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Slow Food

Slow Food is an organization that promotes local food and traditional cooking. It was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986 and has since spread worldwide. Promoted as an alternative to fast food, it strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages farming of plants, seeds, and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. It promotes local small businesses and sustainable foods. It also focuses on food quality, rather than quantity. It was the first established part of the broader slow movement. It speaks out against overproduction and food waste. It sees globalization as a process in which small and local farmers and food producers should be simultaneously protected from and included in the global food system.

Organization
Slow Food began in Italy with the founding of its forerunner organization, Arcigola, in 1986 to resist the opening of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome. In 1989, the founding manifesto of the international Slow Food movement was signed in Paris, France, by delegates from 15 countries.

At its heart is the aim to promote local foods and traditional gastronomy and food production. Conversely, this means an opposition to fast food and industrial food production.

The Slow Food organisation has expanded to include over 100,000 members, with branches in over 150 countries. Over 1,300 local convivia chapters exist. About 360 convivia in Italy—to which the name condotta (singular) / condotte (plural) applies—are composed of 35,000 members, along with 450 other regional chapters around the world. The organisational structure is decentralised: each convivium has a leader who is responsible for promoting local artisans, local farmers, and local flavors through regional events such as Taste Workshops, wine tastings, and farmers' markets.

Offices have been opened in Switzerland (1995), Germany (1998), New York City (2000), France (2003), Japan (2005), the United Kingdom, and Chile. Global headquarters are located in Bra, near Turin, Italy. Numerous publications are put out by the organisation, in several languages around the world. Recent efforts at publicity include the world's largest food and wine fair, the Salone del Gusto in Turin, a biennial cheese fair in Bra called Cheese, the Genoan fish festival called SlowFish, and Turin's Terra Madre ("Mother Earth") world meeting of food communities.

In 2004, Slow Food opened a University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo, in Piedmont, and Colorno, in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The Colorno branch has since been closed and transferred to Pollenzo. Carlo Petrini and Massimo Montanari are the leading figures in the creation of the university, whose goal is to promote awareness of good food and nutrition.

Objectives
Slow Food incorporates a series of objectives within its mission, including:

 * developing an "Ark of Taste" for each ecoregion, where local culinary traditions and foods are celebrated
 * creating "Praesidia" grassroots organizations to promote slow foods to the public
 * forming and sustaining seed banks to preserve heirloom varieties in cooperation with local food systems
 * preserving and promoting local and traditional food products, along with their lore and preparation
 * organizing small-scale processing (including facilities for slaughtering and short run products)
 * organizing celebrations of local cuisine within regions (for example, the Feast of Fields held in some cities in Canada)
 * promoting "taste education"
 * educating consumers about the risks of fast food
 * educating citizens about the drawbacks of commercial agribusiness and factory farms
 * educating citizens about the risks of monoculture and reliance on too few genomes or varieties
 * developing various political programmes to preserve family farms
 * lobbying for the inclusion of organic farming concerns within agricultural policy
 * lobbying against government funding of genetic engineering
 * lobbying against the use of pesticides
 * teaching gardening skills to students and prisoners
 * encouraging ethical buying in local marketplaces

Founder and president Carlo Petrini believes that "everyone has the right to good, clean, and fair food": good, meaning a high quality product with a flavorful taste; clean, meaning the naturalness in the way the product was produced and transported; fair, meaning adequate pricing and treatment for both the consumers and producers.

Slow Food Nation

Slow Food Nation was an event organized by Slow Food USA, which celebrates slow and sustainable foods. Slow Food Nation attracted an estimated audience of more than 50,000 people. Held over the Labor Day weekend from August 29 to September 1, 2008, the majority of the event took place in either San Francisco's Civic Center and Fort Mason Center. Slow Food Nation's founder is influential chef and author Alice Waters. In addition to a specially-created "victory garden" in front of San Francisco City Hall, a marketplace, tastings, and other events, Slow Food Nation featured panels led by food scholars such as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, as well as the founder of Slow Food, Carlo Petrini.

United States

In 2008, Slow Food USA hosted its largest gathering to date dubbed Slow Food Nation in San Francisco. The event reconvened in 2017 as Slow Food Nations, the stateside equivalent to Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, and was held in Denver, Colorado. The event is scheduled to continue in 2018.

, Slow Food USA has a membership of roughly 12,000, down from over 30,000 in 2008. In 2011, the organization was forced to make a series of staff layoffs and reductions and had faced a significant reduction in their income from wealthy supporters. This was partly attributed to the economic recession, but also to disagreements within the movement and a loss of several key personalities.

As of 2024, Slow Food USA has 200 chapters, down from 225 chapters in 2011. These are locally based and governed 501(c)3 non-profit organizations that hold events and education outreach programs that benefit their communities while carrying out the message of the slow food movement and advancing the local environmental movement. The movement also encourages the creation of urban gardens.

Beyond the chapters established within the cities in the United States, a number of universities are becoming recognised by Slow Food USA, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Slow Food-University of Wisconsin has five projects that are dedicated to the movement's efforts, including a Family Dinner Night, weekly café, and a Farm to University scheme. From then, 46 Slow Food chapters have been established on campuses of higher education.

Notable members include Alice Waters, Eric Schlosser, Pamela Sheldon Johns, Fabrizio Facchini and Michael Pollan. As of 2021, the executive director is Anna Mulé.

In October 2014, the organization formed an initial 15-month partnership with fast-food chain Chipotle Mexican Grill, which had the company funding $500,000 toward Slow Food USA's National School Garden Program; 100 school gardens in different cities across the US would be funded in an effort to teach children where food comes from and how food is grown.

United Kingdom
Slow Food UK works to raise strategic awareness about sustainability and social justice issues surrounding food and farming in Britain. In 2014, Slow Food UK devolved into Slow Food England, Slow Food Scotland, Slow Food Cymru, and Slow Food Northern Ireland. Slow Food UK as an entity provides administrative support to those nations and local groups, and the Slow Food UK Board is now made up of directors from the nations (Shane Holland, Chair & Director for England; John Cooke, Director for Scotland; Illtud Dunsford, Director for Wales; and Paula McIntyre, Director for Slow Food Northern Ireland). The numerous local groups are led by Slow Food members, who take significant grassroots action in their local communities. The many notable Slow Food UK members and supporters include Raymond Blanc and Jamie Oliver.

Some of the local groups are very large, such as Slow Food London, and run programmes such as the Slow Food Global Schools Twinning Programme, which are more akin to the work of a national office. Slow Food London is also the major campaigning Slow Food body within the UK, responding to every local, national, and European consultation on food, fisheries, and agriculture, and has even been a co-signatory in judicial review against the UK government in regards to food and farming, retaining a leading firm of solicitors pro bono on an ongoing basis.

Besides running national education programmes, such as Slow Food Kids, and Slow Food on Campus, Slow Food UK National Office co-ordinates fights to preserve British culinary heritage through the Chef Alliance and Forgotten Foods programmes (UK Ark of Taste). The Chef Alliance is a network of chefs committed to protecting Britain's edible biodiversity by cooking with Forgotten Foods, or foods that are produced on a very small scale and are being lost due to commercial varieties overtaking the market. The Forgotten Foods programme is part of the Slow Food International Ark of Taste. In 2014, the Chef Alliance had over 100 members, and now over 150 Forgotten Foods are recognized.

Australia
The Australian slow food movement aims to increase community awareness of the value from farm to market of good, clean, local food. A campaign is being mounted to have included in Slow Food International's Ark of Taste (nationally nominated threatened produce and food products) the following Australian foods: Kangaroo Island's Ligurian bee honey, the Queensland-native bunya nut, bull-boar sausage from Victoria, and Tasmanian leatherwood honey.

The Netherlands
In the Netherlands especially the Slow Food Youth Network (SFYN) is very active. SFYN is a worldwide network of young people creating a better future through food. SFYN believes that they, as young people, must play an important role in the future of food production and consumption. That is why they bring young consumers, producers, farmers, chefs and students closer together. In the Netherlands they do this through eat-ins, tastings, events such as World Disco Soup Day, the talkshow Als Warme Broodjes, campaigns such as food education and projects such as the SFYN Academy.

Latvia
In 2005, British-born Latvian chef Mārtiņš Rītiņš became the president of the newly-founded Latvian Slow Food Association, which has been organizing slow food festivals in cities across Latvia with cooking demonstrations by Rītiņš and other chefs, tastings by local organic producers and cultural handicrafts (such as fine silver jewellery, beeswax candles, leather books, pottery and hemp clothing) by local artisans.

Wine
In 2010, Slow Food International began its independent Slow Wine project with the release of a wine guide. Prior to 2010, Slow Food Worked with publisher Gambero Rosso to release a guide. The first edition of Slow Food's first solo effort was released in 1993, with the title "Slow Food guide to the wines of the world", translated into five languages and sold in more than 50,000 copies. The guide was an attempt to review not only the wines, but also the wineries and the people behind the bottle. Two editions of the guide have been published, also available in English.

Eco-gastronomy
Eco-gastronomy encompasses the Slow Food movement within a broader context. Eco-gastronomy is concerned with environmental sensitivity, biodiversity, and sustainable agriculture. In relation to the Slow Food movement, gastronomic knowledge is closely related to distinct biodiversity within different cultures around the world. Utilizing this knowledge allows for it to be used and defended.

In 2000, the Slow Food Presidia project was launched. The goal of the project was to protect and relaunch local and traditional agriculture at risk of extinction. Today, Slow Food Presidia includes communities that are committed to passing on traditional production techniques and crafts as well as preserving native food and livestock breeds. Each Presidium represents a community of producers inspired by the slow food philosophy, a traditional food product, a place, and cultural heritage and a legacy of knowledge. The Presidia Project represents a shift from cataloging information to implementing the knowledge through the direct involvement of food producers.

Criticisms
Slow Food's aims have been compared to the Arts and Crafts movement's response to 19th-century industrialisation. Some of the criticisms aimed at the movement are socioeconomic. For example, without significantly altering the working day of the masses, slow food preparation can be an additional burden to whoever prepares food. In contrast, the more affluent society can afford the time and expense of developing "taste", "knowledge", and "discernment". Slow Food's stated aim of preserving itself from the "contagion of the multitude" can be seen as elitist by those that consume fast food or are not part of the movement. In 1989, Petrini visited Venezuela and began to recognize the socioeconomic barriers that many faced with regard to the slow food movement. To address this, he adjusted the slow food agenda to include an alternative food approach that favored healthy, local, community-based food consumption and production. While this made the slow food movement more accessible for many, it did not eliminate all of the socioeconomic barriers faced within the movement.

title: Slow Food


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Eco-gastronomy

Eco-gastronomy is an approach to alternative consumption that stresses the importance of the interaction between humans and food and the effect produced by that. It aims to get a healthier and more sustainable food and, at the same time, to reduce the impact on the environment, from the productive and the consumptive side.

Term
The Latin term eco refers to how organisms relate to their environment, while gastronomy, according to food philosopher Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, is the intelligent knowledge of whatever concerns man's nourishment.

The fusion of these two words creates the concept of eco-gastronomy. The prefix eco is used to highlight the connections between "the art and appreciation of food" and every issue related to the process of food production and consumption, from the environmental care to the social and ethical concerns.

Ecogastronomy "links food and humans, while bringing attention to the responsibility that all people have for the health and well-being of our food ways".

Context
The concept of eco-gastronomy belongs to the field of food consumption that is rather criticized and contested as it involves a series of ethical issues, such as immediate versus delayed gratification, nature versus culture, necessity versus luxury, body versus mind, etc.

In this context there are a series of forms of critical and alternative consumption, associated by their critiques (generally deriving from the homogenization of capitalist mode of production) and their proposals of alternative lifestyles. A cohesive movement of alternative consumption does not exist, since every form of alternative consumption differs in its target and scope. What these phenomena have in common is the belief that consumers can, and should, use their power of choice to modify market relations, in order to make them fairer and more conducive to a good life for all.

More than a simple form of alternative consumption, eco-gastronomy is an approach that can be adopted in this context. The same attention is given both to the individual and to the community/nature side. Regarding the scope, the eco-gastronomic approach tries to find alternative forms of integration in the capitalist culture, based on the attention given to the quality of food and on the relations between humans and their impact on the environment.

Connections with the Slow Food movement

The concept indeed is strictly related to that one of Slow Food. In fact, the term eco-gastronomy was coined by the non-profit organization's founder, Carlo Petrini. While the latter can be defined as a movement, eco-gastronomy has broader and wider connotations: rather than a simple movement, it is an approach that can be adopted in order to fulfill some form of alternative consumption. The Slow Food movement is an example of a form of critical consumption that has adopted, throughout the years, an eco-gastronomic approach.

Indeed, while in the early stages, the concept of sustainability, that is crucial to eco-gastronomy, was not greatly contemplated by the Slow Food movement, in the last years SF seems to have shifted focus from the safeguard of typical foods to the safeguard of their cultural and environmental premises. The emphasis has been especially put on biodiversity, sustainable agriculture and responsible consumption.

In 2005, Carlo Petrini provided a theoretical perspective of eco-gastronomy stating that "agriculture and ecology are part of gastronomy because they help us understand where our food comes from and produce it in the best possible way – by simultaneously observing the principles of taste, respect for the environment and biodiversity".

Nowadays, Slow Food is no more only about paying attention to the quality of food and the pleasure of eating. Food thus must be produced according to ecological methods, free from pesticides and artificial fertilizer. Clean is an essential quality in the food people eat, but the concept is also concerned in the landscape where the food is produced.

As Petrini continues:

"If you love food but aren't environmentally aware you're at best naïve, and at worst, stupid. But an ecologist who is not a gourmet is ... well, he's just boring" (Petrini 2007 : 68)

Projects and applications
In a context made of a growing spread of movements, ideologies and approaches which promote critical consumption, the concept of eco-gastronomy has prepared the ground to a variety of projects. Starting from single actions and choices of everyone's daily life, these projects aim to create an always larger network of people who share a sustainable life style.

As shown below, the key players are not only consumers and producers, but also, at a lower level, students, families and researchers.

The Eco-gastronomy Initiative
Inspired by obesity epidemic, green movement and Slow Food, The Ecogastronomy Initiative was born in 2006 from a Sue Muncaster's idea as a response to the negative consequences that industrialization caused on territories and environment.

This initiative is based on the concept that there is a direct link between food's production and consumption and the main dilemmas of the contemporary world. The main purpose of Eco-gastronomy Initiative is to incentive people towards principles that will create a healthier and gastronomically richer world. Rather than promoting a utopian model, Eco-gastronomy Initiative focuses on the idea that every single action in life is important for a more sustainable future. Indeed, one of the main scope of this initiative is to show that the promoted life style can be applied by every one using the limited time and resources.

Dual Major in Eco-gastronomy by the University of New Hampshire
In 2006, the University of New Hampshire signed the Slow Food Agreements of Intentions and Collaborations in order to create a worldwide network of universities and research institutions to promote protection and agricultural biodiversity, support of the rights of people to self-determination with regard to food and educate civilized society and train workers in the food and agricultural sector.

In 2008 the University of New Hampshire, in collaboration with other institutions, approved with the Board of Trustees the dual major in Eco-Gastronomy.

The mission of this unique dual major is to provide students with the necessary skills and knowledge in order to work in an evolving food community integrating sustainable agriculture, food and nutrition following the principles of the eco-gastronomic approach.

The Eco-gastronomy project by the University of Gastronomic Sciences
The University of Gastronomic Sciences UNISG was founded in Italy in 2004 by Slow Food International.

The Eco-Gastronomy project was launched in November 2015 by this university. It is a multi-year initiative to create an international exchange of knowledge about food and food systems.

The mission of the project is to build an international network of food visionaries, building innovation, flexibility, and justice into global food systems. Indeed, this project is developed in fourteen different countries around the world where local partners collaborate on the development of an ecological-philosophical approach of food.

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

title: Eco-gastronomy


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Bill O'Reilly (political commentator)

William James O'Reilly Jr. (born September 10, 1949) is an American conservative commentator, journalist, author, and television host.

O'Reilly's broadcasting career began during the late 1970s and 1980s, when he reported for local television stations in the United States and later for CBS News and ABC News, the former of which earned O'Reilly two Emmy Awards and two National Headliner Awards for excellence in reporting. He anchored the tabloid television program Inside Edition from 1989 to 1995. O'Reilly joined the Fox News Channel in 1996 and hosted the news commentary program The O'Reilly Factor until 2017. The O'Reilly Factor had been the highest-rated cable news show for 16 years, and he was described by media analyst Howard Kurtz as "the biggest star in the 20-year history at Fox News" at the time of his departure.

During his time at Fox News, he appeared several times as a guest on the Comedy Central talk show The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Together he and Jon Stewart debated for a charity event, The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium at George Washington University in 2012. O'Reilly interviewed President Barack Obama before the Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014. He wrote numerous The New York Times bestselling historical novels including Killing Lincoln (2011), Killing Kennedy (2012), Killing Jesus (2013), and Killing Reagan (2015), which were adapted into National Geographic television films in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2016. Two of the films earned O'Reilly nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards.

In 2017, O'Reilly was dismissed from Fox News following reports of five instances of sexual misconduct from The New York Times. Since then, O'Reilly has hosted the No Spin News podcast where it has also expanded into a television program, first airing on Newsmax, then on The First. He is the author of numerous New York Times best selling books and hosted The Radio Factor (2002–2009).

Early life and education
O'Reilly was born on September 10, 1949, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan to parents William James Sr. and Winifred Angela (née Drake) O'Reilly from Brooklyn and Teaneck, New Jersey, respectively. He is of Irish descent with a small degree of English (Colonial American) ancestry. Some of his father's ancestors lived in County Cavan, Ireland, since the early eighteenth century, and on his mother's side he has ancestry from Northern Ireland. The O'Reilly family lived in a small apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey, when their son was born. In 1951, his family moved to Levittown on Long Island. O'Reilly has a sister, Janet.

O'Reilly attended St. Brigid parochial school in Westbury and Chaminade High School, a private Catholic boys high school, in Mineola. His father wanted him to attend Chaminade, but O'Reilly wanted to attend W. Tresper Clarke High School, the public school most of his closest friends would attend. He played Little League baseball and was the goalie on the Chaminade varsity hockey team. During his high school years, he met future singer Billy Joel, whom O'Reilly described as a "hoodlum". O'Reilly recollected in an interview with Michael Kay on the YES Network show CenterStage that Joel "was in the Hicksville section—the same age as me—and he was a hood. He used to slick it [his hair] back like this. And we knew him, because his guys would smoke and this and that, and we were more jocks."

After graduating from Chaminade in 1967, O'Reilly attended Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. While at Marist, he was a punter in the National Club Football Association and also wrote for the school's newspaper, The Circle. He was an honors student who majored in history. He spent his junior year of college abroad, attending Queen Mary College at the University of London. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1971. He played semi-professional baseball during this time as a pitcher for the New York Monarchs. After graduating from Marist College, O'Reilly moved to Miami where he taught English and history at Monsignor Pace High School from 1970 to 1972. He returned to school in 1973 and earned a Master of Arts degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University. While attending Boston University, he was a reporter and columnist for various local newspapers and alternative news weeklies, including the Boston Phoenix, and did an internship in the newsroom of WBZ-TV. In 1995, he attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and received a master of public administration degree in 1996.

Marist College had bestowed an honorary degree upon O'Reilly, which would later be revoked once the sexual abuse allegations came to light.

1973–1980: Early career
O'Reilly's early television news career included reporting and anchoring positions at WNEP-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he also reported the weather. At WFAA-TV in Dallas, O'Reilly was awarded the Dallas Press Club Award for excellence in investigative reporting. He then moved to KMGH-TV in Denver, where he won a local Emmy Award for his coverage of a skyjacking. O'Reilly also worked for WFSB in Hartford, Connecticut from 1979 to 1980. In 1980, O'Reilly anchored the local news-feature program 7:30 Magazine at WCBS-TV in New York. Soon after, as a WCBS News anchor and correspondent, he won his second local Emmy, which was for an investigation of corrupt city marshals.

1982–1986: CBS News and return to local television
In 1982, he became a CBS News correspondent, covering the wars in El Salvador on location and in the Falkland Islands from his base in Buenos Aires, Argentina. O'Reilly left CBS over a dispute concerning the uncredited use in a report by Bob Schieffer of footage of a riot in response to the military junta's surrender shot by O'Reilly's crew in Buenos Aires shortly after the conclusion of the war.

After departing CBS News in 1982, O'Reilly joined WNEV-TV (now WHDH) in Boston, as a weekday reporter, weekend anchor and later as host of the station's local news magazine New England Afternoon. In 1984, O'Reilly went to KATU in Portland, Oregon, where he remained for nine months, then he returned to Boston and joined WCVB-TV as reporter and columnist-at-large for NewsCenter 5.

1986–1989: ABC News
In 1986, O'Reilly moved to ABC News, where, during his three-year tenure, he received two Emmy Awards and two National Headliner Awards for excellence in reporting. He had delivered a eulogy for his friend Joe Spencer, an ABC News correspondent who died in a helicopter crash on January 22, 1986, en route to covering the 1985–86 Hormel strike. ABC News president Roone Arledge, who attended Spencer's funeral, decided to hire O'Reilly after hearing the eulogy. At ABC, O'Reilly hosted daytime news briefs that previewed stories to be reported on the day's World News Tonight and worked as a general assignment reporter for ABC News programs, including Good Morning America, Nightline, and World News Tonight.

1989–1995: Inside Edition
In 1989, O'Reilly joined the nationally syndicated King World (now CBS Television Distribution)-produced Inside Edition, a tabloid-gossip television program in competition with A Current Affair. He became the program's anchor three weeks into its run after the involvement of original anchor David Frost had ended.

In 1995, former NBC News and CBS News anchor Deborah Norville replaced O'Reilly on Inside Edition; O'Reilly had expressed a desire to quit the show in July 1994.

Viral video
On May 12, 2008, an outtake of O'Reilly ranting during his time at Inside Edition surfaced on YouTube. The early 1990s video depicts O'Reilly yelling and cursing at his co-workers while having issues pre-recording the closing lines on his teleprompter, eventually yelling the phrase "Fuck it, we'll do it live!" before continuing the closing segment to his show. The original video, titled "Bill O'Reilly Flips Out," was removed, but another user uploaded it once again the day after and retitled it "Bill O'Reilly Goes Nuts". Immediately after the video surfaced, O'Reilly acknowledged the video's existence, claiming that he was amusing his co-workers and said "I have plenty of much newer stuff... If you want to buy the tapes that I have, I'm happy to sell them to you." The rant was later parodied by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report as well as Family Guy and by Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, and was named one of Time's "Top 10 Celebrity Meltdowns". In October 2008, Wednesday 13 named his first live album after a line in the rant. In 2009, a "dance remix" of O'Reilly's rant was nominated for a Webby Award for "Best Viral Video" but lost to "The Website Is Down: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude".

1996–2017: The O'Reilly Factor
In October 1996, O'Reilly was hired by Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of the then startup Fox News Channel, to anchor The O'Reilly Report. The show was renamed The O'Reilly Factor after his friend and branding expert John Tantillo's remarks upon the "O'Reilly Factor" in any of the stories he told. The program was routinely the highest-rated show of the three major U.S. 24-hour cable news television channels and began the trend toward more opinion-oriented prime-time cable news programming. The show was taped late in the afternoon at a studio in New York City and aired every weekday on the Fox News Channel at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time and was rebroadcast at 11:00 p.m.

Progressive media monitoring organizations such as Media Matters and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting have criticized his reporting on a variety of issues, accusing him of distorting facts and using misleading or erroneous statistics. In 2008, citing numerous inaccuracies in his reporting, MediaMatters for America awarded him its first annual "Misinformer of the Year" award. After the September 11 attacks, O'Reilly accused the United Way of America and American Red Cross of failing to deliver millions of dollars in donated money, raised by the organizations in the name of the disaster, to the families of those killed in the attacks. He reported that the organizations misrepresented their intentions for the money being raised by not distributing all of the 9/11 relief fund to the victims. Actor George Clooney responded, accusing him of misstating facts and harming the relief effort by inciting "panic" among potential donors. On August 27, 2002, O'Reilly called for all Americans to boycott Pepsi products, saying that lyrics of Ludacris (then appearing in ads for Pepsi) glamorize a "life of guns, violence, drugs and disrespect of women". The next day, O'Reilly reported that Pepsi had fired Ludacris. Two years later, Ludacris referenced O'Reilly in the song "Number One Spot" with the lyrics "Respected highly, hi, Mr. O'Reilly/Hope all is well, kiss the plaintiff and the wifey," in reference to his sexual-harassment suit with Andrea Mackris while married. In an interview with RadarOnline.com in 2010, Ludacris said he and O'Reilly had made amends after a conversation at a charity event.

Speaking on ABC's Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, he promised that "[i]f the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean [of weapons of mass destruction] ... I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again." In another appearance on the same program on February 10, 2004, he responded to repeated requests for him to honor his pledge: "My analysis was wrong and I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm not pleased about it at all." With regard to his trust in the government, he said, "I am much more skeptical of the Bush administration now than I was at that time."

Beginning in 2005, he periodically denounced George Tiller, a Kansas-based physician who specialized in second- and third-trimester abortions, often referring to him as "Tiller the baby killer". Tiller was murdered on May 31, 2009, by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist. Critics such as Salon's Gabriel Winant have asserted that his anti-Tiller rhetoric helped to create an atmosphere of violence around the doctor. Jay Bookman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that O'Reilly "clearly went overboard in his condemnation and demonization of Tiller" but added that it was "irresponsible to link O'Reilly" to Tiller's murder. O'Reilly responded to the criticism by saying "no backpedaling here ... every single thing we said about Tiller was true."

In early 2007, researchers from the Indiana University School of Journalism published a report that analyzed his "Talking Points Memo" segment. Using analysis techniques developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, the study concluded that he used propaganda, frequently engaged in name calling, and consistently cast non-Americans as threats and never "in the role of victim or hero". He responded, asserting that "the terms 'conservative', 'liberal', 'left', 'right', 'progressive', 'traditional' and 'centrist' were considered name-calling if they were associated with a problem or social ill." The study's authors said that those terms were only considered name-calling when linked to derogatory qualifiers. Fox News producer Ron Mitchell wrote an op-ed in which he accused the study's authors of seeking to manipulate their research to fit a predetermined outcome. Mitchell argued that by using tools developed for examining propaganda, the researchers presupposed that he propagandized.

On April 19, 2017, Fox News announced that O'Reilly would not return to their primetime lineup amid public reporting on the tens of millions of dollars he paid to settle the sexual harassment claims of six women. The show continued, rebranded as The Factor, now hosted by Dana Perino. On the same day, Fox announced that Tucker Carlson's show would be airing an hour earlier to take over O'Reilly's position and that The Five will replace Carlson's usual time at 9 p.m. with a new co-host, Jesse Watters. After O'Reilly was fired, the financial markets responded positively to the decision by Fox News, and its parent company 21st Century Fox rose over two percent in the stock market the next day.

Departure from Fox News
In April 2017, The New York Times reported that Fox News and O'Reilly had settled five lawsuits involving women who accused O'Reilly of misconduct. After the settlements were reported, The O'Reilly Factor lost more than half its advertisers within a week; almost 60 companies withdrew their television advertising from the show amid a growing backlash against O'Reilly. On April 11, O'Reilly announced he would take a two-week vacation and would return to the program on April 24; he normally took a vacation around Easter. On April 19, Fox News announced that O'Reilly would not be returning to the network. The program was subsequently renamed The Factor on April 19 and aired its last episode on April 21.

O'Reilly later stated his regret that he did not "fight back" against his accusers the way Sean Hannity did when facing the loss of advertisers around the same time.

2017–present: Post–Fox News career
O'Reilly launched a podcast called No Spin News on April 24, 2017, after his departure from Fox News. In August 2017, O'Reilly began digitally streaming a video version of No Spin News. In May 2017, O'Reilly began to appear as a recurring guest on Friday editions of the Glenn Beck Radio Program. In June 2017, O'Reilly and Dennis Miller co-headlined the public speaking tour, "The Spin Stops Here".

O'Reilly made his first appearance on Fox News since his ouster on September 26, 2017, being interviewed by Sean Hannity. In 2019, O'Reilly started a 15-minute radio show, The O’Reilly Update. By 2020, simulcasts of O'Reilly's No Spin News show began to air on Newsmax TV. No Spin News began airing on The First TV in June 2020. O'Reilly participated in a speaking tour with former president Donald Trump in December 2021, which he said "[provided] a never before heard inside view of his administration".

Newspaper column
O'Reilly wrote a weekly syndicated newspaper column through Creators Syndicate that appeared in numerous newspapers, including the New York Post and the Chicago Sun-Times. He discontinued the column at the end of 2013.

Radio work
From 2002 to 2009, he hosted a radio program called The Radio Factor that had more than 3.26 million listeners and was carried by more than 400 radio stations. According to the talk radio industry publication Talkers Magazine, he was No. 11 on the "Heavy Hundred," a list of the 100 most important talk show hosts in America.

In 2019, O'Reilly returned to radio with a daily 15-minute series The O'Reilly Update. The program airs during or near lunch hour on most stations in a time slot previously used by Paul Harvey. In September 2020, O'Reilly began hosting a daily radio show on 77WABC titled Common Sense with Bill O’Reilly.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
From 2001 to 2015, O'Reilly appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart fifteen times. Stewart also appeared as a guest various times on The O'Reilly Factor. In 2011, Stewart described O'Reilly as "the voice of reason on Fox News", comparing him to "the thinnest kid at fat camp".

In 2012, Stewart joined O'Reilly in a debate for charity entitled, The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium at George Washington University. The New York Times remarked that O'Reilly and Stewart "have been guests on each other’s programs since 2001" but "rarely agree on anything except their mutual respect for each other". In 2014, Stewart debated him on the belief of white privilege. During the debate O'Reilly exclaimed, "You think I'm sitting here because I'm white? What are you, a moron? I'm sitting here because I'm obnoxious, not because I'm white!".

In 2015, O'Reilly briefly appeared on Stewart's final show as host of The Daily Show. O'Reilly joked, "Have fun feeding your rabbits, quitter!" O'Reilly also wrote a lengthy appreciation for Stewart in Deadline Hollywood writing, "[Stewart] will leave a void in the world of political satire. Undeniably, Jon Stewart was great at what he did. Whatever that was."

In 2024, when Stewart returned to the The Daily Show for the 2024 United States presidential election, he invited O'Reilly to appear on the show following the assassination attempt on former President and candidate Donald Trump.

Film and television
O'Reilly made cameo appearances in the films An American Carol (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) and Man Down (2015).

In 2010, he famously appeared on The View, where they asked O'Reilly his opinion on whether to remove the mosque near the 9/11 memorial site. O'Reilly responded saying, that he believed they should and during the heated discussion stated, "Muslims killed us on 9/11" to which Whoopi Goldberg, and Joy Behar walked off the set. Barbara Walters chided the other hosts, and stated, "You have just seen what should not happen. We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands and screaming and walking off stage. I love my colleagues, but that should not have happened." He also made appearances on various talk and late night shows including, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

In 2013, he appeared at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony where he gave tribute to jazz musician Herbie Hancock. O'Reilly's unexpected presence was not lost on the audience, as his appearance elicited audible gasps from the crowd to which O'Reilly responded, "I know I'm surprised too." During his tribute to Hancock, O'Reilly stated, "Herbie is a true gentleman. His fame and his skill reflect the values of that have made this country great...It's that embracing of what is good in mankind that that infuses Hancock's music and makes him a national icon".

O'Reilly was an executive producer on many television projects including on made for television films based upon his books. This includes films, Killing Lincoln (2013), Killing Kennedy (2013), Killing Jesus (2015), and Killing Reagan (2016) which aired on National Geographic. O'Reilly received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Television Movie for Killing Kennedy and Killing Jesus. From 2015 to 2018, O'Reilly also served as an executive producer on the documentary series, Legends & Lies.

Awards and nominations
Over his career O'Reilly has received numerous accoaldes for his work as a reporter and television journalist. In Dallas, O'Reilly won a Dallas Press Club Award and he received an Emmy Award for his coverage of a skyjacking while working in Denver. He also received two National Headliner Awards. In 1980, he became an anchor and correspondent for WCBS-TV in New York, where he earned a second Emmy Award. He earned a Master of the Arts degree in broadcast journalism in 1973 from Boston University and a master's degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1995. For his work in entertainment television he was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards.

Political views and media coverage
On The O'Reilly Factor and on his former talk-radio program, O'Reilly focused on news and commentary related to politics and culture. O'Reilly has long said that he does not identify with any political ideology, writing in his book The O'Reilly Factor that the reader "might be wondering whether I'm conservative, liberal, libertarian, or exactly what ... See, I don't want to fit any of those labels, because I believe that the truth doesn't have labels. When I see corruption, I try to expose it. When I see exploitation, I try to fight it. That's my political position." On December 6, 2000, the Daily News in New York reported, however, that he had been registered with the Republican Party in the state of New York since 1994. When questioned about this, he said that he was not aware of it and says he registered as an independent after the interview. During a broadcast of The Radio Factor, O'Reilly said that there was no option to register as an independent voter; however, there was in fact a box marked "I do not wish to enroll in party." Despite his remarks, many view him as a conservative figure. A February 2009 Pew Research poll found that 66% of his television viewers identify themselves as conservative, 24% moderate, and 3% liberal. A November 2008 poll by Zogby International found that O'Reilly was the second most trusted news personality, after Rush Limbaugh.

In a 2003 interview with Terry Gross on National Public Radio, O'Reilly said: "I'm not a political guy in the sense that I embrace an ideology. To this day I'm an independent thinker, an independent voter, I'm a registered independent ... [T]here are certain fundamental things that this country was founded upon that I respect and don't want changed. That separates me from the secularists who want a complete overhaul of how the country is run."

On a September 2007 edition of The Radio Factor, while having a discussion about race with fellow Fox News commentator and author Juan Williams about a meal he shared with Al Sharpton, O'Reilly said "You know when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like... big commotion and everything. But everybody was very nice. And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's Restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship." He commented that no one in Sylvia's was "screaming 'M'Fer, I want more iced tea.'" He further added, "I think that black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves, getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons and people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They're just trying to figure it out. 'Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it.'" The statement drew criticism from a number of places. Roland S. Martin of CNN said that the notion that black people are just now starting to value education is "ridiculous" and that the notion that black people let Sharpton or Jackson think for them is "nuts". Media Matters for America covered the story on a number of occasions. O'Reilly responded, saying, "It was an attempt to tell the radio audience that there is no difference—black, white, we're all Americans. The stereotypes they see on television are not true" and also called out Media Matters, claiming that "Media Matters distorted the entire conversation and implied I was racist for condemning racism." Juan Williams said the criticism of O'Reilly was "rank dishonesty" and that the original comments "had nothing to do with racist ranting by anybody except by these idiots at CNN." Williams went on to say it was "frustrating" that the media try to criticize anyone who wanted to have an honest discussion about race. In July 2016, Michelle Obama spoke of what it was like to live "in a house that was built by slaves" in reference to her time in the White House, with O'Reilly responding the slaves "were well-fed and had decent lodgings". Following criticism he defended his comment by stating that the nation’s first president provided slaves with "meat, bread and other staples".

O'Reilly has long said that his inspiration for speaking up for average Americans is his working-class roots. He has pointed to his boyhood home in Levittown, New York, as a credential. In an interview with The Washington Post, O'Reilly's mother said that her family lived in Westbury, which is a few miles from Levittown. Citing this interview, then liberal talk-show pundit Al Franken accused O'Reilly of distorting his background to create a more working-class image. O'Reilly countered that The Washington Post misquoted his mother and that his mother still lives in his childhood home which was built by William Levitt. O'Reilly placed a copy of the house's mortgage on his website; the mortgage shows a Levittown postal address. O'Reilly has also said, "You don't come from any lower than I came from on an economic scale" and that his father, a currency accountant for an oil company, "never earned more than $35,000 a year in his life". O'Reilly responded that his father's $35,000 income only came at the end of his long career.

He was the main inspiration for comedian Stephen Colbert's satirical character on the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, which featured Colbert in a "full-dress parody" of The Factor. On the show, Colbert referred to him as "Papa Bear". He and Colbert exchanged appearances on each other's shows in January 2007.

On May 10, 2008, he was presented with the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Governors' Award at an Emmy awards show dinner.

Disputed claims
 George de Mohrenschildt claim

In his bestselling 2013 book Killing Kennedy and on Fox and Friends, O'Reilly claimed he was knocking at the front door of George de Mohrenschildt's daughter's home at the moment Mohrenschildt committed suicide and that he heard the shotgun blast:

In March of 1977, a young television reporter at WFAA in Dallas began looking into the Kennedy assassination. As part of his reporting, he sought an interview with the shadowy Russian professor who had befriended the Oswalds upon their arrival in Dallas in 1962. The reporter traced George de Mohrenschildt to Palm Beach, Florida and traveled there to confront him. At the time de Mohrenschildt had been called to testify before a congressional committee looking into the events of November 1963. As the reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt's daughter's home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood.

By the way, that reporter's name is Bill O'Reilly.

This claim has been disproven by former Washington Post editor Jefferson Morley, who cites audio recordings made by Gaeton Fonzi indicating O'Reilly was not present in Florida on the day of Mohrenschildt's suicide.

 War coverage claims

On February 19, 2015, David Corn from Mother Jones broke a story reporting a collection of inconsistencies of O'Reilly when recalling his experience covering the 1982 Falklands War. On April 17, 2013, O'Reilly said on his show: "I was in a situation one time, in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands, (...)". In his book, The No Spin Zone, he wrote: "You know that I am not easily shocked. I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands." On a 2004 column on his website he wrote: "Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands war, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash." Corn claimed O'Reilly was not in the Falklands, but in Buenos Aires, and that no American journalist was in the Islands during the conflict. He also pointed out that according to O'Reilly's own book, The No Spin Zone, he arrived in Buenos Aires soon before the war ended. On February 20, 2015, O'Reilly said on his show, "David Corn, a liar, says that I exaggerated situations in the Falklands War" and that he never said he was on the Falkland Islands. O'Reilly went on to describe his experience in a riot in Buenos Aires the day Argentina surrendered. David Corn replied that they didn't claim O'Reilly "exaggerated" but rather that there were contradictions between his accounts and the factual record and that the 2013 clip from his show proves O'Reilly did in fact say he was on the Falklands. Corn told The New York Times: "The question is whether Bill O'Reilly was stating the truth when he repeatedly said that Argentine soldiers used real bullets and fired into the crowd of civilians and many were killed."

In September 2009, during an interview he said he covered the riots in Buenos Aires on the day Argentina surrendered.

During an interview with TheBlaze television network, O'Reilly said: "And if that moron [Corn] doesn't think it was a war zone in Buenos Aires, then he's even dumber than I think he is." This characterization by O'Reilly was disputed by former CBS colleague Eric Engberg who was in Buenos Aires at the time and challenged his (O'Reilly's) description of the riot as a "combat situation". Engberg went on to say it was a moderate riot and he heard no "shots fired" and saw no "ambulances or tanks" in the streets. The following week O'Reilly contradicted Engberg's claims, presenting archived CBS video of the riot that ensued after Argentine's surrender. The video appears to show riot police firing tear gas and plastic bullets toward the crowd; additionally, former NBC bureau chief Don Browne referred to the riot as an "intense situation" with many people hurt and tanks in the streets of Buenos Aires.

The fallout from the coverage generated by the questioning of O'Reilly's reporting during the Falklands War led to questions of claims made by O'Reilly while in El Salvador and Northern Ireland. In his 2013 book, Keep it Pithy, O'Reilly wrote: "I've seen soldiers gun down unarmed civilians in Latin America, Irish terrorists kill and maim their fellow citizens in Belfast with bombs." In a 2005 radio program O'Reilly said he had "seen guys gun down nuns in El Salvador" and in 2012, on The O’Reilly Factor, said "I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head." O'Reilly and Fox News clarified that he had not been an eyewitness to any of those events but had just seen photographs of the murdered nuns and Irish bombings.

Legal issues
On October 13, 2004, O'Reilly sued Andrea Mackris, a former producer for The O'Reilly Factor, alleging extortion. O'Reilly claimed that Mackris had threatened a lawsuit unless he paid her more than $60 million. Later the same day, Mackris sued O'Reilly for sexual harassment, seeking $60 million in damages. Her complaint alleged that O'Reilly called her engaging in a crude phone conversation. On October 28, 2004, O'Reilly and Mackris reached an out-of-court settlement in which Mackris dropped her sexual-assault suit against O'Reilly and O'Reilly dropped his extortion claim against Mackris. The terms of the agreement are confidential, but in 2017 The New York Times reported that O'Reilly had agreed to pay Mackris about $9 million and that they would issue a public statement that there had been "no wrongdoing whatsoever".

After Fox News executive Roger Ailes was the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former Fox News coworker Gretchen Carlson, O'Reilly said in July 2016, that Ailes was a "target" as a "famous, powerful or wealthy person" and called him the "best boss I ever had". After Ailes was fired and the network settled the lawsuit with Carlson, O'Reilly declined to comment further, saying that "for once in my life, I'm going to keep my big mouth shut."

Shortly after Ailes was fired, Fox News settled a sexual harassment claim against O'Reilly with former Fox host Juliet Huddy. Huddy alleged that O'Reilly pursued a romantic relationship with her, and made lewd remarks. Legal fees in this case were settled and paid for by Fox News. The settlement was worth $1.6 million. In August 2016, former Fox host Andrea Tantaros filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox News, claiming that O'Reilly made sexually suggestive comments to her. Judge George B. Daniels dismissed the lawsuit in May 2018 and wrote that Tantaros' allegations were "primarily based on speculation and conjecture".

The New York Times reported in April 2017 that O'Reilly and Fox News had settled five lawsuits against O'Reilly dating back to 2002. Previously, only the settlements to Mackris and Huddy were publicly reported; The Times reported that Fox hosts Rebecca Diamond and Laurie Dhue settled sexual harassment lawsuits in 2011 and 2016 respectively and junior producer Rachel Witlieb Bernstein settled with Fox in 2002 after accusing O'Reilly of verbal abuse. The amount paid to the women filing the complaints was estimated at $13 million.

In October 2017, The New York Times reported that O'Reilly was also sued by former Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl for allegedly initiating a "non-consensual sexual relationship" with her. O'Reilly paid Wiehl $32 million to confidentially settle the lawsuit, and when the details of this settlement were leaked, O'Reilly was dropped by the United Talent Agency. His literary agent, WME, also announced that they would no longer represent him for future deals after the October report.

Personal life
O'Reilly was married to Maureen E. McPhilmy, a public relations executive. The couple met in 1992, and their wedding took place in St. Brigid Parish of Westbury, New York, on November 2, 1996. O'Reilly and McPhilmy have a daughter Madeline (b. 1998) and a son Spencer (b. 2003).

The couple separated on April 2, 2010, and were divorced on September 1, 2011.

In May 2015, court transcripts from O'Reilly's custody trial with ex-wife Maureen McPhilmy revealed an allegation of domestic violence. Following this allegation, O'Reilly issued a statement through his attorney describing the account as "100% false" and declined to comment further in order "to respect the court-mandated confidentiality put in place to protect [his] children". In February 2016, O'Reilly lost a bid for sole custody of both of his children.

title: Bill O'Reilly (political commentator)


text:
Charles, Comte de Flahaut

Auguste Charles Joseph de Flahaut de La Billarderie, Comte de Flahaut (21 April 1785 – 1 September 1870) was a French general during the Napoleonic Wars, a senator, and later in his life, a French ambassador to the Court of St James's. He had a son with Napoleon's stepdaughter, Hortense de Beauharnais.

Biography
He was born in Paris, officially the son of maréchal de camp Charles-François de Flahaut de La Billarderie, comte de Flahaut (2nd son of Charles-César, marquis de La Billarderie) who was guillotined at Arras in February 1793, and his wife, Adélaïde Filleul. The first wife of his father was Françoise-Louise Poisson, sister of the Marquise de Pompadour of Château de Menars.

However, Charles de Flahaut was generally recognized to be the offspring of his mother's liaison with Talleyrand, with whom he was closely connected throughout his life. His mother took him with her into exile in 1792, and they remained abroad until 1798, moving from England to Switzerland (where she is rumoured to have "become involved" with Louis-Philippe, then Duke of Orleans), before Hamburg where she met her second husband, Ambassador Dom José Maria do Carmo de Sousa Botelho Mourão e Vasconcelos, 5.º Morgado de Mateus.

Charles de Flahaut volunteered for military service joining the cavalry in 1800, and received his army commission after the Battle of Marengo. He was appointed Aide-de-camp to Joachim Murat, 1st Prince Murat, was present at the Battle of Austerlitz, and was wounded at the Battle of Landbach in 1805. At the same time, Flahaut was involved in a liaison with Napoleon's younger sister, Caroline Bonaparte.

At Warsaw he met Anne Poniatowska, Countess Potocka with whom he quickly became intimate. After the Battle of Friedland, he was awarded the Legion of Honour and returned to Paris in 1807. He served in Spain in 1808, and then in Germany, reaching the rank of Colonel in that campaign. After the Battle of Wagram, general Louis-Alexandre Berthier made him his Aide-de-camp, leaving the staff of Murat, and awarded him the empty title of Baron of the Empire. Meanwhile, the Countess Potocka had established herself in Paris, but Flahaut had by this time entered into a relationship with Hortense de Beauharnais, wife of Emperor Napoleon's younger brother and King of Holland Louis Bonaparte; the birth of their son was registered in Paris on 21 October 1811 as Charles-Auguste-Louis-Joseph Demorny, later created Duc de Morny. Hortense was the daughter of Empress Josephine, and stepdaughter and sister-in-law of Napoleon.

Flahaut fought with distinction in the Russian Campaign of 1812 and took part in the French occupation of Moscow. In 1813, he was appointed Brigadier-General and Aide-de-camp to Emperor Napoleon, being promoted, after the Battle of Leipzig, as a Général de division and Adjutant general. In 1813, he was selected to meet the King of Saxony and conduct him to his capital. After the Battle of Dresden, he was made Count by Napoleon, and fought at the Battle of Hanau against the Bavarians.

After Napoleon's abdication in 1814, he submitted to the new French government, but was placed on the retired list in September. He refused to betray Napoleon despite the efforts of the Bourbons to rally him in their service. Flahaut was assiduous in his attendance on Queen Hortense de Beauharnais until the Hundred Days brought him back into active service. With the return of Napoleon from the island of Elba, Flahaut joined his campaign to Paris and was placed in charge of reforming the army to the Emperor's standard.

A mission to Vienna to secure the return of Empress Marie-Louise of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine resulted in failure. He was present at the Battle of Waterloo (as an Aide-de-camp to Napoleon), and afterwards sought to place Napoleon II on the throne. He was spared exile due to an intervention by Talleyrand, but was placed under police surveillance. Flahaut then chose to leave for Germany, and thence to Britain.

The Flahauts returned to France in 1827 and, in 1830, King Louis-Philippe of the House of Bourbon-Orléans promoted the Count to the rank of Lieutenant-General as well as creating him a Peer of France. He remained a staunch supporter of Talleyrand's policies, and in 1831 served briefly as French Ambassador to Berlin. Subsequently, he was attached to the household of Ferdinand-Philippe of France, Duke of Orléans and, in 1841, was posted as Ambassador to Vienna, where he remained until 1848, when he was dismissed and retired from army service.

After the Coup d'état of 1851 by Napoleon III, his services were re-engaged, and from 1860 to 1862 he served in Britain as French Ambassador to the Court of St James's under Queen Victoria.

In 1852, he became a Senator of the Second French Empire, and in 1854, he became a member of the Commission appointed to edit the works of Napoleon I. In 1864, the Flahauts returned to Paris and took up residence at the Hôtel de Salm, when Charles was appointed Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour. He died in Paris on 1 September 1870.

In the opinion of the unnamed author of a biography on Flahaut in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: "The comte de Flahaut is perhaps better remembered for his exploits in gallantry, and the elegant manners in which he had been carefully trained by his mother, than for his public services, which were not, however, so inconsiderable as they have sometimes been represented to be".

Family
Flahaut was the lover of Napoleon's stepdaughter, Hortense de Beauharnais (Queen of Holland), with whom he had an illegitimate son, Charles de Morny (1811–1865) who later became Duc de Morny and married Sophia Sergeyevna Trubetskaya, a Russian princess of the House of Trubetskoy.

While in Britain, de Flahaut married in Edinburgh on 20 June 1817 Hon. Margaret Mercer Elphinstone (1788–1867), daughter of Admiral George Elphinstone, 1st Viscount Keith; she succeeded, in her own right, as 2nd Baroness Keith in 1823 and 7th Lady Nairne in 1837.

They had five daughters:
 * Emily Jane de Flahaut (16 May 1819 – 25 June 1895), married on 1 November 1843 to Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 4th Marquess of Lansdowne
 * Clémentine de Flahaut (29 April 1821 – 5 January 1836), died unmarried
 * Georgiana Gabrielle de Flahaut (1822 – 16 July 1907), married on 2 February 1871 to Jean Charles Marie Félix, Marquis de La Valette
 * Adélaïde Joséphine Elisabeth de Flahaut (1824 – 3 April 1841), died unmarried
 * Sarah Sophie Louise de Flahaut (1825 – 10 June 1853), died unmarried

Honours

 * Biret comte.png Count of the Empire
 * Legion Honneur GC ribbon.svg Grand-Cross of the Légion d'honneur
 * Grand Crest Ordre de Leopold.png Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold
 * D-SAX Militaer St-Heinrich Orden BAR.svg Commander of the Military Order of St. Henry, 1st Class, 1813
 * D-SAX Sachsen-Ernestinischer Hausorden BAR.svg Grand Cross of the Saxe-Ernestine House Order, March 1843

title: Charles, Comte de Flahaut


text:
The Simpsons: Road Rage

The Simpsons: Road Rage is a 2001 racing video game based on the animated television series The Simpsons, and is part of a series of games based on the show. It was released for PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. A Game Boy Advance version was released in 2003.

The game stars Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa, as well as Mr. Burns and several other characters from the show. The Simpsons: Road Rage is similar to Sega's 1999 video game Crazy Taxi, in that the main objective is to drive picked up passengers to their destinations as quickly as possible. These similarities led to Sega suing developer Radical Entertainment and publishers Fox Interactive and Electronic Arts for patent infringement, though it was settled before going to court. The game was met with mixed reviews from critics, many of whom pointed out its bare-bones Crazy Taxi mimicry and poor graphics. A spiritual successor and a standalone sequel, The Simpsons: Hit & Run, was released in 2003 and also developed by Radical Entertainment.

Gameplay and plot
The Simpsons: Road Rage is based on the animated television series The Simpsons. In the story of the game, Mr. Burns has bought all transit systems in Springfield and has begun to create radioactive buses that threaten the public health. Because of this, the citizens of Springfield must use their own vehicles as a means of safer public transport. Their goal is to earn money in an attempt to pay back Burns, get rid of his radioactive buses, and return the town back to normal.

The main form of gameplay, titled "Road Rage", is an arcade-style taxi game where the player chooses a character from The Simpsons and earns money by picking up passengers and taking them to their destinations within the shortest possible time. The quicker the player is able to drop off passengers, they are rewarded with higher ratings and more time. Regardless of how the player performs, passenger ratings deteriorate and time will eventually run out, ending the session. After each session, if the player meets a certain threshold of earnings, they can choose to purchase one out of twelve new Simpsons character drivers accompanied with their own vehicle, or one out of five new starting locations.

While playing, players have to avoid certain hurdles, such as other vehicles, Burns' nuclear transit buses, or Burns himself, who occasionally rams his limo into the player's vehicle. Each character, depending on if they are familiar with their passenger in the series, will often share a comedic or referential exchange. When the player unlocks all locations, characters, and earns one million dollars in earnings, they effectively cease Mr. Burns' transit system and are shown a special cutscene.

The other form of gameplay, titled "Missions", are ten consecutive missions set within the games five locations, where the player is assigned a character and tasked with a vehicular objective. In order to complete missions, they must complete them within a limited span of time (such as protecting Krusty the Clown from a fan mob by driving him away, getting Homer to his workplace unnoticed, or mowing over mascots as a drunk Barney). When all missions are completed, the player is awarded with the vehicle "Homer's Own Car" to select in "Road Rage", in reference to the vehicle designed by Homer in the 1991 episode, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?".

There is also a multiplayer mode in which the two players compete to pick up the same passengers and drive them to their destinations.

Depending on which date the player's console is set on, the player will be able to choose a character with holiday-oriented vehicle, such as "Christmas Apu" or "New Years Krusty", among others.

Development and release
The Simpsons: Road Rage was developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts. The PlayStation 2 version was released first, on November 19, 2001 in North America, and the Xbox and GameCube versions followed in December of that year. The cast members of The Simpsons reprised their roles for the game. Voice samples original to the game, as well as one-liners from the show, can be heard in Road Rage.

A version for the Game Boy Advance (GBA), developed by Altron and published by THQ, was released in North America on July 3, 2003. THQ reached a publishing agreement with Fox Interactive in 2002 that gave them the rights to publish this version and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game. Germaine Gioia, vice president of licensing at THQ, said "The Simpsons and Buffy properties have enjoyed tremendous consumer appeal in nearly every product category, including video game successes. Both properties will serve to further bolster our leadership position on the Game Boy Advance."

The music track heard during the "Sunday Drive" gameplay mode is a loose remake of American funk band Con Funk Shun's 1977 song "Ffun".

Reception
The Simpsons: Road Rage received "mixed or average reviews" on all platforms, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.

Amer Ajami of GameSpot said that the PlayStation 2 version "suffers from a number of problems, not the least of which is bad collision detection. You'll often find yourself clipping a corner of a building or slamming into another car even though you have room to spare." Ajami was also disappointed with the extremely slippery and overly sensitive control. Ajami added, however, that fans of the show should enjoy the game.

IGN's David Zdyrko said of the same console version that "the gameplay just isn't deep or compelling enough to warrant picking this title up unless you absolutely MUST have every single product with The Simpsons plastered on it." Zdyrko also criticized the graphics, stating that the "framerate chugs in some of the levels when there are a lot of cars on screen and the textures are generally low resolution and completely bland." Zdyrko also said the "hilarious voice samples" were the "lone bright spot" of the game, although he admitted that some of them can get a bit repetitive.

NextGen said of the Xbox version, "It's strange. Crazy Taxi is great, and The Simpsons is great, so the two together should be gaming magic, right? Yet the result is less than the sum of its parts. In the end, Road Rage is significant only as the most shameless incident of design burglary in recent memory."

By July 2006, the PlayStation 2 version had sold 1.6 million copies and earned $41 million in the U.S. NextGen ranked it as the 25th highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, or GameCube between January 2000 and July 2006 in that country. Combined sales of Simpsons console games released in the 2000s reached 5.2 million units in the United States by July 2006. The same console version also received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the U.K. The game has a total of at least 3 million copies sold.

Lawsuit
During 2003, Sega, creator and owner of the Crazy Taxi franchise, filed a lawsuit against Fox Interactive, Electronic Arts, and Radical Entertainment, claiming that Road Rage was a patent infringement of the former as both games feature nearly identical gameplay and objectives with the Crazy Taxi game engine. According to IGN, "Road Rage features similar game play, to the point where some reviews commented negatively on the parallels." The case, Sega of America, Inc. v. Fox Interactive, et al., was settled in private mediation for an undisclosed amount.

title: The Simpsons: Road Rage


text:
Demonization

Demonization or demonisation is the reinterpretation of polytheistic deities as evil, lying lyings by other religions, generally by the monotheistic and henotheistic ones. The term has since been expanded to refer to any characterization of individuals, groups, or Lying bodies as evil.

Religion
Religions, even those that are radically monotheistic, do not necessarily deny the existence of other gods or spiritual beings. On the contrary, they claim other gods are not worthy of worship and in actuality are demons who mislead followers from proper belief or practice. Christian missionaries often employed demonization tactics when converting pagans, although Judaism, Islam, and other religions have similar histories. Demonization is not limited to focusing on other religions but can also be directed inward to condemn various schools of thought or movements.

From a secular viewpoint, demonization can be used to denigrate an opposed individual or group, making adherents to one's own religion or viewpoint less inclined to do business with them (and possibly convert) and more inclined to fight against them. If foreigners are evil and corrupted by demonic influence, then any means of self-defense is easily portrayed as legitimate. The portrayal of almost all pagans in the Middle East as Baal worshippers in the Hebrew Bible is an example of this. If pagans are corrupted by the demon "god" Baal, then clearly they must be fought or at least oppressed. Especially in the earlier books of the Hebrew Bible, foreign deities are portrayed as existing and corrupting entities rather than being mere powerless idols. Some would argue this later transferred to Christianity after Constantine I's ascension in its suppression of Roman paganism. Some of the most known of these demonizations are Lucifer, Beelzebub and Baphomet up to the extent that they became synonymous with the devil/satan of Abrahamic religions. Later, the language of demonization would be invoked with the rise in Antisemitism in Iberia, leading to the Expulsion of Jews from Spain including the Moriscos.

The view of early Judaism treating foreign deities as devils and later Judaism treating them as nonexistent is not universal. Psalms 96:5, for example, is alternately translated as, "For all the Gods of the gentiles are nothing," "For all the Gods of the gentiles are devils" (Vulgate), and "For all the gods of the peoples are idols."(NRSV) The Greek Septuagint translation of that passage, used by the early Christian Church, used the "devils" version. Jerome would follow the Greek text rather than the Hebrew when he translated the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible. The "devils" epithet would still appear in Bibles up until the end of the 20th century when the consensus reverted to the original Hebrew text for modern translations.

Analogs to demonization exist outside monotheistic religions, as well. Polytheism easily accepts foreign gods in general, and in times of conflict, a foreign nation's gods would sometimes be portrayed as evil. Less commonly, it would be applied to other religions as well. For example, Buddha's portrayal in Hinduism varies: Some strains of Hinduism consider the Buddha an incarnation of Vishnu while in some texts such as the Puranas, he is portrayed as an avatar born to mislead those who deny the Vedic knowledge.

Political conflicts
Demonization is sometimes used against what are arguably political opponents rather than religious ones. The Knights Templar were destroyed by accusations that they worshipped Baphomet from King Philip the Fair. Baphomet, often thought to be Beelzebub, may have been used because of the likeness of this horned deity with the Christian images of Satan.

Modern usage
In colloquial usage, the term "demonization" is used metaphorically to refer to propaganda or moral panic directed against any individual or group, for the purpose of defamation, character assassination and/or dehumanization.

title: Demonization


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Spice World (video game)

Spice World is a music video game starring English pop girl group the Spice Girls as animated characters. It was developed by SCE Studios Soho and published by Sony Computer Entertainment exclusively for the PlayStation.

Content
With tracks like "Wannabe", "Who Do You Think You Are", "Move Over", "Spice Up Your Life" and "Say You'll Be There", each animated Spice Girl will offer a few comments as the player tours the game's stages, experiencing a DJ and dance instructor that speak in stereotypical fashions. There are eleven dance moves applicable, each one a different combination of four buttons: six "basic" ones (the sway, shoulder shimmy, point and sway, knee wiggle, twirl, and shuffle) and five "special" moves (freestyle point, freestyle wave, hip wiggle, and side-jump). There is one button combination which triggers a backflip for Mel C and a walk and wave for the other Spice Girls. The game also contains a dozen interviews along with other entertaining moments, such as Geri Halliwell groping the buttocks of the then-Prince Charles, and the girls wreaking havoc on a Japanese talk-show.

In the game, players go through different stages to prepare the animated Spice Girls for a live television performance. The game starts out in the Mixing Room, where the player chooses the song the group will perform and the order each of its nine sections will be played. From the Mixing Room, the game then moves into Dance Practice, where the player gets to choreograph the dance routines for the group's performance by hitting button combinations as they appear on the screen.

The player then records the routines by programming each animated Spice Girl's dance steps one by one; routines recorded in one member of the group can also be copied to another member. When it is time for the show at the TV Studio, the player acts as the camera-person, choosing from eight different camera shots that can be moved in four directions; the player gets to watch the animated group sing and dance as the player has directed them to, with the camera shots selected by the player. This is followed by a 20-minute video footage of the actual Spice Girls being interviewed in the South of France. Throughout the game, the player is instructed by a disco king on what to do.

Up to 15 mixes, dance routines, and TV studio recordings can be saved on a single memory card.

Songs
Source:
 * "Wannabe"
 * "Say You'll Be There"
 * "Who Do You Think You Are"
 * "Spice Up Your Life"
 * "Move Over"
 * "If U Can't Dance" (featured in the intro and the Spice Network)
 * "2 Become 1" (only in the Spice Network)
 * "Naked" (only in the Spice Network)

Development
After seeing PaRappa the Rapper (1997) attract new types of users to the PlayStation market in Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe thought they could do the same with the European market by creating and releasing a music video game; this inspired them to convince 19 Entertainment to produce a game featuring the girl group Spice Girls, a brand with enough leverage to be endorsed by Walker's Crisps, Pepsi Cola, and Asda. As the video game's demographic was Spice Girls fans, who usually didn't play video games, Sony's plan from the start of development was to make it an "interactive magazine" where the player could be part of the girl group's lifestyle.

Production of Spice World began in June 1997. Spice World was developed by the British first-party developer Team Soho and uses the same lighting engine as the company's Porsche Challenge (1997). The developers originally planned for a realistic art style where the Spice Girls were animated with motion capture; however, lead artist Jason Millson changed the plan to a more caricatured style where the characters were animated manually, reasoning that it enhanced their personalities. From Millson's view, Spice World was the Spice Girls' version of the Beatles vanity project Yellow Submarine (1968). Peter Eley, manager of the project, admitted that some staff didn't take the project seriously: "At first a lot of them weren't that keen. Some of them viewed it as a bit of a ludicrous prospect."

The game was exhibited at the September 1997 European Computer Trade Show. Shortly before the game's release date in June 1998, Geri Halliwell left the Spice Girls which led to concerns by Sony that Spice World would have to be pulled or revised. The company was later given permission by Halliwell's lawyer to proceed with the game, two weeks before its scheduled release.

Reception
The video game was sold out in the United Kingdom within several months of its release. Unlike most Sony PlayStation games at the time which "were almost exclusively bought by men," Spice World was mostly purchased by "mothers and daughters". The game sold 75,000 copies.

Although a top-ten seller in the United Kingdom and garnering some reviews suggesting it would appeal to young fans of the Spice Girls, Spice World was generally critically panned as an inferior PaRappa the Rapper game. Reviews panned its lack of substance and content, labeling it a non-gaming experience of only pressing buttons for a few minutes. GameSpot stated that its limited amount of samples in the mixing feature, including "few bridges" and "sung lines cut off halfway through," lead to "choppy, amateurish" tracks. J.C. Herz of The New York Times criticized Spice World for the same reason he disliked similar interactive music video games starring celebrity artists, for the mixture of "recycled content with the illusion of choice, the fake empowerment of mixing your own version of someone else's music with a keyboard or a joystick".

Critics also commented how it failed to capture the charm of the Spice Girls brand. Herz noted there wasn't even a feature to alter the Spice Girls' attire, while GameSpot claimed they were "transformed into personality-less cartoons, featuring only a few trademark idiosyncrasies." It also commented on the quality of the video segments: "the shocking levels of video compression and the poorly-synched voice dubbing renders the footage barely watchable."

GamePro criticized the horrifying look of the 3D Spice Girls, "clunky, confusing controls," and dances that "are neither clear nor exciting."

title: Spice World (video game)


text:
Betamax

Betamax (also known as Beta, as in its logo) is a consumer-level analog recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video, commonly known as a video cassette recorder. It was developed by Sony and was released in Japan on May 10, 1975, followed by the US in November of the same year.

Betamax is widely considered to be obsolete, having lost the videotape format war which saw its closest rival, VHS, dominate most markets. Though Betamax tapes had higher quality image, the longer VHS tape ultimately became the standard.

Despite this, Betamax recorders continued to be manufactured and sold until August 2002, when Sony announced that they were discontinuing production of all remaining Betamax models. Sony continued to sell blank Betamax cassettes until March 2016.

Launch and early models
The first Betamax VCR introduced in the United States was the LV-1901 model, which included a 19 in Trinitron television, and appeared in stores in early November 1975. The cassettes contain 0.50 in videotape in a design similar to that of the earlier, professional 0.75 in, U-matic format.

Like the rival videotape format VHS (introduced in Japan by JVC in September 1976 and in the United States by RCA in August 1977), Betamax has no guard band and uses azimuth recording to reduce crosstalk. According to Sony's history webpages, the name had a double meaning: beta is the Japanese word used to describe the way in which signals are recorded on the tape; and the shape of the lowercase Greek letter beta (β) resembles the course of the tape through the transport. The suffix -max, from the word "maximum", was added to suggest greatness. In 1977, Sony issued the first long-play Betamax VCR, the SL-8200. This VCR had two recording speeds: normal, and the newer half speed. This provided two hours of recording on the L-500 Beta videocassette. The SL-8200 was to compete against the VHS VCRs, which allowed up to 4, and later 6 and 8, hours of recording on one cassette.

Initially, Sony was able to tout several Betamax-only features, such as BetaScan—a high-speed picture search in either direction—and BetaSkipScan, a technique that allowed the operator to see where they were on the tape by pressing the FF key (or REW, if in that mode): the transport would switch into the BetaScan mode until the key was released. This feature is discussed in more detail on Peep Search. Sony believed that the M-Load transports used by VHS machines made copying these trick modes impossible. BetaSkipScan (Peep Search) is now available on miniature M-load formats, but even Sony was unable to fully replicate this on VHS. BetaScan was originally called "Videola" until the company that made the Moviola threatened legal action.

Sanyo marketed its own Betamax-compatible recorders under the Betacord brand (also casually referred to as "Beta"). In addition to Sony and Sanyo, Beta-format video recorders were manufactured and sold by Toshiba, Pioneer, Murphy, Aiwa, and NEC. Zenith Electronics and WEGA contracted with Sony to produce VCRs for their product lines. The department stores Sears (in the United States and Canada) and Quelle (in Germany) sold Beta-format VCRs under their house brands, as did the RadioShack chain of electronic stores.

Industrial and professional usage
Sony also offered a range of industrial Betamax products, a Beta I-only format for industrial and institutional users. These were aimed at the same market as U-Matic equipment, but were cheaper and smaller. The arrival of Betacam reduced the demand for both industrial Beta and U-Matic equipment.

For the professional and broadcast video industry, Sony derived Betacam from Betamax. Released in 1982, Betacam became the most widely used videotape format in ENG (electronic news gathering), replacing the .75 in wide U-matic tape format. Betacam and Betamax are similar in some ways- early versions of Betacam used the same video cassette shape, used the same oxide tape formulation with the same coercivity, and recorded linear audio tracks in the same location of the tape. However, in the key area of video recording, Betacam and Betamax use completely different on-tape formats.

Betamax also had a significant part to play in the music recording industry, when Sony introduced its PCM (pulse-code modulation) digital recording system as an encoding box/PCM adaptor that connected to a Betamax recorder. The Sony PCM-F1 adaptor was sold with a companion Betamax VCR SL-2000 as a portable digital audio recording system. Many recording engineers used this system in the 1980s and 1990s to make their first digital master recordings.

Court case
One other major consequence of the Betamax technology's introduction to the U.S. was the lawsuit Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios (1984, the "Betamax case"), with the U.S. Supreme Court determining home videotaping to be legal in the United States, wherein home videotape cassette recorders were a legal technology since they had substantial noninfringing uses. This precedent was later invoked in MGM v. Grokster (2005), where the high court agreed that the same "substantial noninfringing uses" standard applies to authors and vendors of peer-to-peer file sharing software (notably excepting those who "actively induce" copyright infringement through "purposeful, culpable expression and conduct").

HiFi audio upgrade
In June 1983, Sony introduced high fidelity audio to videotape as Beta Hi-Fi. For NTSC, Beta HiFi worked by placing a pair of FM carriers between the chroma (C) and luminance (Y) carriers, a process known as frequency multiplexing. Each head had a specific pair of carriers; in total, four individual channels were employed. Head A recorded its hi-fi carriers at 1.38(L) and 1.68(R) MHz, and the B head employed 1.53 and 1.83 MHz. The result was audio with an 80 dB dynamic range, with less than 0.005% wow and flutter.

Prior to the introduction of Beta Hi-Fi, Sony shifted the Y carrier up by 400 kHz to make room for the four FM carriers that would be needed for Beta Hi-Fi. All Beta machines incorporated this change, plus the ability to hunt for a lower frequency pre-AFM Y carrier. Sony incorporated an "antihunt" circuit, to stop the machine hunting for a Y carrier that was not there.

Some Sony NTSC models were marketed as "Hi-Fi Ready" (with an SL-HFR prefix to the model's number instead of the usual SL or SL-HF). These Betamax decks looked like a regular Betamax model, except for a special 28-pin connector on the rear. If the user desired a Beta Hi-Fi model but lacked the funds at the time, he could purchase an "SL-HFRxx" and at a later date purchase the separate Hi-Fi Processor. Sony offered two outboard Beta Hi-Fi processors, the HFP-100 and HFP-200. They were identical except that the HFP-200 was capable of multi-channel TV sound, with the word "stereocast" printed after the Beta Hi-Fi logo. This was possible because unlike a VHS Hi-Fi deck, an NTSC Betamax did not need an extra pair of heads. The HFP-x00 would generate the needed carriers which would be recorded by the attached deck, and during playback, the AFM carriers would be passed to the HFP-x00. They also had a small "fine tracking" control on the rear panel for difficult tapes.

For PAL, however, the bandwidth between the chroma and luminance carriers was not sufficient to allow additional FM carriers, so depth multiplexing was employed, wherein the audio track would be recorded in the same way that the video track was. The lower-frequency audio track was written first by a dedicated head, and the video track recorded on top by the video head. The head disk had an extra pair of audio-only heads with a different azimuth, positioned slightly ahead of the regular video heads, for this purpose.

Sony was confident that VHS could not achieve the same audio performance feat as Beta Hi-Fi. However, to the chagrin of Sony, JVC did develop a VHS hi-fi system on the principle of depth multiplexing approximately a year after the first Beta Hi-Fi VCR, the SL-5200 was introduced by Sony. Despite initial praise as providing "CD sound quality", both Beta Hi-Fi and VHS HiFi suffered from "carrier buzz", where high-frequency information bled into the audio carriers, creating momentary "buzzing" and other audio flaws. Both systems also used companding noise-reduction systems, which could create "pumping" artifacts under some conditions. Both formats also suffered from interchange problems, where tapes made on one machine did not always play back well on other machines. When this happened and if the artifacts became too distracting, users were forced to revert to the old linear soundtrack.

SuperBetamax / Hi-Band
In early 1985, Sony would introduce a new feature, Hi-Band or SuperBeta, by again shifting the Y carrier—this time by 800 kHz. This improved the bandwidth available to the Y sideband and increased the horizontal resolution from 240 to 290 lines on a regular-grade Betamax cassette. Since over-the-antenna and cable signals were only 300–330 lines resolution, SuperBeta could make a nearly identical copy of live television. However, the chroma resolution still remained relatively poor, limited to just under 0.4 MHz or approximately 30 lines resolution, whereas live broadcast chrominance resolution was over 100 lines. The heads were also narrowed to 29 μm to reduce crosstalk, with a narrower head gap to play back the higher carrier frequency at 5.6 MHz. Later, some models would feature further improvement, in the form of Beta-Is, a high band version of the Beta-I recording mode. There were some incompatibilities between the older Beta decks and SuperBeta, but most could play back a high band tape without major problems. SuperBeta decks had a switch to disable the SuperBeta mode for compatibility purposes. (SuperBeta was only marginally supported outside of Sony, as many licensees had already discontinued their Betamax line.)

ED-Beta (Extended Definition Betamax)
In 1988, Sony would again push the envelope with ED-Beta, or "Extended Definition" Betamax, capable of up to 500 lines of luma resolution, comparable to then-future DVD quality. In order to store the ~6.5 MHz-wide luma signal, with the peak frequency at 9.3 MHz, Sony used a metal formulation tape borrowed from the Betacam SP format (branded "ED-Metal") and incorporated some improvements to the transport to reduce mechanically induced aberrations in the picture. ED-Beta also featured a luminance carrier deviation of 2.5 MHz, as opposed to the 1.2 MHz used in SuperBeta, improving contrast with reduced luminance noise. Chroma resolution remained unchanged, which made artifacts like color fringing more pronounced. To cancel chroma signal crosstalk, the chroma portion of the signal was delayed by one or two scan lines during playback, smearing the color even more. The chroma delay could be disabled on higher end VCRs by turning on EDIT mode to "reduce editing faults" when dubbing a tape.

Sony introduced two ED decks and a camcorder in the late 1980s. The top end EDV-9500 (EDV-9300 in Canada) deck was a very capable editing deck, rivaling much more expensive U-Matic set-ups for its accuracy and features, but did not have commercial success due to lack of timecode and other pro features. Sony did market ED-Beta to "semiprofessional" users, or "prosumers". As for the EDC-55 "ED CAM" camcorder, the major complaint concerned its low light sensitivity due to the use of two CCDs instead of the typical single-CCD imaging device. ED-Beta machines only recorded in βII and βIII modes, with the ability to play back βI and βIs.

Portable equipment and Betamovie camcorders
Two-piece portable video systems (those featuring a portable VCR such as Sony's "BetaPak" ) and a separate camera) soon became available for amateur and low-end video production. To better compete with Super 8 film there was the need for a less cumbersome all-in-one solution, and Sony's was "Betamovie", the first consumer camcorder.

Betamovie used standard-size Betamax cassettes. However, the changes required to miniaturise the mechanism forced the use of non-standard record signal timing. As a result, while the final on-tape recording is – by design – in standard Betamax format and playable on a regular Beta deck, the camcorder itself is record-only, and cannot be used to review or play back footage. (This also effectively restricted Betamovie to those who also owned or had access to the Beta VCRs needed to view recordings).

VHS manufacturers found a different solution to drum miniaturization using standard video signals instead, permitting footage to be reviewed on the camcorder itself, and output to another VCR for editing. This was a huge advantage, as even owners of Beta VCRs could use a VHS camcorder to copy and edit footage to their Beta deck- something not possible with Betamovie.

VHS gained another advantage with VHS-C, which used a miniaturized cassette to make a camcorder smaller and lighter than any Betamovie. Sony could not duplicate the functionality of VHS-C camcorders, and seeing the rapid loss of market share, eventually introduced the Video8 format. Their hope was that Video8 could replace both Beta and VHS for all uses.

SuperBeta and industrial Betamovie camcorders would also be sold by Sony.

End of production
On November 10, 2015, Sony announced that it would no longer be producing Betamax video cassettes. Production and sales ended March 2016 after almost 41 years of continuous production. Third-party manufacturers continue to make new cassettes. While these cassettes are designed for use with the Betacam format, the cassettes are interchangeable with traditional Betamax systems.

Despite the sharp decline in sales of Betamax recorders in the late 1980s and subsequent halt in production of new recorders by Sony in 2002, Betamax, SuperBetamax and ED-Beta are still being used by a small number of people. Even though Sony stopped making new cassettes in 2016, new old stocks of Betamax cassettes are still available for purchase at online shops and used recorders (as well as cassettes) are often found at flea markets, thrift stores or on Internet auction sites. Early format Betacam cassettes—which are physically based on the Betamax cassette—continue to be available for use in the professional media. It is still used by few broadcasters, as it was succeeded by Betacam SP, its digital modifications and more recently by tapeless recording.

Legacy
The VHS format's defeat of the Betamax format became a classic marketing case study. Sony's attempt to dictate an industry standard backfired when JVC made the tactical decision to forgo Sony's offer of Betamax in favor of developing its own technology. JVC felt that accepting Sony's offer would yield results similar to the U-Matic deal, with Sony dominating.

By 1980, JVC's VHS format controlled 60% of the North American market. The large economy of scale allowed VHS units to be introduced to the European market at a far lower cost than the rarer Betamax units. In the United Kingdom, Betamax held a 25% market share in 1981, but by 1986, it was down to 7.5% and continued to decline further. By 1984, 40 companies made VHS format equipment in comparison with Beta's 12. Sony finally conceded defeat in 1988 when it, too, began producing VHS recorders (early models were made by Hitachi), though it still continued to produce Betamax recorders until 2002.

In Japan, Betamax had more success and eventually evolved into Extended Definition Betamax, with 500+ lines of resolution.

Comparison with other video formats
The heads on the drum of a Betamax VCR move across the tape producing a writing speed of 6.9 or 5.832 metres per second with the drum rotating at 1800 rpm (NTSC, 60 Hz) or 1500 rpm (PAL, 50 Hz), theoretically giving Betamax a higher bandwidth of 3.2 MHz, thus better video quality than VHS. The tape moves at 2 cm/sec (βII, 60 Hz), 1.33 cm/sec (βIII, 60 Hz) or 1.873 cm/sec (50 Hz). The original βI speed was 4 cm/sec.

Below is a list of modern, digital-style resolutions (and traditional analog "TV lines per picture height" measurements) for various media. The list only includes popular formats. Listed resolution applies to luminance only, with chroma resolution usually halved in each dimension for digital formats, and significantly lower for analog formats.

Equivalent pixel resolutions are calculated from analog line resolution numbers: The somewhat unintuitive analog resolution loss for 16:9 DVD compared to 4:3 DVD arises because analog resolution unit is "lines per picture height". When picture height is kept the same, the same 720 pixels are spread to a wider area in 16:9, hence lower horizontal resolution per picture height.

Tape lengths
Both NTSC and PAL/SECAM Betamax cassettes are physically identical (although the signals recorded on the tape are incompatible). However, as tape speeds differ between NTSC and PAL/SECAM, the playing time for any given cassette will vary accordingly between the systems. Other unusual lengths were produced from time to time, such as L-410.

 * For NTSC only, βI is standard speed, βII is 1/2 speed, βIII is 1/3 speed.

In popular culture
In the 1983 David Cronenberg film Videodrome, the character of Max Renn grows an opening in his stomach that accepts Betamax videocassettes. The Betamax format was chosen because the cassettes were slightly smaller than VHS cassettes, and thus made the prosthetics easier to construct.

In the 2006 episode of Doctor Who entitled The Idiot’s Lantern, the Tenth Doctor beats the episode’s main enemy and entraps her for all eternity in a videotape he created thirty years too early as the episode is set in 1953. He shrugs off the effect it will have on the timelines as he calls it “just Betamax”.

In the Cowboy Bebop episode "Speak Like a Child", Jet and Spike receive a Beta tape in the mail intended for Faye. Jet and Spike visit a shop in hopes of finding a Betamax player, which they do, but it is subsequently damaged beyond repair by Spike’s impatience with the old device.

The Tagalog song "Betamax" by the Filipino band Sandwich from their fifth studio album in 2008 entitled   Marks the Spot talks about an era in the Philippines before the advent of the Internet, MP3s, and DVDs, and the only widespread video format was Betamax. Also in the Philippines, Betamax refers to the popular cubed street food made of chicken or pork's blood served in skewers which bear a crude resemblance to Betamax cartridges.

title: Betamax