and as Scholastic Productions produced the series Voyagers!, My Secret Identity, Charles in Charge. In April 2019, Scholastic signed a distribution deal with 9 Story Media Group, including 230 hours of TV series. Scholastic book clubs are offered at schools in many countries. Teachers administer the program to the students in their own classes, but in some cases, the program is administered by a central contact for the entire school. Within Scholastic, Reading Clubs is a separate unit. Reading clubs are arranged by age/grade. Scholastic Parents Media publishes the Scholastic Child magazine; the group specializes in online advertising sales and custom programs designed for parents with children aged 0–6. Scholastic has been criticized for inappropriately marketing to children. Scholastic now requires parents to submit children's names with birth dates to place online orders, creating controversy. A significant number of titles carried have strong media tie-ins and are considered relatively
