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Michael J. Pollard

Michael J. Pollard (born Michael John Pollack Jr.; May 30, 1939 – November 20, 2019) was an American character actor. With his distinctive bulbous nose, dimpled chin and smirk, he gained a cult following, usually portraying quirky, off-beat, simplistic but likeable supporting characters. He was best known for his role as C.W. Moss, in the film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which earned him critical acclaim along with nominations for an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. Other notable appearances include The Wild Angels (1966), Hannibal Brooks (1969), Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970), Dirty Little Billy (1972), American Gothic (1988), and Tango & Cash (1989).

Early life
Pollard was born in Passaic, New Jersey, and brought up in the nearby North Jersey communities of Garfield and Clifton. He was the son of Sonia V. (née Dubanowich) and Michael John Pollack, a bar manager. His parents were both of Polish descent. His mother was born in New York, and his father was born in New Jersey. Pollard's father supported his wife and Michael Jr. by working 60 hours a week as a barman at O'Rourke's Tap Room. Pollard attended Montclair Academy (now Montclair Kimberley Academy) and Actors Studio in New York.

Early career
Pollard had his earliest screen roles in television, with multiple appearances in programs broadcast during 1959. He had two roles in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Appointment at Eleven", a minor part as a shoeshine boy and as herpetologist Hansel Eidelpfeiffer in "Anniversary Gift". Pollard also portrayed Homer McCauley, the dramatic lead, in a television adaptation of William Saroyan's novel The Human Comedy, narrated by Burgess Meredith, and broadcast as an episode of the DuPont Show of the Month. That same year Pollard appeared in David Hedison's 16-segment NBC espionage TV series Five Fingers in the episode "The Unknown Town".

Later that same year, Pollard appeared in episode five of CBS's The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis as Jerome Krebs, the first cousin of Maynard G. Krebs, played by Bob Denver, who in real life had been drafted into the United States Army. Pollard's character was to have been a replacement for Maynard, but disappeared when Denver was classified 4-F and was able to return to the series.

Pollard created the non-singing role of Hugo Peabody in the original Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie. In 1962, Pollard appeared in the short-lived Robert Young comedy/drama series Window on Main Street in the episode "The Boy Who Got Too Many Laughs". That same year he was cast in the role of Virgil, Deputy Barney Fife's socially awkward but talented cousin, on CBS's The Andy Griffith Show.

In 1963, he appeared on an episode of ABC's Channing, a drama about college life starring Jason Evers and Henry Jones. That same year Pollard played the role of Digby Popham in the Walt Disney family musical Summer Magic, opposite Hayley Mills. He was cast as Danny Larkin in the 1963 episode "Tell Me When You Get to Heaven" of the ABC drama, Going My Way, starring Gene Kelly as a Roman Catholic priest in New York City.

Pollard played the role of Cyrus in a 1964 episode of the CBS western series Gunsmoke, titled "Journey for Three". That year he also appeared as Ted Mooney, son of Mr. Mooney, on The Lucy Show. In 1965, he played the role of "Jingles" in the episode "The Princess and the Paupers" on the ABC crime drama, Honey West, starring Anne Francis. In 1966, Pollard starred in the role of Bernie in the popular NBC espionage series I Spy (the episode titled "Trial by Treehouse", aired October 19, 1966), alongside series regulars Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, and guest stars Cicely Tyson and Raymond St. Jacques. Also in 1966, Pollard played the (uncredited) role of Stanley, the runny-nosed airplane mechanic, in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.

Pollard was known for his short stature (five feet and six inches), which facilitated his getting youthful roles into his thirties. One such role was in the original Star Trek series as the teenage leader of an all-child planet in the episode "Miri" (1966): "Michael J. Pollard is smarmily effective as, in essence, a cult leader for the kids, and the kids themselves manage a perfect blend of creepy, scary, and silly. The cry of “bonk-bonk on the head” is amusing right up until twenty kids pile onto Kirk and he emerges with blood seeping down the sides of his head." He also appeared in a first-season episode of Irwin Allen's Lost In Space as a nameless Peter Pan-like boy who lives in the dimension behind all mirrors ("The Magic Mirror").

In 1967, he played the supporting role of C. W. Moss in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, alongside Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, and Estelle Parsons, for which he received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor and won a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. The role led to his joke candidacy in 1968 for President of the United States, complete with a campaign song: "Michael J. Pollard for President", recorded by DJ and recording artist Jim Lowe, best known for the 1950s hit "The Green Door". (The record features Pollard, asking, "Hey, man ... president of what ...?" and a snippet from real candidate Robert F. Kennedy; Kennedy was assassinated soon after the disc came out, which led many radio stations to refuse to play it.)

Also in 1967, Pollard played the lead role in Derek May's short drama, Niagara Falls. Later that year, he was once again singled out for praise in Carl Reiner's autobiographical comedy Enter Laughing; noted film critic Roger Ebert wrote: "Michael J. Pollard, an unknown before his fascinating entry in Bonnie and Clyde, brings his squint and grin to the part of Marvin, our hero's buddy, and steals every scene. There is something about Pollard that is absolutely original and seems to strike audiences as irresistibly funny and deserving of affection. If he works at it and gets a break or two, there will be no stopping him. Really. All he needs is visibility, and people will become addicted."

In 1969, he played the supporting role of an escaped American POW, "Packy", in the British World War II-themed comedy, Hannibal Brooks, directed by Michael Winner.

1970s–2019
In 1970, Pollard had a starring role as Little Fauss in the cult motorcycle racing movie Little Fauss and Big Halsy with Robert Redford, Noah Beery Jr., Lucille Benson, and Lauren Hutton.

Pollard starred in Dirty Little Billy (1972), a revisionist western depicting Billy the Kid at the beginning of his criminal career, set in Coffeyville, Kansas:"This is no typical, Tinseltown western though. It's more like The Making of a Sociopath, with Michael J. Pollard starring as displaced, 17-year-old Billy Bonney, in the days leading up to his evolution into the notorious Billy the Kid ... this is the perfect role for Pollard. And though a little old to play a teenager (he was 33), he hands us a Billy who's perpetually victimized by bad luck, until he finally blows a gasket at the very end and sparks his future." In 1974, he played the role of a young man dying of cancer, in the season one opening episode, "The Time of His Life", of the trucking TV series Movin' On. He later had a key supporting role in the 1980 cult film Melvin and Howard about the Melvin Dummar-Howard Hughes Mormon Will controversy. Pollard also starred in 6 episodes of the failed CBS comedy series Leo & Liz in Beverly Hills (1986) with Harvey Korman and Valerie Perrine.

In 1987, Pollard played the role of an inquisitive volunteer firefighter, Andy, in the film Roxanne, starring Steve Martin. The following year Pollard played the role of Herman, a homeless man whose death strongly affects Bill Murray's character in the Christmas movie Scrooged. Also in 1988, Pollard played a villain in the horror film American Gothic.

In 1989, Pollard had a minor role in Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland and a larger role (as the inventor of super weapons and a super car) in Tango & Cash, which also starred Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone. Also in 1989, he had a two-episode role as the fifth-dimensional imp-villain Mr. Mxyzptlk in the Superboy TV series.

Pollard played Bug Bailey in the popular 1990 film Dick Tracy.

In 1992, he starred in a sixth-season episode of Ray Bradbury Theater, The Handler, in which he portrayed a mortician who tried to give his clients a little extra treatment that he thought they should have. In 1993, he appeared in the horror film Skeeter. In 1997, he played the role of Aeolus in The Odyssey starring Armand Assante.

Pollard continued to work in film and television into the 21st century, including his appearance as "Stucky" in the 2003 Rob Zombie-directed cult classic ''House of 1000 Corpses.

Personal life
Pollard was married to actress Beth Howland, with whom he had one daughter, Holly Howland. He had a son, Axel Emmett Pollard, from a second marriage to Annie Tolstoy.

Death
Michael J. Pollard died on November 20, 2019, from cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California. He was 80.

Filmography

 * Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1959) (Season 5 Episode 3: "Appointment at Eleven") as Shoeshine Boy
 * Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1959) (Season 5 Episode 6: "Anniversary Gift") as Hansel Eidelpfeiffer
 * It Happened to Jane (1959) as Lloyd (uncredited)
 * Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) as George
 * The Andy Griffith Show (1962) as Cousin Virgil
 * The Stripper (1963) as Jelly
 * Summer Magic (1963) as Digby Popham
 * Gunsmoke (1964) as Cyrus
 * The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966) as Stanley (airplane mechanic) (uncredited)
 * The Wild Angels (1966) as Pigmy
 * The Magic Mirror: Irwin Allen's Lost in Space as the Boy behind the mirror
 * Star Trek: The Original Series (1966) (Season 1 Episode 8: "Miri" – Jahn
 * Enter Laughing (1967) as Marvin
 * Caprice (1967) as Barney
 * Bonnie and Clyde (1967) as C.W. Moss
 * Niagara Falls (1967)
 * Jigsaw (1968) as Dill
 * Hannibal Brooks (1969) as Packy
 * Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970) as Little Fauss
 * The Legend of Frenchie King (1971) as The Sheriff
 * Morbo (1972) as Hombre de la casa
 * Dirty Little Billy (1972) as Billy Bonney
 * Sunday in the Country (1974) as Leroy
 * Four of the Apocalypse (1975) as Clem
 * Between the Lines (1977) as The Hawker
 * Melvin and Howard (1980) as Little Red
 * Heated Vengeance (1985) as Snake
 * Riders of the Storm (1986) as Tesla
 * The Patriot (1986) as Howard
 * America (1986) as Bob Jolly
 * Roxanne (1987) as Andy
 * American Gothic (1988) as Woody
 * Scrooged (1988) as Herman
 * Season of Fear (1989) as Bob
 * Fast Food (1989) as Bud
 * Night Visitor (1989) as Stanley Willard
 * Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989) as Herman Miranda
 * Next of Kin (1989) as Harold
 * Heartstopper (1989) as Dr. Lubbock
 * Tango & Cash (1989) as Owen
 * Why Me? (1990) as Ralph
 * I Come in Peace (1990) as Boner
 * Dick Tracy (1990) as Bug Bailey
 * The Arrival (1991) as Lou
 * Joey Takes a Cab (1991) as Alan
 * Another You (1991) as Brad (uncredited)
 * The Art of Dying (1991) as Delbert
 * Motorama (1991) as Lou
 * Split Second (1992) as The Rat Catcher
 * Arizona Dream (1993) as Fabian
 * Skeeter (1993) as Hopper
 * Mad Dog Time (1996) as Red Mash
 * The Odyssey (1997) as Aeolus
 * Stir (1997) as Hotel Manager
 * Merchants of Venus (1998) as The Senator
 * The Unknown Cyclist (1998) as Gabe Sinclair
 * Tumbleweeds (1999) as Mr. Cummings
 * The Debtors (1999)
 * Forever Lulu (2000) as Hippie
 * Danny and Max (2000) as Berquist
 * Out of the Black (2001) as Ned
 * House of 1000 Corpses (2003) as Stucky
 * Sunburnt Angels (2011) as Cards
 * The Woods (2012) as Moose

In popular culture

 * In 1968, DJ-turned-singer Jim Lowe (who hit the top of the charts in 1956 with "The Green Door") recorded "Michael J. Pollard for President" on the Buddah Records label.
 * Pollard suggested the title for the Traffic song "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys".
 * AMT released a $1/25$ model kit of the Michael J. Pollard "Flower Power 1936 Ford" Item # T218-200.
 * Actor Michael J. Fox, whose real middle name is Andrew, adopted the middle initial "J." as a homage to Pollard.

title: Michael J. Pollard


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MSN

MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is an American web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.

The Microsoft Network was initially a subscription-based dial-up online service that later became an Internet service provider named MSN Dial-up. At the same time, the company launched a new web portal named Microsoft Internet Start and set it as the first default home page of Internet Explorer, its web browser. In 1998, Microsoft renamed and moved this web portal to the domain name www.msn.com, where it has remained.

In addition to its original MSN Dial-up service, Microsoft has used the 'MSN' brand name for a wide variety of products and services over the years, notably Hotmail (later Outlook.com), Messenger (which was once synonymous with 'MSN' in Internet slang and has now been replaced by Skype), and its web search engine, which is now Bing, and several other rebranded and discontinued services.

The recent website and suite of apps offered by MSN was first introduced by Microsoft in 2014 as part of a complete redesign and relaunch. MSN is based in the United States and offers international versions of its portal for dozens of countries around the world.

Microsoft Internet Start

From 1995 to 1998, the MSN.com domain was used by Microsoft primarily to promote MSN as an online service and Internet service provider. At the time, MSN.com also offered a custom start page and an Internet tutorial, but Microsoft's major web portal was known as "Microsoft Internet Start", and was located at home.microsoft.com.

Internet Start served as the default home page for Internet Explorer and offered basic information such as news, weather, sports, stocks, entertainment reports, links to other websites on the Internet, articles by Microsoft staff members, and software updates for Windows. Microsoft's original news website (now NBCNews.com) which launched in 1996, was also tied closely to the Internet Start portal.

MSN.com
In 1998, the largely underutilized 'MSN.com' domain name was combined with Microsoft Internet Start and reinvented as both a web portal and as the brand for a family of sites produced inside Microsoft's Interactive Media Group. The new website put MSN in direct competition with sites such as Yahoo!, Excite, and Go Network. Because the new format opened up MSN's content to the world for free, the Internet service provider and subscription service were renamed to MSN Internet Access at that time. (That service eventually became known as MSN Dial-up.)

The relaunched MSN.com contained a whole family of sites, including original content, channels that were carried over from 'web shows' that were part of Microsoft's MSN 2.0 experiment with its Internet service provider in 1996–97, and new features that were rapidly added. MSN.com became the successor to the default Internet Explorer start page, as all of the previous 'Microsoft Internet Start' website was merged with MSN.com.

Some of the original websites that Microsoft launched during that era remain active in some form today. Microsoft Investor, a business news and investments service that was once produced in conjunction with CNBC, is now MSN Money;  CarPoint, an automobile comparison and shopping service, is now MSN Autos; and the Internet Gaming Zone, a website offering online casual games, is now MSN Games. Other websites since divested by Microsoft include the travel website Expedia, the online magazine Slate, and the local event and city search website Sidewalk.com.

In the late 1990s, Microsoft collaborated with many other service providers, as well as other Microsoft departments, to expand the range of MSN's services. Some examples include MSN adCenter, MSN Shopping (affiliated with eBay, PriceGrabber and Shopping.com), and the Encarta encyclopedia with various levels of access to information.

Since then, MSN.com has remained a popular destination, launching many new services and content sites. MSN's Hotmail and Messenger services were promoted from the MSN.com portal, which provided a central place for all of MSN's content. MSN Search (now Bing), a dedicated search engine, launched in 1999. The single sign-in service for Microsoft's online services, Microsoft Passport (now Microsoft account), also launched across all MSN services in 1999. The MSN.com portal and related group of services under the 'MSN' umbrella remained largely the same in the early 2000s.

The sports section of the MSN portal was ESPN.com from 2001 to 2004, and FoxSports.com from 2004 to 2014. MSN had an exclusive partnership with MSNBC.com for news content from 1996 until 2012, when Microsoft sold its remaining stake in msnbc.com to NBCUniversal and the website was renamed NBCNews.com. Since then, MSN has launched 'MSN News', an in-house news operation.

As of May 2005, MSN.com was the second most visited portal website in the United States with a share of 23.2 percent, behind Yahoo! which held a majority.

MSN released a preview of an updated home page and logo on November 3, 2009. It was originally expected to be widely available to over 100 million U.S. customers by early 2010. MSN rolled out the newer logo, together with a redesign of the overall website, on December 25, 2009.

In 2012, MSN announced on its blog that it would be unveiling a new version of the MSN.com home page on October 26, exclusively for Windows 8, saying that the new version would be "clean, simple, and built for touch". Microsoft said it would be more app-like due to the speed of Internet Explorer 10. More new features included 'Flip Ahead', which allowed users to swipe from one article to the next. MSN for Windows 8 also had new deals with the AP and Reuters.

Rebranding of services
Many of MSN's services were reorganized in 2005 and 2006 under a new brand name that Microsoft championed at the time, Windows Live. This move was part of Microsoft's strategy to improve its online offerings using the Windows brand name. The company also overhauled its online software and services due to increasing competition from rivals such as Yahoo! and Google. The new name was introduced one service at a time. The group of Windows Live services used Web 2.0 technology to offer features and functionality through a web browser that were traditionally only available through dedicated software programs.

Some of the MSN services affected by the rebranding included MSN Hotmail, which became Windows Live Hotmail (now Outlook.com); MSN Messenger, which became Windows Live Messenger (now integrated into Skype); MSN Search, which became Live Search (now known as Bing); MSN Virtual Earth, which became Live Search Maps (now Bing Maps); MSN Spaces, which became Windows Live Spaces; MSN Alerts, which became Windows Live Alerts; and MSN Groups, which became Windows Live Groups. Some other services, such as MSN Direct, remained a part of the MSN family without transitioning to Windows Live.

Following the launch of Windows Live, the MSN brand took on a different focus. MSN became primarily an online content provider of news, entertainment, and common interest topics through its web portal, MSN.com, while Windows Live provided most of Microsoft's online software and services. In 2012, Microsoft began to phase out the Windows Live brand, referring to each service separately by its individual brand name without any 'Windows' prefix or association.

Subsequent redesign
Microsoft launched a completely rewritten and redesigned MSN website, making use of the company's modern design language, on September 30, 2014. The new MSN portal features a new version of the logo that follows a style similar to other current Microsoft products. The website no longer offers original content, instead of employing editors to repurpose existing content from partners at popular and trusted organizations. Much of the existing content on MSN was eliminated as the website was simplified into a new home page and categories, some of which have corresponding apps:

 * News: The latest news headlines and articles from a variety of hand-picked sources. Synced with the News app.
 * Weather: Current weather conditions, forecasts, maps, news, and traffic. Synced with the Weather app.
 * Entertainment: TV, movies, music, and celebrity news, as well as theater showtimes, tickets, and TV listings. Based on the former Bing Entertainment service. Also includes the MSN Games website for online casual games.
 * Sports: Up-to-the-minute scores, standings, and headlines from leagues worldwide. Synced with the Sports app.
 * Money: Stock market tickers and watchlists, personal finance, real estate, investments, currency converter, and more. Synced with the Money app.
 * Lifestyle: Headlines, features, and other content related to style, home & garden, family, smart living, relationships, and horoscopes.
 * Health & Fitness: Tools and information about weight loss, strength, exercise, nutrition, medicine, and more.
 * Food & Drink: Recipes, cooking tips, news from chefs, cocktails, and shopping lists.
 * Travel: Destinations, trip ideas, hotel search, flight search, flight status, and arrivals and departures. Previously based on Farecast.
 * Autos: Research and buying advice, auto-related news, information for enthusiasts, and coverage of auto shows worldwide.
 * Video: Trending and viral videos, comedy and pop culture, and videos from other MSN categories. Integrates with video search from Bing Videos.

The top of the home page provides access to Microsoft services Bing, Outlook.com, Skype, Office Online, OneNote, OneDrive, Bing Maps, and Groove Music, as well as popular social media services Facebook and Twitter. Signing into MSN with a Microsoft account allows for personalized content to appear and to be synchronized across devices on the website and in the corresponding apps. The redesign of the website led to the closure of MSN's longtime personalized home page service 'My MSN', which was made up of customized RSS feeds, as the new website no longer supports user-specified RSS content. However, it added some customizability, allowing each category on the home page to be reordered or hidden.

With the 2014 relaunch, MSN now supports responsive design and eliminates the need for a separate mobile website. The redesign of MSN proved positive and helped increase traffic with an additional 10 million daily visitors after two months.

In 2022, Microsoft began phasing out MSN for Microsoft Start, with news pages being moved to Start, and ads for the website appearing on the homepage. The homepage is the only element of the site that is still intact.

Apps
The MSN web-based apps provides users information from sources that publish to MSN.

Microsoft launched these apps along with the 2014 redesign of the MSN web portal, rebranding many of the Bing apps that originally shipped with Windows and Windows Phone. News, Weather, Sports, Money, and Travel first shipped with Windows 8, while Health & Fitness and Food & Drink first appeared in Windows 8.1. In December 2014, the apps became available across all the other major mobile device platforms as well: iOS, Android, and Fire OS.

The apps allow users a reasonable amount of freedom to decide which sources provide information. Each app has its own color code that is used on the live tile and internally. Originally, each app brought a unified experience with the MSN website and synchronized preferences across devices.

There are currently four apps in the suite: Start (previously News), Weather, Sports, and Money. In July 2015, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of the Food & Drink, Health & Fitness, and Travel apps on all platforms, and that they will not be bundled with Windows 10; those three apps are no longer offered.

After Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone division, Microsoft also started bundling MSN services with its Nokia-branded feature phones, though the only supported model was the Nokia 215. In addition to these apps, Microsoft developed a separate set of mobile apps specifically for MSN China.

Microsoft Start
Microsoft Start (previously named Microsoft News) is a news aggregator and service that features news headlines and articles chosen by editors. The app includes sections for top stories, U.S., world, money, technology, entertainment, opinion, sports, and crime, along with other miscellaneous stories. It allows users to set their own personalized favorite topics and sources, receive notifications of breaking news through alerts, filter preferred news sources, and alter font sizes to make articles easier to read.

Originally, Start included an RSS feed, but that capability was removed; Microsoft currently only allows users to subscribe to specified news sources, thereby curating news. Start uses the chaseable live tile feature introduced in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. If a user clicks on the Microsoft News Start menu tile when a particular story is shown, the user will see a link to that story at the top of the app when it launches.

Weather
MSN Weather (originally named Bing Weather) shows weather from a user's current location or any other location worldwide, and it allows users to define their favorite places, which will synchronize back to the Microsoft Start and across devices. Users can pin Weather tiles to the Start menu to see local weather conditions from multiple locations at a glance. It also offers satellite maps and has information regarding ski resorts. The app receives its weather conditions and forecasts from a variety of sources internationally. Weather uses weather conditions as the background, making it the only app that does not have a light/dark switch in Windows 10. Weather is not available for iOS; however, it comes preinstalled on the Nokia 215 phone from Microsoft Mobile that runs Series 30+; it is currently the only feature phone to have the app built-in.

Money
MSN Money (originally MoneyCentral, then MSN Moneycentral, before being rebranded as MSN Money in the mid-2000s - prior to being relaunched as a spin-off of Bing Finance) allows users to set up lists of stocks to watch, follow certain corporations and receive stock updates, get the latest headlines regarding stock markets, view real-time trading figures with a 30-minute delay, track their own personal finances, calculate mortgages, get information on commodities and bonds, and convert currency.

Esports Hub
MSN Esports (often referred to as MSN Esports Hub ) is a Bing intelligence AI curated webpage for the growing esports industry. Users can watch integrated streams from YouTube or Twitch. Microsoft's advanced AI called "Watch For", the algorithm originally made for Microsoft's Mixer is an artificial intelligence that uses computer vision algorithms on livestreams so that it can alert the viewer of significant moments. This algorithm is implemented in the MSN Esports Hub. Users can also check the calendar for dates of upcoming e-sport events and tournaments or the news for updates on games and their tournament. After the creation of the MSN Esports Hub, Microsoft acquired Smash.gg; an e-sport tournament platform.

Food & Drink
MSN Food & Drink (originally named Bing Food & Drink) is a discontinued recipe app that offers news related to foods and drinks, a personal shopping list that synchronizes across devices and the web, and a wine encyclopedia that contains information on over 1.5million bottles of wine, over 3.3million tasting notes, and hundreds of cocktail recipes. Users can control the app hands-free, add their own recipes from physical cookbooks or personal recipes by snapping a photo, add notes to recipes, and sort the recipes into collections. The app also collects information from famous chefs and lists them according to their style of cuisine.

Health & Fitness
MSN Health & Fitness (originally named Bing Health & Fitness) allowed users to track their intake of calories, look up nutritional information for hundreds of thousands of different foods, use a built-in GPS tracker, view step-by-step workouts and exercises with images and videos, check symptoms for various health conditions, and synchronize their health data to third-party devices such as activity trackers. MSN Health & Fitness formerly connected data with the Microsoft HealthVault, but it started using a Microsoft account with MSN's own cloud service to synchronize data when it was rebranded from Bing to MSN. The app is not related in any way to Microsoft's Xbox Fitness or Microsoft Health (the companion app for the Microsoft Band), despite being similar in function.

Sports
MSN Sports (originally named Bing Sports) displayed various sports scores and standings from hundreds of leagues around the world, as well as aggregated sports-related articles and news headlines. Sports also allowed the user to view slideshows and photo galleries, look up information about individual players and fantasy leagues, and set and track their favorite teams by selecting various topics from the hamburger menu. It also powered various predictive features within Microsoft's Cortana virtual assistant.

It was discontinued on July 20, 2021, in favor of the web portal.

Travel
MSN Travel (originally named Bing Travel) was a travel search engine that allows users to book hotels and flights, aggregates travel-related headlines, and offers detailed information about thousands of travel destinations. Data in the app is powered by various travel websites, including Expedia, formerly owned by Microsoft. Other features include finding information on local restaurants, viewing pictures (including panoramas) and historical data about destinations, and reading reviews by previous travelers. If the user is signed in, Cortana can track flights and get hotel information through the app. MSN Travel was the only app in the suite that was exclusive to Windows. The app was discontinued in September 2015 but can still be accessed via the web.

Previously, Microsoft had acquired Farecast in 2008, a website in the computer reservations system industry that offered predictions regarding the best time to purchase airline tickets. Farecast was founded in 2003 and collected over 175 billion airfare observations by 2007. Farecast's team of data miners used these airfare observations to build algorithms to predict future airfare price movements. Microsoft integrated it as part of its Live Search group of tools in May 2008 as Live Search Farecast; Microsoft rebranded it as Bing Travel on June 3, 2009, as part of its efforts to create a new search identity. In 2009, there were allegations that Bing Travel had copied its layouts from Kayak.com; Microsoft denied the allegations. By January 2013, Bing Travel results were powered by Kayak.com. As of January 2014, the fare prediction feature had been removed. As of May 2015, Microsoft rebranded the service to MSN Travel. In August 2015, MSN Travel flight search pages changed from being powered by Kayak.com to its competitor Skyscanner.

Older mobile apps
Microsoft first offered content from its MSN web portal on mobile devices in the early 2000s, through a service called Pocket MSN (in line with its Pocket PC products of the era) and later renamed MSN Mobile. The original MSN Mobile software was preloaded on many cell phones and PDAs, and usually provided access to legacy MSN services like blogs (MSN Spaces), email (Hotmail), instant messaging (MSN Messenger), and web search (now called Bing). Some wireless carriers charged a premium to access it. As many former MSN properties were spun off to Bing, Windows Live, and other successors in the late 2000s, the Microsoft Mobile Services division took over the development of mobile apps related to those services.

In the meantime, Microsoft's MSN apps took on a more content-related focus, as did the web portal itself. Previous versions of MSN apps that were bundled with Windows Mobile and early versions of Windows Phone, as well as MSN apps for Android and iOS devices in the early 2010s, were primarily repositories for news articles found on MSN.com. Other earlier MSN mobile apps included versions of MSN Weather and MSN Money for Windows Mobile 6.5,  MSN Money Stocks, and a men's magazine called 'MSN OnIt' for Windows Phone 7.

International
Microsoft's world headquarters is in the United States, so the main MSN website is based there. However, MSN has offered various international versions of its portal since its inception in 1995 for dozens of countries around the world. A list of international MSN affiliates is available at MSN Worldwide.

Following the redesign and relaunch of the MSN web portal in 2014, most international MSN websites share the same layout as the U.S. version and are largely indistinguishable from it, aside from their content. There were two exceptions: ninemsn, a longtime partnership between Microsoft and the Nine Network in Australia that launched in 1997 (Microsoft sold its stake in the venture in 2013 and ended its co-branding with Nine in 2016); and MSN China, an entirely customized version of MSN for China (Microsoft discontinued the portal in 2016, replacing it with a page that links to a number of other Chinese websites).

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

title: MSN


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Talk:Delerium

Albums
more information needs to be added to the albums section NeoVampTrunks 05:35, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

New Edits
I hope my edits will solve any problems addressed below. I felt that the article considered Delerium a pop band (and as an afterthought, one who happened to have an extensive, albeit dark past), so I attempted to bring it to neutrality by balancing all of Delerium's history here. Please, those of you who know the history better than I, add more content! Iluvchineselit 17:30, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Delerium fans, listeners, or otherwise interested parties, feel free to edit the article. Thanks to Msn.com Radio this group's music is now available to millions of listeners. BF

Delerium wasn't always chill out music.
This article completly ignores anything about Delerium before Semantic Spaces, when the music used to be good.

Karma?
OK, don't get me wrong - Karma was good, but Semantic Spaces was better. Popefelix 12:51, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Whatever your bias, i think the comment about Silence being the greatest song needs to be redacted. That's a bit of an over-reach. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:BD6C:1670:6D6B:21F2:838A:C12 (talk) 20:07, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Sound Tracks
Don't forget their inclusion in sound tracks, including the Tomb Raider one.
 * Yeah, I was just watching it on TBS or whatever out of curiousity and had to check my ears during the shower scene. Also, "Silence" has been put in many things. Listening to the early experimental noise tracks they did, or FLA, who would've guessed? Khiradtalk 13:23, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Fauxliage
Is Fauxliage really just a Delerium album? They have their myspace, under the band name Fauxliage, including the sentence "Fauxliage is the first full length collaboration between former Sixpence None the Richer singer, Leigh Nash, and Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber of Canadian ambient pop outfit Delerium." - which means they don't consider it just another Delerium album, doesn't it?

First Result
Someone who knows how to change this please do: this band's page is most likely not the first thing that someone searching for Delerium is looking for. The disambiguation page or the page about the medical disorder is more likely to be what they're looking for. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.21.192.104 (talk) 18:00, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

 * Note that only the band uses the misspelling. We need a better header to redirect people who accidently got here by misspelling it themselves. Okay, I've fixed it. S  B Harris 18:48, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move. Cúchullain t/ c 16:19, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Delerium (band) → Delerium – Title already redirects here. Unreal7 (talk) 23:33, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Prefer to restore previous redirect to Delirium. LCS check (talk) 15:08, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You must mean Delerium as per this edit ? If not please elaborate why you think this should redirect to Delirium. Zarcadia (talk) 00:32, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Weak support I don't like the idea of an R from misspelling usurping an actual title, though it wouldn't surprise me if many readers using this search term were, in fact, just misspelling delirium. Probably the best way to deal with this would be a distinguish hatnote. --BDD (talk) 16:33, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Support. No need for unnecessary disambiguation, but also agree distinguish hatnote would be useful. Zarcadia (talk) 20:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Support - current title contains unnecessary disambiguation per WP:AT and WP:D. --B2C 21:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Support, though in addition to distinguish, I'd include a hatnote to Delerium Records. Mind  matrix  21:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose per LCS, "delerium" should point to either delirium or delirium (disambiguation) or be a disambiguation page in itself. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 23:45, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Why should this page direct to delirium or delirium (disambiguation)? Please check your spelling carefully. Zarcadia (talk) 00:32, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Per LCS, I did note the spelling, as did LCS. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * These are two valid and independent words whose spelling differs in one letter. The correct action in such situations is to use a hatnote to distinguish between the two. Wikipedia currently has one subject specifically named "Delerium" - the band. Mind  matrix  14:03, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

External links modified
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External links modified
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Epiphany (2008)
This documentary probably belongs somewhere. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6507386/ 76.187.82.215 (talk) 03:43, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Delerium


text:
Bunny (disambiguation)

Bunny is a colloquial term for a rabbit.

Bunny may also refer to:

People

 * Bunny (surname)
 * Bunny (nickname)
 * The Bunny, ring name of Canadian professional wrestler Laura Dennis
 * Bunny, pseudonym of Carl E. Schultze (1866–1939), American newspaper cartoonist

Characters

 * Bunny (Harvey Comics), a Harvey Comics character
 * Barnaby "Bunny" Brooks Jr., a character in the television show Tiger & Bunny
 * Bunny (Lexx), a character on the television series Lexx
 * Bunny (Powerpuff Girls), a one-time character on the TV series Powerpuff Girls
 * Bunny (Sailor Moon) or Sailor Moon, the main character in Sailor Moon media
 * Bunny, a character in the comics with Zachary Zatara of the DC Universe
 * Bunny, a character in the film Platoon
 * Bunny, a character in the film Toy Story 4
 * Bunny, a character in the novel series MythAdventures, by Robert Asprin
 * Bunny, a character in the television series Eldorado
 * Bunny, a character in the television series As the World Turns
 * Bunny, the main character in the short film Big Buck Bunny
 * Bunny, the main character in the television series Untalkative Bunny
 * Bunny Bravo, a character in the television series Johnny Bravo
 * Bunny Corcoran (aka Edmund Corcoran), a character in the novel The Secret History
 * Bunny Halper, a character in the television series The Danny Thomas Show
 * Bunny Lebowski (aka Bunny LaJoya), a character in the film The Big Lebowski
 * Bunny Manders, a character in the short stories about A. J. Raffles
 * Bunny the makeup lady, a character on the American sketch comedy TV series Don't Look Now
 * Bunny Watson, a protagonist played by Katharine Hepburn in the film Desk Set
 * Bunny Wigglesworth, a character in the film Zorro, The Gay Blade
 * Howard "Bunny" Colvin, a character in the television show The Wire
 * Bunny Swan, Chinese character on Madtv played by Alex Borstein
 * Bunny Bones, a former member of Dread's crew, from Sonic Prime

Entertainment

 * Bunny (1998 film), an animated short
 * Bunny (2005 film), a Telugu-language film
 * Bunny (play), a play by Norman Krasna
 * Bunny (Beach Fossils album)
 * Bunny (Halo Circus album)
 * Bunny (webcomic)
 * Bunny (YuiKaori album)
 * Bunny (novel), a novel by Mona Awad

Place names

 * Bunny, Nottinghamshire, England, a village and civil parish
 * Bunny Park, a children's park with rabbits in Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa
 * Bunny park, the local name for Brent Lodge Park and Animal Centre, in Hanwell, England
 * Lough Bunny, a lake in the Burren in the west of Ireland

Other uses

 * Bunny, a term used in the sport of cricket, meaning an incompetent batsman
 * Bunny, a local term for a chine or coastal valley in Hampshire, England
 * Bunny, or Bunny chow, a fast food dish in South African cuisine
 * Bunny, or Playboy Bunny, a waitress at a Playboy Club

title: Bunny (disambiguation)


text:
Summer Triangle

The Summer Triangle is an astronomical asterism in the northern celestial hemisphere. The defining vertices of this imaginary triangle are at Altair, Deneb, and Vega, each of which is the brightest star of its constellation (Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra, respectively). The greatest declination is +45° and lowest is +9° meaning the three can be seen from all places in the Northern Hemisphere and from the home of most people resident in the Southern Hemisphere. The two stars in Aquila and Cygnus represent the head of an eagle and tail of a swan that looks east inscribed into the triangle and forming the altitude of the triangle. Two small constellations, Sagitta and Vulpecula, lie between Aquila in the south of the triangle and Cygnus and Lyra to the north.

History
The term was popularized by American author H. A. Rey and British astronomer Patrick Moore in the 1950s. The name can be found in constellation guidebooks as far back as 1913. The Austrian astronomer Oswald Thomas described these stars as Grosses Dreieck (Great Triangle) in the late 1920s and Sommerliches Dreieck (Summerly Triangle) in 1934. The asterism was remarked upon by Joseph Johann von Littrow, who described it as the "conspicuous triangle" in the text of his atlas (1866), and Johann Elert Bode connected the stars in a map in a book in 1816, although without label. These are the same stars recognized in the Chinese legend of The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, a story dating back some 2,600 years, celebrated in the Qixi Festival. The stars also bear ceremonial significance in the related celebrations of Tanabata, Chilseok, and Thất Tịch, derived from Qixi. In the mid- to late-20th century, before inertial navigation systems and other electronic and mechanical equipment took their places in military aircraft, United States Air Force navigators referred to this asterism as the "Navigator's Triangle".

Visibility

From mid-to-tropical northern latitudes:
 * the centre of the triangle appears about overhead around solar midnight during summer, and exactly so at about the 27th parallel north. This means it rises at sunset in the east and sets at sunrise in the west.
 * it is visible in the eastern sky in early mornings during spring.
 * In autumn and winter evenings, it is visible in the western sky until January.

From mid-southern latitudes, the asterism is in the north during the culmination season described above.

The stars of the Summer Triangle
Both Altair and Vega are bluish-white, rapidly-rotating A-type main sequence stars in the local neighbourhood of the sun. However, Deneb is a white supergiant star over 100 times as distant, and one of the most luminous stars in the entire galaxy.

title: Summer Triangle


text:
World Series Cricket

World Series Cricket (WSC) was a commercial professional cricket competition staged between 1977 and 1979 which was organised by Kerry Packer and his Australian television network, Nine Network. WSC ran in commercial competition to established international cricket. World Series Cricket drastically changed the nature of cricket, and its influence continues to be felt today.

Three main factors caused the formation of WSC — a widespread view that players were not paid sufficient amounts to make a living from cricket or reflect their market value and that following the development of colour television and increased viewer audiences of sports events, the commercial potential of cricket was not being achieved by the established cricket boards and Packer wished to secure the exclusive broadcasting rights to Australian cricket, then held by the non-commercial, government-owned Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), to realise and capitalise on the commercial potential of cricket.

After the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) refused to accept Channel Nine's bid to gain exclusive television rights to Australia's Test matches in 1976, Packer set up his own series by secretly signing agreements with leading Australian, English, Pakistani, South African and West Indian players, most notably England captain Tony Greig, West Indies captain Clive Lloyd, Australian captain Greg Chappell, future Pakistani captain Imran Khan and former Australian captain Ian Chappell. Packer was aided by businessmen John Cornell and Austin Robertson, both of whom were involved with the initial setup and administration of the series.

Australian Captain Ian Chappell summed up the quality of World Series Cricket by saying it was the toughest cricket that he ever played (having all the best players in the world involved).

Kerry Packer and the Australian television industry
In the mid-1970s, the Australian television industry was at a crossroads. Since its inception in 1956, commercial television in Australia had developed a reliance on imported programs, particularly from the United States, as buying them was cheaper than commissioning Australian productions. Agitation for more Australian-made programming gained impetus from the "TV: Make it Australian" campaign in 1970. This led to a government-imposed quota system in 1973. The advent of colour transmissions in 1975 markedly improved sport as a television spectacle and, importantly, Australian sport counted as local content. However, sports administrators perceived live telecasts to have an adverse effect on attendance. The correlation between sports, corporate sponsorship, and television exposure was not evident to Australian sports administrators at the time.

After the death of his father Sir Frank in 1974, Kerry Packer had assumed control of Channel Nine, one of the many media interests owned by the family's company Consolidated Press Holdings (CPH). With Nine's ratings languishing, Packer sought to turn the network around via an aggressive strategy that included more sports programming. Firstly, he secured the rights to the Australian Open golf tournament. He spent millions of dollars revamping The Australian Golf Club in Sydney as a permanent home for the tournament. Jack Nicklaus was hired to redesign the course and to appear in the tournament. Packer was a fan of cricket, which was undergoing a resurgence in popularity during the mid-1970s. In 1976, Packer sought the rights to televise Australia's home Test matches, the contract for which was about to expire. He approached the ACB with an offer of A$1.5 million for three years (eight times the previous contract), yet he was rebuffed. The ACB felt loyal to the ABC, which had broadcast the game for twenty years when the commercial networks showed little interest in the game. Packer believed that there was an "old-boy network" element to the decision, and he was furious at the dismissive way that his bid was handled. The government-funded ABC could not hope to match a commercial network's bid, but they were awarded another three-year contract worth only $210,000, commencing with the 1976–77 season.

Determined to get some cricket on Channel Nine, Packer put an offer to the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB) to telecast the Australian tour of England scheduled for 1977. His interest was further stimulated by a proposal to play some televised exhibition matches, an idea presented to him by Western Australian businessmen John Cornell and Austin Robertson. Robertson managed several high-profile Australian cricketers such as Dennis Lillee, while Cornell was Paul Hogan's business manager and on-screen sidekick.

Packer took this idea, then fleshed it out into a full series between the best Australian players and a team from the rest of the world. His mistrust of cricket's administrators deepened when the ACB recommended the TCCB accept an offer for their broadcasts rights from the ABC, even though ABC's $210,000 offer was only 14% of the offer from Packer. For the first time, the game's officialdom had a demonstration of Packer's wherewithal: he immediately doubled his original offer and won the contract. But he never forgot the machinations involved in winning the bid.

Secret signings
Packer's planning of the proposed "exhibition" series was audacious. In early 1977, he began contracting a list of Australian players provided by recently retired Australian Test captain Ian Chappell. A bigger coup was achieved when Packer convinced the England captain Tony Greig to not only sign on, but to act as an agent in signing many players around the world. By the time the season climaxed with the Centenary Test match between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 1977, about two dozen players had committed to Packer's enterprise, which as yet had no grounds to play on, no administration and was secret to all in the cricket world. It was a measure of the players' dissatisfaction with official cricket that they were prepared to sign up for what was still a vague concept and yet keep everything covert.

By the time the Australian team arrived to tour England in May 1977, thirteen of the seventeen members of the squad had committed to Packer. News of the WSC plans were inadvertently leaked to Australian journalists, who broke the story on 9 May. Immediately, all hell broke loose in the hitherto conservative world of cricket. Not unexpectedly, the English were critical of what they quickly dubbed the "Packer Circus" and reserved particular vitriol for the English captain Tony Greig, for his central role in organising the break-away. Greig retained his position in the team, but was stripped of the captaincy and ostracised by everyone in the cricket establishment, most of whom had been singing his praises just weeks before.

It seemed certain that all Packer players would be banned from Test and first-class cricket. The Australian players were a divided group and the management made their displeasure clear to the Packer signees. Dispirited by this turn of events and hampered by poor form and indifferent weather, Australia crashed to a 3–0 defeat, surrendering the Ashes won two years before. In light of the controversies the Sydney Gazette article clearly showed West Indian captain Clive Lloyd interviewed after leaving the Caribbean team to join Packer, Lloyd stated it was nothing personal it was clearly earning a more comfortable source of income. That interview created waves across the Caribbean and even in world cricket. It was then realised that the sport had been transformed into one's livelihood.

Court case
A largely unknown Kerry Packer arrived in London in late May 1977. He appeared on David Frost's The Frost Programme to debate his concept with commentators Jim Laker and Robin Marlar. Marlar's aggressive, indignant interrogation of Packer came unstuck when Packer proved to be articulate, witty, and confident that his vision was the way of the future. The show significantly raised Packer's profile and converted some to his way of thinking. The main goal of his trip was to meet the game's authorities and reach some type of compromise. He made a canny move by securing Richie Benaud as a consultant. Benaud's standing in the game and his journalistic background helped steer Packer through the politics of the game.

Cricket's world governing body, the International Cricket Conference (ICC), now entered a controversy initially perceived as an Australian domestic problem. They met with Packer, Benaud and two assistants at Lord's on 23 June to discuss the WSC plans. After ninety minutes of compromise from both sides had almost created common ground, Packer demanded that the ICC award him the exclusive Australian television rights after the 1978–79 season ended. It wasn't in the power of the ICC to do so and Packer stormed from the meeting to deliver the following unadulterated declaration of war: Had I got those TV rights I was prepared to withdraw from the scene and leave the running of cricket to the board. I will take no steps now to help anyone. It's every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. This outburst undid any goodwill that Packer had created during his earlier television appearance, and alarmed his contracted players, who had viewed his scheme as being as much philanthropic as commercial. The ICC decided to treat Packer's scheme with contempt when a month later they decided Packer's matches would not be given first-class status and the players involved would be banned from Test matches and first-class cricket.

A number of the signed players now considered withdrawing. Jeff Thomson and Alvin Kallicharan had their contracts torn up when it was discovered that they had binding agreements with a radio station in Brisbane requiring them to play for Queensland. Packer moved quickly to shore up support, meeting with the players and taking legal action to prevent third parties from inducing players to break their contracts. To clarify the legal implications (including the proposed bans), Packer backed a challenge to the TCCB in the High Court by three of his players: Tony Greig, Mike Procter and John Snow.

The case began on 26 September 1977 and lasted seven weeks. The cricket authority's counsel said that if the top players deserted traditional cricket then gate receipts would decline. Mr. Packer's lawyers stated that the ICC had tried to force the Packer players to break their contracts and to prevent others from joining them. Mr Justice Christopher Slade considered the following nine points:

 * 1) Are the contracts between WSC and its players void?
 * 2) Has WSC established that, as at 3 August, and subject to any statutory immunity conferred by the 1974 Act, it was a good cause of action in tort against the ICC based on inducement of breach of contract?
 * 3) Has WSC established that as at 3 August and subject as aforesaid, it had a good cause of action in tort against the TCCB based on the same grounds?
 * 4) Subject to the provisions of the 1974 Act, are the new ICC rules void as being in restraint of trade?
 * 5) Subject to aforesaid, are the proposed new TCCB rules void as being in restraint of trade?
 * 6) Is the ICC an employers' association within the 1974 Act?
 * 7) Is the TCCB an employers' association?
 * 8) If either the ICC or TCCB or both be employers' associations, does this itself bar any cause of action that would otherwise exist?
 * 9) In the light of the answers, what relief (if any) should be given to (a) the individual plaintiffs and (b) WSC?

Justice Slade in his judgement said that professional cricketers need to make a living and the ICC should not stand in their way just because its own interests might be damaged. He said the ICC might have stretched the concept of loyalty too far. Players could not be criticised for entering the contracts in secrecy as the main authorities would deny the players the opportunity to enjoy the advantages offered by WSC.

The decision was a blow to the cricket authorities and, adding insult to injury, they had to pay court costs. English County cricket teams were pleased as their players who had signed to play for Packer were still eligible to play for them.

"Supertests", the West Indies and drop-in pitches
Official cricket won a series of minor victories – Packer was unable to use the terms "Test match" or call their team of Australians "Australia", or use the official rules of cricket, which are the copyright of the Marylebone Cricket Club.

So the five-day matches became "Supertests", played by the "WSC Australian XI" and Richie Benaud set to work writing rules and playing conditions for the series. Most importantly, WSC was shut out of traditional cricket venues, so Packer leased two Australian rules football stadiums (VFL Park in Melbourne and Football Park in Adelaide), as well as Perth's Gloucester Park (a trotting track) and Sydney's Moore Park Showground.

The obvious problem was preparing grass pitches of suitable standard at these venues, where none had existed previously. By common consensus, it was considered impossible to create the pitches in such a short time. However, Packer hired curator John Maley, who pioneered the concept of "drop-in" pitches. These pitches were grown in hothouses outside the venue, then dropped into the playing surface with cranes. This revolutionary technique was the unsung highlight of the first season of WSC – without them, WSC would have been a folly.

Another unexpected element of the series was the emergence of a West Indian side. The concept was originally envisaged as Australia versus Rest of the World. When the West Indians were offered contracts that would pay them more than they could earn in an entire career, they all signed with alacrity. However, WSC used the West Indian players in the Rest of the World team as well.

The first WSC game, a "Supertest" between the Australians and the West Indians began at VFL Park on 2 December 1977. The standard of the cricket was excellent, but the crowds were poor, which was emphasised by the stadium's capacity of 79,000. The official Test match played in Brisbane at the same time, featuring the weakened Australian team and India, attracted far more spectators.

First season: 1977–78
Employing personality-based marketing, WSC placed great emphasis on the "gladiatorial" aspect of fast bowling and heavily promoted fast bowlers such as Dennis Lillee, Imran Khan, Michael Holding and Andy Roberts. Packer was doubtful of the effectiveness of slow bowling. To counteract the continual rotation of pace bowlers on pitches of unproven quality, WSC batsmen felt the need to increase their bodily protection. In the Sydney Supertest on 16 December, Australian David Hookes was hit a sickening blow from a bouncer bowled by West Indian Andy Roberts. Paradoxically, the effect of Hookes' broken jaw, captured graphically by Nine's cameras, served to "legitimise" the WSC matches: "... he had his jaw shattered by a bouncer from Andy Roberts ... Until that moment, WSC had looked suspiciously like a thrown-together entertainment package; Hookes' injury impressed the contest's intensity on all observers." This incident had another effect: the first helmets appeared on batsmen's heads. Initially, Englishman Dennis Amiss sported a motorcycle helmet when batting in WSC, and he was quickly followed by many other players. Protective cricket equipment developed rapidly, and by the end of WSC, virtually all batsmen in WSC and official Test matches were sporting some form of protective headwear.

WSC decided to place a greater emphasis on one-day cricket than it had previously been given in Australia. A one-day series, the "International Cup" featuring the Australian, West Indian, and World teams, was played alongside six Supertests in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. The first day/night match, played at Melbourne's VFL Park, attracted some curiosity value, but generally, the paying public were indifferent to the series. Many took a lead from the hostile press, and official cricket benefited from a dramatic Test series played between Australia and a touring Indian team. The ACB's masterstroke was the appointment of the 41-year-old Bob Simpson as Australian captain, after a ten-year retirement from first-class cricket. He led a team of relatively unknown youngsters (with the exception of fast bowler Jeff Thomson, who did not sign up for the WSC) to a 3–2 series victory which was not decided until the final Test in Adelaide. Big crowds attended the Tests, and the media coverage was very supportive of the ACB throughout the summer.

By contrast, Packer was seen disconsolately counting cars as they arrived in the car park at some of his matches. He held one glimmer of hope, however. The best-attended matches had been the day-night fixtures, and this format would become the backbone of the programming for the second season. In hindsight, his organisation's ability to even stage the games at such short notice was a triumph and excellent fine-tuning for what was to come. So far, the ACB had enjoyed the backing of the press and the true aficionados of the game. But a series of misfortunes and poor decisions came to plague the ACB in their battle to stay ahead of Packer.

The official Australian team toured the Caribbean under Bob Simpson in March 1978. The West Indies cricket officials had no wish to buy into the ACB-Packer fight and decided to select all of their WSC players for the first two Tests, until the West Indies Cricket Board of Control made a decision to leave out three of their WSC-contracted players for the 3rd Test, ostensibly to allow others a chance to play in Test matches prior to the West Indies' tour to India and Sri Lanka later in the year, which would be at a time that World Series Cricket could not guarantee the availability of their West Indian players. The non-selection of these three players led to the resignation of Clive Lloyd as captain, and all of the WSC contracted West Indian players to declare themselves unavailable for the rest of the series.

The united front weakens
Between the two WSC seasons, the united front presented by the ICC countries began to erode. The highest ill-feeling toward Packer existed in England, but many officials of the county clubs were prepared to keep Packer players on their books.

The West Indies were the most financially vulnerable, and only voted for the original ICC in the interests of unity. The financial and political problems of the recent Australian tour led them to begin negotiations with Packer for a WSC series in the Caribbean during the spring of 1979. Initially, Pakistan took a hard line and refused to select their Packer players, but when WSC signed additional Pakistanis during the off-season, and when an under-strength official Pakistan team were easily beaten by England in the three-Test series in the English summer of 1978, they took a more pragmatic approach, so when it came time in October 1978 for the first Test series between Pakistan and India for seventeen years, all the Packer players were included. Ostensibly, India were not involved as yet, but rumours abounded that their captain Bishan Bedi and star batsman Sunil Gavaskar had signed WSC options.

New Zealand's chief administrator, Walter Hadlee, had advocated a compromise from the start. Now he had no objection to WSC making a brief tour of his country in November, nor was he going to stop the Kiwis' best player, his son Richard, from appearing with WSC. The South Africans, subject to an international boycott caused by the apartheid policy of their government, were keen to see their individual cricketers compete with the world's best. Some were prepared to acclaim South Africa as the best side of the world on the basis of the performances of some of their players (LeRoux and Proctor best bowling averages, Barry Richards best batting average) in WSC.

Meanwhile, WSC continued to up the stakes for the embattled ACB, optioning a number of young Australians and signing more overseas players: they now had well over 50 cricketers under contract. After organising the tours of New Zealand and the West Indies, WSC began making noises about a tour to England and signing enough players for stand-alone England and Pakistan teams. A second-tier tour was created for the 1978–79 season, taking the game to provincial centres around Australia and giving back-up players an opportunity to play regularly. This tour covered a 20,000-kilometre route between Cairns in Queensland to Devonport in Tasmania. WSC created the "Cavaliers" for this secondary tour, a similar concept to the "International Cavaliers" teams of the 1960s in England. The team captained by Eddie Barlow was made of recently retired cricketers, such as Rohan Kanhai, David Holford and Ian Redpath and occasionally young Australians such as Trevor Chappell. It also starred a great innings at Maitland, New South Wales, by a then unheard of Kepler Wessels of 92 not out for the Cavaliers. These matches brought cricket to venues that rarely saw big games.

Packer demonstrated his political clout by getting New South Wales premier Neville Wran to overturn the ban on WSC and allow matches to be played at the traditional home of the game, the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). To boot, Wran had his government foot the bill to install floodlights at the SCG good enough to be used in WSC matches. WSC also gained access to Brisbane's Test ground, Brisbane Cricket Ground, and were offered use of the Adelaide Oval, which was rejected. Perth and Adelaide were dropped from the itinerary. A strategy of focusing on audiences in Melbourne and Sydney was now in place.

Second season: 1978–79
The war swung dramatically in Packer's favour on 28 November 1978 when the first day-night match on a traditional cricket ground was played at the SCG between the WSC Australian and West Indian teams. A near-capacity crowd of 44,374 turned out to watch the limited overs contest, serving a warning to the ACB. A few days later, the official Australian team was humbled in the first Test against England at Brisbane, a precursor to a 5–1 thrashing for a side now captained by the unprepared Graham Yallop. Even Yallop felt himself unsuited to the position, and his team was unable to compete with an experienced, professional England side. Although the Englishmen merely defeated the opposition presented, they further damaged the ACB's cause by playing slow, grinding cricket. Consequently, attendances were poor and the media clamoured for the Australian team to return to full strength.

On the other hand, WSC, with its aggressive marketing, nighttime play, and a plethora of one-day matches, had increased both attendances and television ratings. The targeted audience of women and children flocked to WSC, and the playing standard remained high.

The Supertest final at the SCG between Australia XI and Rest Of The World XI, played under lights, drew almost 40,000 spectators over three days. The sixth Australia-England Test at the same venue a week later was attended by just 22,000 people for four days of play. Later in the season, the ACB scheduled two Tests against Pakistan, which brought the number of Tests played by Australia to eight. This overkill further damaged the ACB's finances. The Pakistanis played their WSC men in what turned out to be an ill-tempered series.

WSC then headed to the Caribbean for a tense, hard-fought series that players from both Australia and West Indies declared the best they ever played in. A riot marred the Guyana Supertest, but the five Supertests and 12 one-day matches went some way toward reducing the debts of the West Indies board. The last cricket action of WSC occurred on 10 April 1979, the final day of a drawn Supertest at Antigua. The West Indies and Australia finished the series 1–1.

The rapprochement
By 1979, the ACB was in desperate financial straits and faced the prospect of fighting an opponent who had seemingly endless cash resources. In two seasons, the combined losses of the two biggest cricket associations, New South Wales and Victoria, totalled more than half a million dollars. Kerry Packer was also feeling the financial pinch – many years later, WSC insiders claimed that the losses he incurred were very much higher than the amounts quoted at the time. During March of that year, Packer instigated a series of meetings with then chairman of the ACB board, Bob Parish, which hammered out an agreement on the future of Australian cricket.

When Parish announced the truce on 30 May 1979, a surprise was in store for followers of the game. Not only had Channel Nine won the exclusive rights to telecast Australian cricket, it was granted a ten-year contract to promote and market the game through a new company, PBL Marketing. The ACB capitulation infuriated the English authorities and the ICC as they had provided much in the way of financial and moral support to the ACB, which now appeared to have sold out to Packer. According to the 1980 issue of Wisden: The feeling in many quarters was that when the Australian Board first found Packer at their throats, the rest of the cricket world supported them to the hilt; even to the extent of highly expensive court cases which cricket could ill afford. Now, when it suited Australia, they had brushed their friends aside to meet their own ends. The WSC Australian players (on tour in West Indies at the time) had no input into the negotiations. This left some disillusioned and apprehensive that they would suffer discrimination from the ACB in the coming years. The ACB opted to not select WSC-contracted players for the tours of England (for the 1979 World Cup) and India (for six Tests) later in the year. Both tours produced sub-standard Australian performances, and both were led by Kim Hughes.

For the 1979–80 season, Greg Chappell was restored as Australian captain and the team contained an even mixture of WSC and non-WSC players. The season's schedule was similar to the WSC format. England and West Indies toured, playing three Tests each against Australia, with a triangular one-day tournament (the World Series Cup) interspersed among the Tests. Australia's results were mixed: in the Test matches, they defeated England 3–0 (having lost 5–1 to the same opponents the previous summer) but lost 0–2 to West Indies, and they failed to make the final of the one-day tournament. The format of the season received heavy criticism, but still made a healthy profit, much of which went to PBL rather than the ACB.

Legacy
World Series Cricket changed the game in many ways. Due to the punishing schedule, cricketers had to be fitter than ever before.

Night matches have become very common, in all forms of the game, with the recent innovation of the Day-night test proving popular. Players became full-time professionals, and at least in the larger cricketing nations are very well-paid, mainly through television rights; broadcasters now have a huge say in the running of the game. With the advent of Twenty20 cricket, players can now play in many domestic leagues around the world and attract high salaries, partly due to broadcast rights. The Indian Premier League only trails the NFL in terms of per-match value of broadcast rights, sitting at USD 15.1 million per match, for a deal worth USD 6 billion running from 2023-27.

However, the traditional form of the game, first-class cricket and Test matches, is still played around the world, and in recent seasons has challenged one-day cricket for the interest of the public. Indeed, membership of a Test Cricket side is often seen as being more prestigious for players, due both to the more challenging nature of the format and to the higher turnover rate of one-day players. Kerry Packer described his involvement in World Series Cricket as "half-philanthropic".

Marketing was a major tool for World Series Cricket, and revolutionised the way cricket in Australia was marketed, with the catchy "C'mon Aussie C'mon" theme song, the simple logo, the coloured clothing worn by the players, and a range of merchandise. All of these techniques pioneered by World Series Cricket have become a staple of the way the game is now marketed in Australia.

In the Australian team, there was a division between the players who stayed loyal to the official XI and the Packer rebels, especially between players such as Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh, former WSC players, and Kim Hughes who stuck with the official side. The division went on into the 1980s. Many of WSC's players fitted back into the official Australian side, though a handful of players from outside WSC remained at the highest level, most notably Allan Border.

The ACB continued to use the name "World Series Cup" to describe the One Day International tournament it held during each summer, usually involving Australia and two other international teams. This format was from WSC's International Cup. The name was used until the mid-1990s.

Coloured dress, protective helmets, field restrictions, and cricket under lights became a standard part of the post-Packer game. Crucially, Packer drove home the lesson that cricket was a marketable game, which could generate huge revenues.

Austin Robertson when he was promoting his book Cricket Outlaws stated how much the directors were paid for World Series Cricket. John Cornell – $70,000, Paul Hogan – $20,000 and Austin Robertson – $10,000.

The Nine Network continued to hold the rights to Test and international cricket in Australia until 2018, when the rights were given to the Seven Network and Foxtel. As of late 2022, Nine is again seeking the rights to international cricket, with Seven suing Cricket Australia over the quality of the Big Bash League.

Trivia

 * During the life of WSC, 56,126 runs were made and 2,364 wickets taken. The 1977 ruling of the ICC that the matches were not first-class has remained, so none of the WSC players' records include the runs and wickets of the WSC era.
 * WSC's advertising jingle "C'mon Aussie C'mon" was released as a single and was number one on the Australian charts in February 1979.

title: World Series Cricket