The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of working-class life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Bart and Maggie; the show is set in the fictional town of Springfield and parodies American culture and society and the human condition. The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a solicitation for a series of animated shorts with producer James L. Brooks. Groening created a dysfunctional family and named the characters after his own family members, substituting Bart for his own name; the shorts became a part of The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. After three seasons, the sketch was developed into a half-hour prime time show and became Fox's first series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season. Since its debut on December 17, 1989, 659 episodes of The Simpsons have been broadcast, it is the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American scripted primetime television series in terms of seasons and number of episodes.
The Simpsons Movie, a feature-length film, was released in theaters worldwide on July 27, 2007, grossed over $527 million. On October 30, 2007, a video game was released; the Simpsons is on its thirtieth season, which began airing September 30, 2018. The Simpsons was renewed for a thirty-first and thirty-second season on February 6, 2019, in which the latter will contain the 700th episode; the Simpsons received acclaim throughout its first nine or ten seasons, which are considered its "Golden Age". Time named it the 20th century's best television series, Erik Adams of The A. V. Club named it "television's crowning achievement regardless of format". On January 14, 2000, the Simpson family was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, it has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 31 Primetime Emmy Awards, 30 Annie Awards, a Peabody Award. Homer's exclamatory catchphrase "D'oh!" has been adopted into the English language, while The Simpsons has influenced many other adult-oriented animated sitcoms.
However, it has been criticized for a perceived decline in quality over the years. The Simpsons is known for its wide ensemble of supporting characters; the main characters are the Simpson family, who live in a fictional "Middle America" town of Springfield. Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a position at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality, he is married to a stereotypical American housewife and mother. They have three children: a ten-year-old troublemaker and prankster. Although the family is dysfunctional, many episodes examine their relationships and bonds with each other and they are shown to care about one another. Homer's dad Grampa Simpson lives in the Springfield Retirement Home after Homer forced his dad to sell his house so that his family could buy theirs. Grampa Simpson has had starring roles in several episodes; the family owns a dog, Santa's Little Helper, a cat, Snowball V, renamed Snowball II in "I, -Bot". Both pets have had starring roles in several episodes.
The show includes an array of quirky supporting characters, which include Homer's co-workers Lenny Leonard and Carl Carlson, the school principal Seymour Skinner and teachers Edna Krabappel and Elizabeth Hoover, neighbor Ned Flanders, friends Barney Gumble, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Moe Szyslak, Milhouse Van Houten, Nelson Muntz, extended relatives Patty and Selma Bouvier, townspeople such as Mayor Quimby, Chief Clancy Wiggum, tycoon Charles Montgomery Burns and his executive assistant Waylon Smithers, local celebrities Krusty the Clown and news reporter Kent Brockman. The creators intended many of these characters as one-time jokes or for fulfilling needed functions in the town. A number of them subsequently starred in their own episodes. According to Matt Groening, the show adopted the concept of a large supporting cast from the comedy show SCTV. Despite the depiction of yearly milestones such as holidays or birthdays passing, the characters do not age between episodes, appear just as they did when the series began.
The series uses a floating timeline in which episodes take place in the year the episode is produced though the characters do not age. Flashbacks and flashforwards do depict the characters at other points in their lives, with the timeline of these depictions generally floating relative to the year the episode is produced. For example, in the 1991 episode "I Married Marge", Bart appears to be born in 1980 or 1981, but in the 1995 episode "And Maggie Makes Three", Maggie appears to be born in 1993 or 1994. A canon of the show does exist, although Treehouse of Horror episodes and any fictional story told within the series are non-canon. However, continuity is limited in The Simpsons. For example, Krusty the Clown may be able to read in one episode, but may not be able to read in another. Lessons learned by the family in one episode may be forgotten in the next; some examples of limited continuity include Sideshow Bob's appearances where Bart and Lisa flashback at all the crimes he committed in Springfield or when the characters try to remember things that happened in previous episodes.
The Simpsons takes place in the fictional American town of Springfield in an unknown and impossible-to-determine U. S. state. The show is intentionally e
Ice Cube
O'Shea Jackson Sr. known professionally as Ice Cube, is an American rapper and actor. Ice Cube gained recognition as a member of the hip hop group C. I. A. in 1984, which gained limited commercial success prior to disbanding three years later. Ice Cube, alongside Dr. Dre and Eazy E formed the group N. W. A, where he gained extreme notoriety as the group's primary songwriter and performer, noted for becoming one of the founding artists of gangsta rap, pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music, as well as visual imagery in music videos. After leaving N. W. A in December 1989, Ice Cube embarked on a successful solo career, releasing the albums AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and Death Certificate, both of which have attained platinum certification in the United States, while being classed as defining albums of the 1990s. Much of his musical output has contained harsh socio-political commentary and storytelling, which has earned him several accolades from multiple publications and artists cited as an influence and one of the best rappers of all time.
Following the release of Death Certificate, Ice Cube transitioned into film, where his popularity was further enhanced by his starring role in Boyz n the Hood, where his performance was praised. He wrote and starred in the Friday film series, which contributed to reinventing his public image as a movie star. Ice Cube has featured in the Barbershop, Ride Along, XXX film series, while serving as a producer to several other films, including Straight Outta Compton, a biographical film depicting the career of N. W. A.. As a businessman, Ice Cube has founded his clothing line, Solo by Cube, as well as the 3 on 3 basketball league Big3, which predominately features retired NBA players. O'Shea Jackson was born on June 15, 1969, in Baldwin Hills, South Central Los Angeles, the son of Doris, a hospital clerk and custodian, Hosea Jackson, who worked as a groundskeeper at UCLA and a machinist, he has an older brother as well as a half-sister, murdered when Ice Cube was 12. His cousin is Teren Delvon Jones known as Del tha Funky Homosapien, a part of the rap group Hieroglyphics and who has worked with Gorillaz.
Jackson grew up on Van Wick Street in South Central Los Angeles. In his early teens, Jackson developed an interest in hip hop music, began writing raps in Los Angeles George Washington Preparatory High School's typewriting class. Jackson penned his first rap song in the ninth grade after a friend named "Kiddo", challenged him to write a song during a typewriting class. Kiddo lost. On the origins of his rapper name, Ice Cube says, he is quoted as saying "He threatened to slam me into a freezer and pull me out when I was an ice cube. I just started using that name, it just caught on."At the age of 16, Jackson sold his first song to future N. W. A. member Eazy-E. Jackson attended William Howard Taft High School in Woodland Hills, California, he enrolled at the Phoenix Institute of Technology in the fall of 1987 in Arizona. Being passionate about architecture, he studied architectural drafting, he returned to Los Angeles to pursue a rap career. Not sure of whether his rap career would work out, he would turn to become an architecture draftsman as a career backup.
With friend Sir Jinx, Ice Cube formed the C. I. A. and they performed at parties hosted by Dr. Dre. Dre soon entered the recording industry as a member of the World Class Wreckin' Cru. Dre saw Cube's potential as a writer and had him assist with writing Wreckin Cru's big L. A. hit track, "Cabbage Patch" as well as joining Cube on a side partnership which the duo called Stereo Crew. Stereo Crew produced a twelve-inch record, "She's a Skag" released on Epic Records in 1986. While Dr. Dre was DJing at L. A. dance club Eve After Dark, Ice Cube would rap over his music parodying songs by other artists. One such example of this was the song "My Penis," a parody of Run-DMC's "My Adidas." In a 2015 interview, club-owner Alonzo Williams said that he felt that this song damaged his reputation and asked for it not to be performed. In 1987, Ice Cube released the Dr. Dre produced single My Posse under with his group C. I. A.. After the collaboration, Ice Cube showed Eazy-E the lyrics to "Boyz-n-the-Hood". Eazy-E, although rejecting the lyrics recorded the song for N.
W. A. and the Posse, the debut album for the group N. W. A that included Dr. Dre, MC Ren, DJ Yella. Ice Cube was the only member of N. W. A, not from Compton, California. By this point Ice Cube was a full-time member of N. W. A along with Dr. Dre and MC Ren. Ice Cube wrote Dr. Dre's and Eazy-E's rhymes for the group's landmark album, Straight Outta Compton, released in 1988. However, towards the end of 1989, Ice Cube found himself at odds with the group's manager, Jerry Heller, after rejecting Heller's proposed contract terms. Ice Cube wrote the lyrics to half of both Straight Outta Compton, Eazy-E's solo album, Eazy-Duz-It, but he was only paid $32,000 and his contract did not confirm that he was an official member of N. W. A; this led Ice Cube to leave the group and bring a private lawsuit against Jerry Heller, settled out of court. In response, the remaining N. W. A members attacked him on the EP 100 Miles and Runnin', on their next and final album, Niggaz4Life. In 1989, Ice Cube recorded his debut solo album, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, in New York with the Bomb Squad.
It was released in May 1990 and was an instant hit and contributing to the rising tide of rap's popularity in mainstream society. The album was charg
Rage Against the Machine
Rage Against the Machine is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1991, the group consists of vocalist Zack de la Rocha and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello, drummer Brad Wilk, their songs express revolutionary political views. As of 2010, they had sold over 16 million records worldwide. Rage Against the Machine released its eponymous debut album in 1992 to commercial and critical success, leading to a slot in the 1993 Lollapalooza festival. In 2003, the album was ranked number 368 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, their second album, Evil Empire, was released in 1996. Their third, The Battle of Los Angeles, followed in 1999, in 2003, it was ranked number 426 on the same list. During their initial nine-year run, they became one of the most popular and influential bands in music history, they were ranked No. 33 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. The band had a large influence on the nu metal genre which came to prominence during the second half of the 1990s.
In 2000, Rage Against the Machine released the cover album Renegades and disbanded after growing creative differences led to de la Rocha's departure. De la Rocha started a low-key solo career, while the rest of the band formed the rock supergroup Audioslave with Chris Cornell, the former frontman of Soundgarden; the same year, Rage Against the Machine announced a reunion and performed together for the first time in seven years at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April 2007. Until 2011, the band continued to perform at more live festivals around the world. In 2016, Morello and Wilk formed a new band, Prophets of Rage, with B-Real, Chuck D, DJ Lord. In 2017, Rage Against the Machine were nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility and again for the 2018 class. Both bids failed. In 1991, following the break-up of guitarist Tom Morello's former band Lock Up, former Lock Up drummer Jon Knox encouraged Tim Commerford and Zack de la Rocha to jam with Tom Morello as he was looking to start a new group.
Morello soon contacted Brad Wilk. This lineup named themselves Rage Against the Machine, after a song de la Rocha had written for his former underground hardcore punk band Inside Out. Kent McClard, with whom Inside Out were associated, had coined the phrase "rage against the machine" in a 1989 article in his zine No Answers. Shortly after forming, they gave their first public performance on October 23, 1991, at the Quad of California State University, Northridge; the blueprint for the group's major-label debut album, demo tape Rage Against the Machine, was laid on a twelve-song self-released cassette, the cover image of which featured newspaper clippings of the stockmarket section with a single match taped to the inlay card. Not all 12 songs made it onto the final album—two were included as B-sides, while three others never saw an official release. Several record labels expressed interest, the band signed with Epic Records. Morello said, "Epic agreed to everything we asked—and they've followed through...
We never saw a conflict as long as we maintained creative control." The band's debut album, Rage Against the Machine, reached triple platinum status, driven by heavy radio play of the song "Killing in the Name", a heavy, driving track featuring only eight lines of lyrics. The "Fuck you" version, which contains 17 iterations of the word fuck, was once accidentally played on the BBC Radio 1 Top 40 singles show on February 21, 1993; the album's cover featured Malcolm Browne's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, burning himself to death in Saigon in 1963 in protest of the murder of Buddhists by the U. S.-backed Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm's regime. The album was produced by Garth Richardson. To promote the album, the band went on tour, playing at Lollapalooza 1993 and as support for Suicidal Tendencies in Europe. After their debut album, the band appeared on the soundtrack for the film Higher Learning with the song "Year of tha Boomerang". An early version of "Tire Me" appeared in the movie.
Subsequently, they re-recorded the song "Darkness" from their original demo for the soundtrack of The Crow, while "No Shelter" appeared on the Godzilla soundtrack. Despite rumors of a breakup for several years, Rage Against the Machine's second album, Evil Empire, entered Billboard's Top 200 chart at number one in 1996, subsequently rose to triple platinum status; the song "Bulls on Parade" was performed on Saturday Night Live in April 1996. Their planned two-song performance was cut to one song when the band attempted to hang inverted American flags from their amplifiers, a protest against having Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes as guest host on the program that night. In 1997, the band opened for U2 on their PopMart Tour, for which all of Rage's profits went to support social organizations, including U. N. I. T. E. Women Alive and the Zapatista Front for National Liberation. Rage subsequently began an abortive headlining U. S. tour with special guests Wu-Tang Clan. Police in several jurisdictions unsuccessfully attempted to have the concerts cancelled, citing amongst other reasons, the bands' "violent and anti-law enforcement philosophies".
Wu-Tang Clan were removed from the lineup and replaced with The Roots, when Wu-Tang Clan pulled a no show during a concert at Riverport. On the Japan leg of their tour promoting Evil Empire, a compilation album composed of the band's B-side recordings titled Live & Rare was released by Sony Records. A li
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial and space warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the five branches of the United States Armed Forces, one of the seven American uniformed services. Formed as a part of the United States Army on 1 August 1907, the USAF was established as a separate branch of the U. S. Armed Forces on 18 September 1947 with the passing of the National Security Act of 1947, it is the youngest branch of the U. S. Armed Forces, the fourth in order of precedence; the USAF is the largest and most technologically advanced air force in the world. The Air Force articulates its core missions as air and space superiority, global integrated intelligence and reconnaissance, rapid global mobility, global strike, command and control; the U. S. Air Force is a military service branch organized within the Department of the Air Force, one of the three military departments of the Department of Defense; the Air Force, through the Department of the Air Force, is headed by the civilian Secretary of the Air Force, who reports to the Secretary of Defense, is appointed by the President with Senate confirmation.
The highest-ranking military officer in the Air Force is the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, who exercises supervision over Air Force units and serves as one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Air Force components are assigned, as directed by the Secretary of Defense, to the combatant commands, neither the Secretary of the Air Force nor the Chief of Staff of the Air Force have operational command authority over them. Along with conducting independent air and space operations, the U. S. Air Force provides air support for land and naval forces and aids in the recovery of troops in the field; as of 2017, the service operates more than 5,369 military aircraft, 406 ICBMs and 170 military satellites. It has a $161 billion budget and is the second largest service branch, with 318,415 active duty airmen, 140,169 civilian personnel, 69,200 reserve airmen, 105,700 Air National Guard airmen. According to the National Security Act of 1947, which created the USAF: In general, the United States Air Force shall include aviation forces both combat and service not otherwise assigned.
It shall be organized and equipped for prompt and sustained offensive and defensive air operations. The Air Force shall be responsible for the preparation of the air forces necessary for the effective prosecution of war except as otherwise assigned and, in accordance with integrated joint mobilization plans, for the expansion of the peacetime components of the Air Force to meet the needs of war. §8062 of Title 10 US Code defines the purpose of the USAF as: to preserve the peace and security, provide for the defense, of the United States, the Territories and possessions, any areas occupied by the United States. The stated mission of the USAF today is to "fly and win...in air and cyberspace". "The United States Air Force will be a trusted and reliable joint partner with our sister services known for integrity in all of our activities, including supporting the joint mission first and foremost. We will provide compelling air and cyber capabilities for use by the combatant commanders. We will excel as stewards of all Air Force resources in service to the American people, while providing precise and reliable Global Vigilance and Power for the nation".
The five core missions of the Air Force have not changed since the Air Force became independent in 1947, but they have evolved, are now articulated as air and space superiority, global integrated intelligence and reconnaissance, rapid global mobility, global strike, command and control. The purpose of all of these core missions is to provide, what the Air Force states as, global vigilance, global reach, global power. Air superiority is "that degree of dominance in the air battle of one force over another which permits the conduct of operations by the former and its related land, sea and special operations forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by the opposing force". Offensive Counterair is defined as "offensive operations to destroy, disrupt, or neutralize enemy aircraft, launch platforms, their supporting structures and systems both before and after launch, but as close to their source as possible". OCA is the preferred method of countering air and missile threats since it attempts to defeat the enemy closer to its source and enjoys the initiative.
OCA comprises attack operations, sweep and suppression/destruction of enemy air defense. Defensive Counter air is defined as "all the defensive measures designed to detect, identify and destroy or negate enemy forces attempting to penetrate or attack through friendly airspace". A major goal of DCA operations, in concert with OCA operations, is to provide an area from which forces can operate, secure from air and missile threats; the DCA mission comprises both passive defense measures. Active defense is "the employment of limited offensive action and counterattacks to deny a contested area or position to the enemy", it includes both ballistic missile defense and air-breathing threat defense, encompasses point defense, area defense, high-value airborne asset defense. Passive defense is "measures taken to reduce the probability of and to minimize the effects of damage caused by hostile action without the intention of taking the initiative", it includes warning.
Really Doe (Ice Cube song)
"Really Doe" is a song recorded by American rapper and actor Ice Cube on his fourth studio album, Lethal Injection which serves as the lead single from the album. "My Skin Is My Sin", a song which appeared on his album Bootlegs & B-Sides, is the B-side for this song. "Really Doe" samples "You Gotta Believe It" by The Pointer Sisters and "Lick the Balls" by Slick Rick. This song is produced by Lay Law. "Really Doe" has a music video released. B-Real of Cypress Hill makes an appearance in the music video as the judge
Simi Valley
Simi Valley is a synclinal valley in Southern California in the United States. It is an hidden valley surrounded by mountains and hills, it is connected to the San Fernando Valley to the east by the Santa Susana Pass and the 118 freeway, in the west the narrows of the Arroyo Simi and the Reagan Freeway connect to Moorpark and Ventura, California. The flat bottom of the valley contains soils formed from shales and conglomerates eroded from the surrounding hills of the Santa Susana Mountains to the north, which separate Simi Valley from the Santa Clara River Valley, the Simi Hills. Simi Valley borders the Santa Susana Mountains to Simi Hills to the east and south; the valley covers an area of about 62 square miles in southern Ventura County, bordering the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. The Santa Clara River Valley occupies the northwestern corner of the valley. Mountainous terrain of South Mountain and Oak Ridge characterizes the central area. Elevation within the quadrangle ranges from about 250 feet along the arroyo bottoms to over 2200 feet.
Steep dissected slopes form much of the boundary of the area. In the southeast, Little Simi Valley, drained by Arroyo Simi/Arroyo Las Posas, separates the southern flank of Oak Ridge from the Las Posas Hills; the Las Posas upland area, a broad elevated region that slopes to the south, separates the South Mountain-Oak Ridge highlands from the Las Posas-Camarillo Hills between Little Simi Valley on the east and the Oxnard Plain on the west. This low-lying area is referred to as the Las Posas Valley. Numerous north-south-trending drainages cut South Mountain and Oak Ridge creating steep narrow canyons on north-facing slopes and wide flat-bottomed canyons with incised streams on south-facing slopes. A network of residential streets and ranch and oilfield roads that traverse the area from U. S. Highway 101 and state highways 118, 23, 126 provides access to the area. Current land use includes citrus and avocado orchards, oil well drilling and production and gravel quarries, decorative-rock quarries, cattle grazing, suburban residential development, golf courses.
The oldest geologic unit mapped in the Simi Valley quadrangle is the upper Cretaceous Chatsworth Formation. The Sespe Formation consists of alluvial fan and floodplain deposits of interbedded pebble-cobble conglomerate, massive to thick-bedded sandstone, thin-bedded siltstone and clay-stone. In the northern part of the map area, Sespe Formation is overlain by and inter-fingers with the upper Oligocene to lower Miocene Vaqueros Formation, composed of transitional and marine sandstone and claystone with local sandy coquina beds. In the Las Posas Hills, Sespe Formation is unconformably overlain by marine sandstones of the middle Miocene Topanga Group that are interlayered with and intruded by basalt flows and diabase dikes of the Conejo Volcanics. Deep-marine strata of the upper Miocene Modelo Formation cover the Vaqueros Formation and Topanga Group along the crests and southern flanks of South Mountain and Oak Ridge, they occur as isolated outcrops in the Las Posas Hills. Locally, Modelo Formation consists of interbedded diatomaceous shale, claystone and siltstone with minor sandstone, limestone and tuff beds.
The most exposed rock units in the area are the Plio-Pleistocene marine and non-marine Pico and Saugus Formations that crop out on the southern flank of South Mountain-Oak Ridge. Locally, the Pico Formation consists of marine siltstone and silty shale with minor sandstone and pebbly sandstone; the Saugus Formation overlies and interfingers with the Pico Formation and is composed of interbedded shallow-marine to brackish water sandstone, pebble-to-cobble conglomerate, coquina beds that grade laterally and vertically into non-marine sandstone and conglomerate. A local member of the Saugus Formation is exposed in the southwest corner of the map area, it is predominantly a volcanic breccia conglomerate that resembles the Conejo Volcanics breccia, but is believed to represent remnants of landslide debris shed from the Conejo Volcanics into a local trough during Saugus time. Valley surficial deposits cover the floor and margins of the Little Simi Valley, Santa Clara River Valley in the north, Arroyo Las Posas in the south, extend up into the larger canyons that drain South Mountain and Oak Ridge.
Extensive surficial deposits are present in the Las Posas upland area in the southwest. These upper Pleistocene to Holocene sediments consist of older and younger alluvial fan and valley deposits, active alluvial fans, active stream deposits. Pleistocene- to Holocene-age landslide deposits are widespread throughout the Simi quadrangle in the finer grained Tertiary sedimentary units where bedding planes are dip slopes. In addition, massive slumps are present in the Vaqueros Formations on anti-dip slopes. Seismic and well data from the San Fernando Valley document evolution of that region from mid-Miocene rifting to north-south contraction. Formations in the western San Fernando Valley subsurface trace southward to outcrops in the Santa Monica Mountains that constrain faulting along the valley's south basin edge. Cretaceous strata in the Simi Uplift to the west are over 2 km higher than equivalent strata beneath the western San Fernando Valley across a boundary marked by the Chatsworth Reservoir fault, Neogene thinning and off-lap.
The Simi fault, located at the eastern end of the Simi-Santa Rosa fault system, bounds the northern margins of the Simi and Tierra Rejada Valleys. West of Simi Valley, the Simi fault has placed Miocene Conejo Volcanics over P
CNN
Cable News Network is an American news-based pay television channel owned by WarnerMedia News & Sports, a division of AT&T's WarnerMedia. CNN was founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner as a 24-hour cable news channel. Upon its launch, CNN was the first television channel to provide 24-hour news coverage, was the first all-news television channel in the United States. While the news channel has numerous affiliates, CNN broadcasts from the Time Warner Center in New York City, studios in Washington, D. C. and Los Angeles. Its headquarters at the CNN Center in Atlanta is only used for weekend programming. CNN is sometimes referred to as CNN/U. S. to distinguish the American channel from CNN International. As of August 2010, CNN is available in over 100 million U. S. households. Broadcast coverage of the U. S. channel extends to over 890,000 American hotel rooms, as well as carriage on subscription providers throughout Canada. As of July 2015, CNN is available to about 96,374,000 pay-television households in the United States.
Globally, CNN programming airs through CNN International, which can be seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories. The Cable News Network was launched at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on June 1, 1980. After an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the channel's first newscast. Burt Reinhardt, the executive vice president of CNN at its launch, hired most of the channel's first 200 employees, including the network's first news anchor, Bernard Shaw. Since its debut, CNN has expanded its reach to a number of cable and satellite television providers, several websites, specialized closed-circuit channels; the company has 42 bureaus, more than 900 affiliated local stations, several regional and foreign-language networks around the world. The channel's success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for conglomerate Time Warner's eventual acquisition of the Turner Broadcasting System in 1996. A companion channel, CNN2, was launched on January 1, 1982 and featured a continuous 24-hour cycle of 30-minute news broadcasts.
The channel, which became known as CNN Headline News and is now known as HLN focused on live news coverage supplemented by personality-based programs during the evening and primetime hours. The first Persian Gulf War in 1991 was a watershed event for CNN that catapulted the channel past the "Big Three" American networks for the first time in its history due to an unprecedented, historical scoop: CNN was the only news outlet with the ability to communicate from inside Iraq during the initial hours of the Coalition bombing campaign, with live reports from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad by reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman and Peter Arnett; the moment when bombing began was announced on CNN by Shaw on January 16, 1991, as follows: This is Bernie Shaw. Something is happening outside.... Peter Arnett, join me here. Let's describe to our viewers what we're seeing... The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated.... We're seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky. Unable to broadcast live pictures from Baghdad, CNN's coverage of the initial hours of the Gulf War had the dramatic feel of a radio broadcast – and was compared to legendary CBS news anchor Edward R. Murrow's gripping live radio reports of the German bombing of London during World War II.
Despite the lack of live pictures, CNN's coverage was carried by television stations and networks around the world, resulting in CNN being watched by over a billion viewers worldwide. The Gulf War experience brought CNN some much sought-after legitimacy and made household names of obscure reporters. In 2000, media scholar and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, Robert Thompson, stated that having turned 20, CNN was now the "old guard." Shaw, known for his live-from-Bagdhad reporting during the Gulf War, became CNN's chief anchor until his retirement in 2001. Others include then-Pentagon correspondent Wolf Blitzer and international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour's presence in Iraq was caricatured by actress Nora Dunn as ruthless reporter Adriana Cruz in the 1999 film Three Kings. Time Warner-owned sister network HBO produced a television movie, Live from Baghdad, about CNN's coverage of the first Gulf War. Coverage of the first Gulf War and other crises of the early 1990s led officials at the Pentagon to coin the term "the CNN effect" to describe the perceived impact of real time, 24-hour news coverage on the decision-making processes of the American government.
CNN was the first cable news channel. Anchor Carol Lin was on the air to deliver the first public report of the event, she broke into a commercial at 8:49 a.m. Eastern Time that morning and said:This just in. You are looking at a disturbing live shot there; that is the World Trade Center, we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story calling our sources and trying to figure out what happened, but something devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan; that is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Sean Murtagh, CNN vice president of finance and administration, was the first network employe
Police Officer 3: 1978
Sergeant I: 1982
LAPD Medal of Valor
