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Miami Marlins

The Miami Marlins are an American professional baseball team based in Miami. The Marlins compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) East Division. The club's home ballpark is LoanDepot Park.

The franchise began play as an expansion team in the 1993 season as the Florida Marlins. The Marlins originally played home games at Joe Robbie Stadium, which they shared with the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League (NFL). In 2012, the team moved to LoanDepot Park (then known as Marlins Park), their first exclusive home and the first to be designed as a baseball park. As part of an agreement with park owner Miami-Dade County to use the stadium, the franchise also changed their name to the Miami Marlins prior to the 2012 season.

With a record of (.460), the Marlins have the lowest winning percentage and fewest postseason appearances (four) among active MLB franchises. Despite this, the Marlins won the World Series during their first two playoff runs in 1997 and 2003. Only three players were on both World Series teams with the Marlins: Jeff Conine, Luis Castillo, and Rick Helling (both Conine and Castillo are the only Marlins to play a thousand games with the team). All four of their playoff appearances came as wild card teams, making them one of two MLB franchises (along with the Colorado Rockies) to have never won a division title, as well as the only franchise to have never appeared in back-to-back postseasons. The Marlins were also the first team to win the World Series as a wild card. Also noteworthy is the fact the Marlins have no retired numbers, with the exception of Jackie Robinson's universally retired #42, as done in 1997.

Franchise history

Wayne Huizenga, CEO of Blockbuster Entertainment Corporation, was awarded an expansion franchise in the National League (NL) for a $95 million expansion fee and the team began operations in 1993 as the Florida Marlins. MLB had announced a few months earlier that it intended to add two new teams to the National League. It was a foregone conclusion that one of them would be placed in Florida; the only question was whether Huizenga would beat out competing groups from Orlando and Tampa Bay. Orlando fielded a very spirited campaign bolstered by its family-oriented tourism industry. Tampa Bay already had a baseball park—the Florida Suncoast Dome in St. Petersburg, completed in 1990. However, on June 10, 1991, the National League awarded a Miami-based franchise to Huizenga. The franchise adopted the nickname "Marlins" from previous minor league teams, the Miami Marlins of the Triple-A 's International League from 1956 to 1960, and the Miami Marlins (1962–70) and Miami Marlins (1982–88) teams that played in the Florida State League.

The Marlins' first manager was Rene Lachemann, a former catcher who had previously managed the Seattle Mariners and Milwaukee Brewers, and who at the time of his hiring was a third base coach for the Oakland Athletics. The team drafted its initial lineup of players in the 1992 MLB Expansion Draft. The Marlins defeated the Houston Astros 12–8 in their inaugural spring training game. Jeff Conine hit Florida's first homer before a crowd of 6,696 at the Cocoa Expo Sports Complex. The Marlins won their first game on April 5, 1993, against the Dodgers. Charlie Hough was the starting pitcher for that game. Jeff Conine went 4-for-4 as well, making him an immediate crowd favorite. By the end of his tenure with Florida, he had earned the nickname "Mr. Marlin." Gary Sheffield and Bryan Harvey represented the Marlins as the club's first All-Star Game selections, and Sheffield homered in the Marlins' first All-Star Game at-bat. The team finished the year five games ahead of the last-place New York Mets and with an attendance of 3,064,847. In that season, the Marlins traded young set-up reliever Trevor Hoffman and two minor-league prospects to the San Diego Padres for third baseman Gary Sheffield. While Sheffield helped Florida immediately and became an all-star, Hoffman eventually emerged as the best closer in the National League. After the 1993 season, Donald A. Smiley was named the second president in club history. The Marlins finished last (51–64) in their division in the strike-shortened season of and fourth (67–76) in. Lachemann was replaced as manager midway through the by director of player development John Boles.

1997: First World Series title
Following an 80–82 record in 1996, former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Jim Leyland was hired to lead the club heading into 1997.

In 1997, the Marlins finished nine games back of the Division Champion Atlanta Braves, but earned the wild card berth. Veteran additions such as LF Moisés Alou, 3B Bobby Bonilla, and trade-deadline additions Darren Daulton and Jim Eisenreich added experience and clutch hits. Talented young stars Luis Castillo (2B) and Édgar Rentería (SS) comprised one of the best double play combos in the NL. The Marlins swept the San Francisco Giants 3–0 in the National League Division Series, and then went on to beat the Atlanta Braves 4–2 in the National League Championship Series, overcoming the loss of Alex Fernandez to a torn rotator cuff, and Kevin Brown to a virus. Brown's place was taken in Game 5 by rookie pitcher Liván Hernández, who struck out 15 Braves and outdueled multiple Cy Young Award winner Greg Maddux to a 2–1 victory. The underdog Marlins went on to face the Cleveland Indians in the 1997 World Series, and won in seven games. In Game 7, Craig Counsell's sacrifice fly in the bottom of the ninth tied the game at 2, then, with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the 11th, Édgar Rentería's soft liner glanced off the glove of Cleveland pitcher Charles Nagy and into center field to score Counsell and give the Marlins the win.

2003: Second World Series victory

On May 9, the Marlins called up high-kicking southpaw Dontrelle Willis from the Double-A Carolina Mudcats and helped carry the injury-plagued Marlins with an 11–2 record in his first 17 starts. Miguel Cabrera (also from the Mudcats) filled in well, hitting a walk-off home run in his first major league game, against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at Pro Player Stadium. Both Willis and Cabrera would later prove to be essential parts of the Marlin's playoff success. Jeff Conine – an original Marlin and member of the 1997 World Series team – returned from Baltimore, Hall of Fame catcher Iván Rodríguez signed with the Marlins as a free agent and closer Ugueth Urbina arrived from the Texas Rangers. These acquisitions helped to keep the team in contention, and although they finished ten games behind the Braves, the Marlins captured the NL wild card.

On October 15, the Marlins defeated the Chicago Cubs four games to three in the 2003 National League Championship Series, coming back from a 3–1 deficit. Game 6 saw the Marlins play a role in one of baseball's most infamous moments, the Steve Bartman incident. With one out in the eighth inning and the Cubs three runs ahead, Marlins second baseman Luis Castillo hit a pop foul a row into the stands along the third baseline. Cubs fan Steve Bartman reached for the ball, preventing Cubs left fielder Moisés Alou from making the out and setting off an eight-run Marlins rally. The incident with Bartman and a come-from-behind win in Wrigley Field in Game 7 helped the Marlins capture their second NL pennant, keeping the "Curse of the Billy Goat" alive and well.

In the 2003 World Series, the Marlins defeated the heavily favored New York Yankees in six games, winning the sixth game in Yankee Stadium. Shortstop Álex González helped the Marlins in Game 4 of the series with a walk-off home run in extra innings. Josh Beckett was named the Most Valuable Player for the series after twirling a five-hit complete-game shutout in Game 6. Skipper Jack McKeon became the oldest manager ever to win a World Series title.

2012–present
In 2012, the team moved from the football-oriented Sun Life Stadium (located in Miami Gardens) to Marlins Park in downtown Miami. As a condition of the move, the team was renamed the Miami Marlins, and adopted a new logo and colors. On November 16, 2017, Giancarlo Stanton won the National League MVP, becoming the first Marlin to win the award.

During the 2020 shortened season, the Marlins finished with a 31–29 overall record and 2nd place in the NL East. In the Wild Card Series they swept the Chicago Cubs in 2 games. Miami loss in three games to the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS.

On November 13, 2020, the Marlins became the first club in any American major-level sports league to hire a woman to an executive position when Kim Ng was announced as the team's general manager. In addition, she will also be MLB's first Asian American general manager. On February 28, 2022, it was announced Derek Jeter stepped down as CEO of the Marlins. On September 30, 2023, with the Marlins 7–3 win in Pittsburgh, the Marlins clinched their fourth postseason berth, making Kim Ng the first woman GM in MLB history to lead a playoff team.

1993–2002
The Florida Marlins debuted wearing three different uniforms. The primary and alternate home uniforms shared the same design: "Marlins" (with an underline after the letter "S") in teal with black trim and letters were rendered in black with teal trim, along with teal pinstripes. The alternate home uniforms were sleeveless, and teal undershirts were added to the ensemble. The road uniforms featured "Florida" (with the marlin wrapped around the letter "F") in teal with black trim and letters were rendered in black with teal trim. The primary logo patch was placed on the left sleeve. The Marlins wore three different cap designs, all featuring the "F" insignia in front of a leaping marlin. The all-teal home cap and the black-brimmed teal road cap were initially the primary headwear the team used, with the all-black cap as the alternate.

By the late 1990s, teal was gradually de-emphasized and the Marlins wore black caps and undershirts for the remainder of the uniform's run.

2003–2011
The Marlins introduced new uniforms before its second World Series-winning season. On the home uniforms, teal was relegated to accent color status with black now the primary lettering and pinstripe color. Silver accents were also added to the letters. A sleeved alternate pinstriped home uniform replaced the original sleeveless version, sharing the same design as the primary home uniform except with the "F" logo on the left chest. The "F" logo also took its place on the left sleeve in place of the primary logo. Road uniforms again featured "Florida" but now shared the same script look and color scheme as the home uniform (with an underline after the letter "A"). White accents were added to the letters. In addition, the Marlins began wearing a black alternate uniform, featuring the same "Marlins" script but in silver with teal, black and white accents. Both alternate uniforms lacked the front chest numbers.

In 2010, the Marlins changed its road uniform design, replacing "Florida" with "Marlins". The sleeve logo patches were also removed.

2012–2018
Rebranding into the Miami Marlins, the team introduced a new color scheme, with orange, black and blue. The "M" insignia is white with orange, yellow and sky blue accents, along with a stylized abstract marlin on top. This logo served as a cap logo as well as a patch on the left sleeve. The primary home, road and black alternate uniforms all feature "Miami" in front, with the first "M" shaped similarly to the cap and sleeve logos. The home and road uniform feature black letters with silver trim, along with orange drop shadows on the numbers, while the alternate black uniform feature white letters with silver trim and orange numbers with silver trim and black drop shadows. The orange alternate uniform featured the team name in white with sky blue accents; however the abstract marlin was located atop the letter "I". Letters were black with silver trim, while sky blue drop shadows were featured on the numbers. The Marlins primarily wore all-black caps, though for a brief period they wore alternate all-orange caps.

2019–present
The Marlins released updated logos and color schemes, replacing orange and silver with bright Caliente red, Miami blue and slate grey. Home and road uniforms contain 'Miami" and letters in black with red drop shadows and blue accents, while the black alternate uniform contain "Marlins" and letters in black with red drop shadows and blue accents. The cap logo, used on the all-black cap, is a stylized "M" with a more realistic marlin on top. The marlin logo also appears on the left sleeve.

In 2021, the Marlins unveiled a City Connect uniform. The primarily red uniform with Miami blue trim paid homage to the Cuban Sugar Kings.

In 2024, the Marlins updated their black alternate uniform, changing the letters to white in order to improve visibility. They also introduced a new Miami blue alternate uniform, featuring the black "Marlins" lettering with white trim and red drop shadows. This was originally their Spring Training uniform, albeit with the "M" logo on the left chest.

World Series championships
The Marlins won the World Series in 1997 and 2003, but both titles were followed by controversial periods where the team sold off all the high-priced players and rebuilt. Between 2003 and 2019, the team's two World Series runs also marked their sole postseason appearances. Their three playoff qualifications and seven winning seasons are the fewest among MLB franchises.

Despite never winning a division title, the Florida Marlins is the only team to make the playoffs and win a World Series in its first two winning seasons.

Awards

 * No-Hitters: Marlins pitchers have pitched six no-hitters in team regular-season history, five coming against teams in the NL West and one against a team from the American League (AL).

 * Hitting for the cycle: One Marlins player has hit for the cycle.

Retired numbers
From 1993 until 2011, the Marlins had retired the number 5 in honor of Carl Barger, the first president of the Florida Marlins, who had died prior to the team's inaugural season. Barger's favorite player was Joe DiMaggio, thus the selection of number 5. With the move to LoanDepot Park, the team opted to honor Barger with a plaque instead, and opened number 5 to circulation. Logan Morrison, a Kansas City native and fan of Royals Hall-of-Famer George Brett (who wore that number with the Royals), became the first Marlins player to wear the number. As of 2023, the Marlins are the only franchise with no retired numbers for former players, and while seven former players are in the Hall of Fame, none wear a Marlins cap on their plaque or have the Marlins listed as their primary team.

After José Fernández's death as a result of a boating accident on September 25, 2016, the Miami Marlins built a memorial at LoanDepot Park in his honor, which displays his number 16. Fernández's number has yet to be officially retired, but remains inactive.

Minor league affiliations
The Miami Marlins farm system consists of seven minor league affiliates.

Radio and television
The Marlins' flagship radio station from their inception in 1993 through 2007 was WQAM 560 AM. Although the Marlins had plans to leave WQAM after 2006, they remained with WQAM for the 2007 season. On October 11, 2007, the Marlins announced an agreement with WAXY 790 AM to broadcast all games for the 2008 season. Longtime Montreal Expo and current Marlins play-by-play radio announcer Dave Van Horne won the Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting in 2010. He shares the play-by-play duties with Glenn Geffner.

Games are also broadcast in Spanish on Radio Mambi 710 AM. Felo Ramírez called play-by-play on that station from 1993 to 2017 along with Luis Quintana, won the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.

Marlins games are televised by Bally Sports Florida. Paul Severino serves as the play-by-play announcer with Tommy Hutton, J.P. Arencibia, Gaby Sánchez and Jeff Nelson. Jessica Blaylock host's Marlins Live and is the Marlins on site reporter.

Culture

In 1989, Back to the Future Part II had a reference to the Chicago Cubs defeating a baseball team from Miami in the 2015 World Series, ending the longest championship drought in all four of the major North American professional sports leagues. In actuality, the Cubs would end up getting swept in four games by the New York Mets in the NLCS, the Marlins failed to make the postseason, and the 2015 World Series was between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Mets, with the Royals winning in five games. Also, both the Cubs and Marlins are part of the National League, rendering a World Series matchup between the two teams impossible.

The Marlins were the first team in Major League Baseball to have a dance/cheer team. Debuting in 2003, the "Marlins Mermaids" influenced other MLB teams to develop their own cheer/dance squads. In 2008, the Florida Marlins debuted "The Marlins Manatees", Major League Baseball's first all-male dance/energy squad, to star alongside the Mermaids. As of 2012, the Marlins have abandoned the "Mermaids" and "Manatees" for in-game entertainment instead using an "energy squad", a co-ed group of dancers. In 2019, the Marlins brought back the Mermaids for the first time since 2012.

The Marlins have had many official anthems over the years, performed by such artists as Pitbull, DJ Khaled, Poo Bear and Creed frontman Scott Stapp. Stapp penned their 2010 anthem Marlins Will Soar.

On July 16, 2022, the Marlins became the second NL team to form a cheering section for fans when it opened "Sandy's Beach" at Section 22 of LoanDepot Park for supporters of team starter Sandy Alcantara. Fans assigned to this section, located near the 3rd base line, wear beach related clothing in an nod to the city's famous beaches whenever Sandy pitchers on select game days.

Best finishes in franchise history
The following are the five best seasons in Marlins history:

Worst finishes in franchise history
The following are the five worst seasons in Marlins' history:

Home attendance
Other than their first few years as a franchise in the 1990s, the Marlins have consistently ranked as one of lowest attendance teams in the league, coming in last place (30th) several of the past 20 years. Even when LoanDepot Park was completed for the 2012 season, attendance was only average for the first year, dropping down to second to last by 2013.

Opening Day salaries
Opening Day payrolls for 25-man roster (since 1993):

Annual financial records
The annual financial records of the Marlins according to Forbes since 2001.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Miami Marlins


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Frontline (Australian TV series)

Frontline is an Australian comedy television series which satirised Australian television current affairs programmes and reporting. It ran for three series of 13 half-hour episodes and was broadcast on ABC TV in 1994, 1995 and 1997.

Production
The series was written, directed and produced by Jane Kennedy, Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner. They created and performed in the television shows The D-Generation and The Late Show before creating Frontline (as well as Funky Squad between series 1 and 2 of Frontline). After Frontline they moved into feature films, making several popular Australian movies including The Castle and The Dish, and hosted The Panel for several years, before moving on to Thank God You're Here and later Have You Been Paying Attention?.

The series was partly inspired by a 60 Minutes special "Has the media gone too far?". It bears some similarity to the UK series Drop the Dead Donkey.

A commercial network
The series follows the fortunes of a fictional current affairs show, Frontline. In the show, Frontline competes directly with Nine's A Current Affair and Seven's Real Life, which changed its name to Today Tonight from 1995 onwards.

The Frontline office showcases and satirises the machinations of the ruthless producers, the self-obsessed airhead host, and the ambitious, cynical reporters, all of whom resort to any sort of underhanded trick to get ratings and maintain their status—including the use of hidden cameras, foot-in-the-door, bullying interview techniques, and chequebook journalism. They ingratiate themselves with the all-powerful network bosses, while the real work is in fact done by their long-suffering production staff.

The station itself also runs other television shows referenced by Frontline staff, such as 6 o'clock news program, a 3-hour news review show Sunday Forum, a sketch show The Komedy Bunch, a game show Jackpot, a teen soap opera Sunshine Cove which later changed to Rainbow Island, also lesser mentioned shows such as the football show Ball-to-Ball, Late-Night OZ, Cartoon Crazies, The Morning Show, Face the Press and Vacation.

As a commentary
The characters and situations were often thinly-disguised parodies of recent real events and real people, giving the show's comedy a black edge. In particular, the Season 1 episode "The Siege" was a replay of a controversial real life incident which had occurred just a few months earlier, told as though Frontline itself had covered the story.

The dim-witted, egotistical host Mike Moore was a parody of current television hosts and journalists. Sitch has claimed that none of the characters were directly based on a single person, and indeed the character of Moore was a combination of well-known characteristics of a number of high-profile television figures, including A Current Affair host Ray Martin, Martin's predecessor Mike Willesee, and Real Life host Stan Grant.

The ABC's media review show Media Watch was featured prominently. Much of the real life journalistic misconduct reported on Media Watch later appeared on Frontline in fictionalised form. One example of this was when Media Watch reported that Dave "Sluggo" Richardson had made a highly misleading report on Christopher Skase for Today Tonight. Richardson was suspended from duty for a month, and in the "One Rule for One" episode of Frontline, fictional reporter Martin di Stasio is suspended for a month for doing exactly the same thing.

Multiple episodes of Frontline featured Media Watch segments criticising the show.

Reporters

 * Mike Moore (Rob Sitch) is the anchor of Frontline. He is self-centred and dim-witted, but his intentions are generally noble. Mike is very protective of what he calls his "journalistic integrity" and resents any insinuation that he is a lightweight. He believes that he is on the cutting edge of journalism, but is oblivious to most of Frontline's content, as the executive producers go to some length to keep him out of production meetings, and a running gag within the show sees Mike ignore most of the stories that Frontline airs despite his position as host. Mike is desperate for any sort of publicity he can get, but his public appearances are a constant source of amusement for the rest of the Frontline team, as they typically end in disaster. While usually harmless, Mike is not above using underhanded tactics to get his way—in "A Hole in the Heart" (series 3), he steals a story from Marty because viewers are responding positively to it, while in "Addicted to Fame", he demands that Geoffrey's television show be cancelled because he is jealous of the attention his friend is getting. In the first two series Mike's position is constantly under threat from senior reporter Brooke Vandenberg, who has a better press profile, but by the last series he has been cemented as one of the network's most valuable stars and considerably more effort is made to pander to his whims. While Mike is usually portrayed as simply dumb (for example, in "A Man of His Convictions" in series 2 he writes a letter to media commentator Stuart Littlemore full of basic spelling and grammatical errors) he occasionally surprises his colleagues with his sneakiness: in "Give 'em Enough Rope" (series 2) he traps the network owner into admitting to contravening the Broadcasting Act in a live interview, after first getting the owner to publicly commit to allowing him to ask difficult questions without threat to his job. Many gags centre around how easily he is manipulated by his executive producer, the most typical case being when Mike refuses to present a story and then is convinced to run it by an appeal to his supposed fearlessness or journalistic integrity.
 * Brooke Vandenberg (Jane Kennedy) is a reporter on Frontline. She is ambitious, amoral and publicity hungry. While there are constant rumours that she has affairs with male celebrities in order to build her profile, in some cases she simply creates the rumours herself; in "The Desert Angel" (series 1) she confesses to Pat Cash that she started a rumour about having an affair with him. Like most of the employees of Frontline, she has no ethical problems with any action the show takes to get a good story. She is, however, portrayed as being very hypocritical; in "The Invisible Man" (series 1), she has no issues with violating peoples' privacy when she runs a story using a hidden camera to catch shoplifters in a store change room, but is outraged when a rival network violates her own privacy in the same way when broadcasting a similar story. Brooke is also very vain, and tends to edit her stories to give herself as much screen time as she can manage. When a new segment producer edits footage of Brooke out of a story in "I Disease" (series 3), she becomes upset to the point where she demands that the producer be fired for it. In "A Hole in the Heart", Brooke discovers she is pregnant to a former boyfriend and is bribed into having an abortion by a new hosting offer.
 * Martin "Marty" Di Stasio (Tiriel Mora) is a senior reporter on Frontline. He is Mike's major antagonist on the team, often baiting him about sensitive topics, such as the supposedly anti-Semitic golf club of which Mike is a member ("A Hole in the Heart"), or whenever Mike's public appearances end in disaster. He is the most experienced journalist on the team: a few references are made to him winning a Walkley Award. Like Brooke, he is uncritical of the show's journalistic tactics (although in the episode "Judge and Jury", he has reservations about their persecution of a priest accused of rape, mainly because he is a lapsed Catholic); in fact he is usually the confidante of the executive producers, and the one they can trust to do what is needed to get a good story, or to persuade Mike to present a story. His position on Frontline is more tenuous than that of Mike or Brooke: in "Dick on the Line" (series 3) he tells Mike and Brooke that at his age he signs his yearly contract immediately and does not mess about negotiating.

Producers

 * Emma Ward (Alison Whyte) is the Line Producer on Frontline. She questions the show's practices most frequently and acts as the viewers' conscience. In "Heroes and Villains" (series 2), she is the only member of the team to have read the supposedly racist book the show is attacking and objects to their incendiary treatment of its author. Early in series 2 and 3, the executive producers of the time approach Marty and ask him to explain Emma. Marty explains that while she has moral qualms like Mike does, she is more difficult to handle because she is intelligent. Despite often objecting, Emma is usually party to ethically questionable practices and occasionally finds them amusing. In "A Hole in the Heart (part 2)", to placate a director from charity organisation Rotary, she allows the executive producer to yell at her and pretend to fire her over one of the show's decisions, when in reality she is receiving a large pay rise in return for her part of the act.
 * Kate Preston (Trudy Hellier) is the segment producer. While Kate is friendly with Emma, who has a more senior position, Kate has fewer ethical qualms about stories than Emma, and tends to be in the middle of conflicts between Emma and the executive producer.
 * Brian "Thommo" Thompson (Bruno Lawrence) is the executive producer during series 1. He is fired by the network in the first episode of series 2, although he is never shown on screen in that episode; the real reason for this is that Lawrence died of lung cancer between the filming of series 1 and series 2, forcing the writers to create a new executive producer character, Sam (see below).
 * Sam Murphy (Kevin J. Wilson) is the executive producer during series 2, hired immediately after Brian is fired. Thommo's and Sam's characters are similar; a hard-nosed EP who would not hesitate to air questionable stories to attract ratings.
 * Graham "Prowsey" Prowse (Steve Bisley) is the executive producer during series 3, hired after the producer who took Frontline to the top retires. Prowsey is much more aggressive and unpleasant than his two predecessors. He has a bad temper, is unpleasant to the staff and is unashamedly sexist: groping the female staff, dismissing bulimia as a "chick thing" and writing off Brooke's bad moods as PMS. He is, however, like his predecessors, capable of being charming when needed to deceive Mike, placate Emma or feed Brooke's ego.

Supporting staff

 * Domenica Baroni (Anita Cerdic) is the office receptionist, and the only person in the office who truly admires Mike. Her increasingly bizarre hairstyles become a running gag, culminating in "Give 'em Enough Rope", when she is completely bald and festooned with ribbons. Her reactions to the show usually reflect the target audience's responses. She is a reluctant and sometimes traitorous party to the office's determination to keep Mike away from production meetings. She is always very supportive of Mike and there are often hints that she actually has a crush on him. Domenica occasionally contributes to stories run by the show, such as when she receives a tipoff from a relative in "Divide the Community, Multiply the Ratings" or when she is the only female staff member willing to go undercover in a nightclub in "My Generation".
 * Shelley Cohen (Linda Ross) is the executive producer's secretary. She has worked for the network for many years and is usually unfazed by the mishaps in the office.
 * Stuart "Stu" O'Hallaran (Pip Mushin) is the office's main cameraman and shoots most of Brooke's and Marty's stories. He, Marty and Jase are all friends and frequently make fun of Mike.
 * Jason "Jase" Cotter (Torquil Neilson) is the sound recordist who works with Stu. Jase is not actually heard speaking until series 3 despite appearing in most episodes in series 1 and 2. He is fired in the episode "I Get the Big Names" for audio taping Brooke Vandanberg while she urinates on the toilet and then leaking it to the media.
 * Hugh Tabbagh (Marcus Eyre) is the editor of videos, who is almost always seen editing in the audio-visual room whilst sitting, smoking cigarettes, coughing wildly and inhaling an asthma puffer.
 * Trev (Stephen Curry) appears as Jase's replacement as the sound recordist towards the end of the third series.

Network employees

 * Geoffrey Salter (Santo Cilauro) is the network's weatherman and Mike's closest friend at work. Geoff usually appears in private conversations in his office with Mike, and is often the catalyst for Mike to question the reassurance he has been given by a producer that the story of the moment is being ethically pursued. Despite his being Mike's closest friend, Mike frequently ignores Geoff's issues, and their conversations often serve to reinforce Mike's beliefs. Geoff is unpopular with the rest of the Frontline staff to the point where he is banned from the Frontline set, but they are all supportive when he unexpectedly achieves popularity with his own one-hour programme in "Addicted to Fame" (series 3), though he is unaware that Mike demanded the plans for the expansion of the show be cancelled because he was jealous of the attention Geoff was getting. He is the focus of a running gag where he will laugh hysterically along with Mike at any anecdote Mike tells him, before admitting that he does not understand it.
 * Ian Farmer (Gerard Kennedy) is the Station Manager, the boss of the local studios. He appears only in series one. He and Brian Thompson are good friends, and frequently play golf together.
 * Bob Caville (Peter Stratford) is the network's managing director, and definitively pulls the office into line.
 * Jan Whelan (Genevieve Mooy) is the network's head of publicity in series 1 and 2. Jan refers to everyone as "poppet" and "darling" and has extravagantly camp mannerisms, but is in fact practical and efficient.
 * Trish (Lynda Gibson) is the network's head of publicity in series 3. Gibson also appears in "Workin' Class Man" from series 2 as the wife/mother of three of a working-class family who is visited by Brooke for a story regarding the difficulties of making ends meet.
 * Elliot Rhodes (Boris Conley) is a comedian and musician, performing short musical sketches about current events at the end of Friday night episodes of Frontline. Mike detests his act but is required to laugh uproariously and compliment it on air every week. In two episodes, he was fired at Mike's request.

Special guests
Frontline frequently featured celebrity cameos, unusually including major Australian politicians appearing as themselves, often but not always as interviewees. The most memorable appearance is that of Pauline Hanson in "The Shadow We Cast" (series 3), in which she turns her famous "please explain?" phrase on Mike. Noel Pearson appears as an interviewee later in the same episode. Other appearances include: John Hewson in "The Soufflé Rises" (series 1); Pat Cash in "The Desert Angel"; Cheryl Kernot in "We Ain't Got Dames" (series 1); Ben Elton, Bert Newton, Rosemary Margan, Amanda Keller and Anne Fulwood in "This Night of Nights" (series 1); Glenn Ridge in "Add Sex and Stir" and "Office Mole" (series 2); Glenn Robbins and Molly Meldrum in "Add Sex and Stir"; George Negus in "Add Sex and Stir" and "Dick on the Line" (series 3); and Ian Baker-Finch in "A Hole in the Heart". Harry Shearer appeared in the series 2 episode "Changing the Face of Current Affairs", where he played the character of Larry Hadges. Merv Hughes also starred in the series 2 episode "Workin' Class Man".

Other guest stars appeared in mock-ups of their own shows: Mike Moore appeared on fictitious episodes of Burke's Backyard with Don Burke, Rex Hunt's fishing show, and The AFL Footy Show with Sam Newman. Stuart Littlemore, who at the time was hosting the media commentary show Media Watch, appeared in several fictitious episodes as a critic of Frontline.

Production strategies
Frontline broke new ground for Australian situation comedy, by adopting some innovative production strategies. Its rapid production schedule was inspired by UK series Drop the Dead Donkey, where each episode was written and taped in a single week and scripts were closely based on the real news stories of the preceding seven days.

The Frontline scripts were likewise written and the series filmed with a short period, often within a single week. It was a fully collaborative effort, with Cilauro, Kennedy, Gleisner and Sitch all sharing writing and directing duties, and the cast all contributing ideas during all stages of production. So sometimes when the show appeared on then-current events, it was a coincidence, as episodes were delayed by several months. In other cases there was direct commentary on real events, albeit not extremely recent ones.

To create a heightened illusion of grainy documentary realism, footage was shot under fluorescent lights in an actual office building set, and taped on hand-held Hi-8 camcorders usually operated by Gleisner and Cilauro. The footage was then transferred onto film and finally transferred back to videotape (see: Kinescope). Footage that was portrayed as being part of the Frontline broadcast (i.e., studio or field reports) was shot at broadcast quality, to increase the "realism" of the satire and complement the behind-the-scenes footage.

Other airings
In 1997, Channel Seven bought the rights to the series; however, they only aired a handful of episodes. The show was perceived by management as "too close to the bone" for a network significantly focused upon its prime-time current affairs ratings battle with rival stations. The Comedy Channel has shown the series as late as 2005. It was shown again on ABC TV in 2018 and in 2020–21.

In America, Frontline was shown as either Behind the Frontline on cable or as Breaking News on PBS (which already has a news series titled Frontline).

In the UK, series 1 and 2 were shown by the Paramount Comedy Channel. Series 3, however, was never screened.

In Canada, it was aired as Behind the Frontline on Showcase in 1997.

Impact
The series was extremely popular through its run, winning a Logie Award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Comedy in 1995, and a Logie for Alison Whyte as most outstanding actress in 1997. Critics often place Frontline at or near the top of lists of "the best Australian TV shows ever made".

Six episodes from series one were a core text in the Year 12 English Advanced syllabus for the Higher School Certificate in New South Wales (2000–2008) for Module C: Representation and Text: Elective 1: Telling the Truth. The episodes are "Playing the Ego Card", "Add Sex and Stir", "The Siege", "Smaller Fish to Fry", "We Ain't Got Dames", and "This Night of Nights". The show has also been used as a text response for both Years 11 and 12 in the English units of the Victorian Certificate of Education. Episodes of Frontline have been analysed for the Media topic in the Year 10 English syllabus in New South Wales since at least 2001 and in Western Australia since at least 2009.

MentalAs campaign
In October 2014, Sitch reprised the role of Mike Moore and Frontline during a short sketch on the Friday Night Crack Up as part of the ABC's "MentalAs" campaign to raise money and awareness for mental health issues.

title: Frontline (Australian TV series)


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Frédéric Bastiat

Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (30 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was a French economist, writer and a prominent member of the French Liberal School.

A member of the French National Assembly, Bastiat developed the economic concept of opportunity cost and introduced the parable of the broken window. He was described as "the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived" by economic theorist Joseph Schumpeter.

As an advocate of classical economics and the economics of Adam Smith, his views favored a free market and influenced the Austrian School. He is best known for his book The Law, where he argued that law must protect rights such as private property, not "plunder" others' property.

Biography
Bastiat was born on 29 June 1801 in Bayonne, Aquitaine, a port town in the south of France on the Bay of Biscay. His father, Pierre Bastiat, was a prominent businessman in the town. His mother died in 1808 when Frédéric was seven years old. His father moved inland to the town of Mugron, with Frédéric following soon afterward. The Bastiat estate in Mugron had been acquired during the French Revolution and had previously belonged to the Marquis of Poyanne. Pierre Bastiat died in 1810, leaving Frédéric an orphan. He was fostered by his paternal grandfather and his unmarried aunt Justine Bastiat. He attended a school in Bayonne, but his aunt thought poorly of it and so enrolled him in the school Saint-Sever. At age 17, he left school at Sorèze to work for his uncle in his family's export business. It was the same firm where his father had been a partner.

Bastiat began to develop an intellectual interest as he no longer wished to work with his uncle and desired to go to Paris for formal studies. This hope was not realized as his grandfather was in poor health and wished to go to the Mugron estate. Bastiat accompanied him and cared for him. The next year when Bastiat was 24, his grandfather died, leaving him the family estate, thereby providing him with the means to further his theoretical inquiries. Bastiat developed intellectual interests in several areas including philosophy, history, politics, religion, travel, poetry, political economy and biography. After the middle-class Revolution of 1830, Bastiat became politically active and was elected justice of the peace of Mugron in 1831 and to the Council General (county-level assembly) of Landes in 1832. Bastiat was elected to the national legislative assembly after the French Revolution of 1848.

His public career as an economist began only in 1844, when his first article was published in the Journal des économistes during October of that year and it was ended by his untimely death in 1850. Bastiat contracted tuberculosis, probably during his tours throughout France to promote his ideas and that illness eventually prevented him from making further speeches (particularly at the legislative assembly to which he was elected in 1848 and 1849) and ended his life. In The Law, he wrote: "Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate)".

This last line is understood by translators to be a reference to the effects of his tuberculosis. During the autumn of 1850, he was sent to Italy by his doctors, and he first traveled to Pisa, then to Rome. On 24 December 1850, Bastiat called those with him to approach his bed and murmured twice the words "the truth" before he died at the age of 49.

Works
Bastiat was the author of many works on economics and political economy, generally characterized by their clear organization, forceful argumentation and acerbic wit. Economist Murray Rothbard wrote that "Bastiat was indeed a lucid and superb writer, whose brilliant and witty essays and fables to this day are remarkable and devastating demolitions of protectionism and of all forms of government subsidy and control. He was a truly scintillating advocate of an unrestricted free market". However, Bastiat himself declared that subsidy should be available, albeit limited under extraordinary circumstances, saying the following: "'Under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the State should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions'."

Among his better-known works is Economic Sophisms, a series of essays (originally published in the Journal des économistes) which contain a defence of free trade. Bastiat wrote the work while living in England to advise the shapers of the French Republic on perils to avoid. Economic Sophisms was translated and adapted for an American readership in 1867 by the economist and historian of money Alexander del Mar, writing under the pseudonym Emile Walter.

Economic Sophisms and the candlemakers' petition
Contained within Economic Sophisms is the satirical parable known as the candlemakers' petition in which candlemakers and tallow producers lobby the Chamber of Deputies of the French July Monarchy (1830–1848) to block out the Sun to prevent its unfair competition with their products. Also included in the Sophisms is a facetious petition to the king asking for a law forbidding the usage of everyone's right hand, based on a presumption by some of his contemporaries that more difficulty means more work and more work means more wealth.

The Law (1850)
Bastiat's most famous work is The Law, originally published as a pamphlet in 1850. It defines a just system of laws and then demonstrates how such law facilitates a free society. In The Law, Bastiat wrote that everyone has a right to protect "his person, his liberty, and his property". The state should be only a "substitution of a common force for individual forces" to defend this right. According to Bastiat, justice (meaning defense of one's life, liberty and property) has precise limits, but if government power extends further into philanthropic endeavors, then government becomes so limitless that it can grow endlessly. The resulting statism is "based on this triple hypothesis: the total inertness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, and the infallibility of the legislator". The public then becomes socially engineered by the legislator and must bend to the legislators' will "like the clay to the potter", saying: Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law – by force – and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes.

Bastiat posits that the law becomes perverted when it punishes one's right to self-defense (of his life, liberty and property) in favor of another's right to legalized plunder which he defines as "if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime" in which he includes the tax support of "protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works". According to Bastiat, legal plunder can be committed in "an infinite number of ways. Thus, we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism". Bastiat also made the following humorous point: "If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"

"What is Seen and What is Not Seen"
In his 1850 essay "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas" ("What is seen and what is not seen"), Bastiat introduced through the parable of the broken window the concept of opportunity cost in all but name. This term was not coined until over sixty years after his death by Friedrich von Wieser in 1914.

Debate with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Bastiat also famously engaged in a debate between 1849 and 1850 with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon about the legitimacy of interest. As Robert Leroux argued, Bastiat had the conviction that Proudhon's anti-interest doctrine "was the complete antithesis of any serious approach". Proudhon famously lost his temper and resorted to ad hominem attacks: "Your intelligence is asleep, or rather it has never been awake. You are a man for whom logic does not exist. You do not hear anything, you do not understand anything. You are without philosophy, without science, without humanity. Your ability to reason, like your ability to pay attention and make comparisons is zero. Scientifically, Mr. Bastiat, you are a dead man."

Views
Bastiat asserted that the sole purpose of government is to protect the right of an individual to life, liberty and property and that it is dangerous and morally wrong for government to interfere with an individual's other personal matters. From this, Bastiat concluded that the law cannot defend life, liberty and property if it promotes legal or legalized plunder which he defined as using government force and laws to take something from one individual and give it to others (as opposed to a transfer of property via mutually agreed contracts without using fraud or violent threats against the other party, which Bastiat considered a legitimate transfer of property).

In The Law, Bastiat explains that if the privileged classes or socialists use the government for legalized plunder, this will encourage the other socioeconomic class to also use legal plunder and that the correct response to the socialists is to cease all legal plunder. Bastiat also explains why his opinion is that the law cannot defend life, liberty and property if it promotes socialist policies. When used to obtain legalized plunder for any group, he says that the law is perverted against the only things (life, liberty and property) it is supposed to defend.

Bastiat was a strong supporter of free trade who was inspired by and routinely corresponded with Richard Cobden and the English Anti-Corn Law League and worked with free-trade associations in France.

Because of his emphasis on the mutual gains to be had from free exchange, on subjective value, and on the importance of deductive reasoning (as opposed to mathematical models) in deriving economic conclusions, Bastiat has been described by Mark Thornton, Thomas DiLorenzo and other economists as a forerunner of the Austrian School, with Thornton positing that through taking this position on the motivations of human action he demonstrates a pronounced "Austrian flavor."

Bastiat's tomb
Bastiat died in Rome and is buried at San Luigi dei Francesi in the center of that city.

title: Frédéric Bastiat