title: Bishop

text: Around the end of the 1st century, the church's organization became clearer in historical documents. In the works of the Apostolic Fathers, and Ignatius of Antioch in particular, the role of the episkopos, or bishop, became more important or, rather, already was very important and being clearly defined. While Ignatius of Antioch offers the earliest clear description of monarchial bishops (a single bishop over all house churches in a city) he is an advocate of monepiscopal structure rather than describing an accepted reality. To the bishops and house churches to which he writes, he offers strategies on how to pressure house churches who do not recognize the bishop into compliance. Other contemporary Christian writers do not describe monarchial bishops, either continuing to equate them with the presbyters or speaking of (bishops, plural) in a city.


title: Bishop

text: As the Church continued to expand, new churches in important cities gained their own bishop. Churches in the regions outside an important city were served by Chorbishop, an official rank of bishops. However, soon, presbyters and deacons were sent from bishop of a city church. Gradually priests replaced the chorbishops. Thus, in time, the bishop changed from being the leader of a single church confined to an urban area to being the leader of the churches of a given geographical area.


title: Bishop

text: Clement of Alexandria (end of the 2nd century) writes about the ordination of a certain Zachæus as bishop by the imposition of Simon Peter Bar-Jonah's hands. The words bishop and ordination are used in their technical meaning by the same Clement of Alexandria. The bishops in the 2nd century are defined also as the only clergy to whom the ordination to priesthood (presbyterate) and diaconate is entrusted: "a priest (presbyter) lays on hands, but does not ordain." ().


title: Bishop

text: At the beginning of the 3rd century, Hippolytus of Rome describes another feature of the ministry of a bishop, which is that of the : the primate of sacrificial priesthood and the power to forgive sins.


title: Bishop

text: The efficient organization of the Roman Empire became the template for the organisation of the church in the 4th century, particularly after Constantine's Edict of Milan. As the church moved from the shadows of privacy into the public forum it acquired land for churches, burials and clergy. In 391, Theodosius I decreed that any land that had been confiscated from the church by Roman authorities be returned.


title: Bishop

text: The most usual term for the geographic area of a bishop's authority and ministry, the diocese, began as part of the structure of the Roman Empire under Diocletian. As Roman authority began to fail in the western portion of the empire, the church took over much of the civil administration. This can be clearly seen in the ministry of two popes: Pope Leo I in the 5th century, and Pope Gregory I in the 6th century. Both of these men were statesmen and public administrators in addition to their role as Christian pastors, teachers and leaders. In the Eastern churches, latifundia entailed to a bishop's see were much less common, the state power did not collapse the way it did in the West, and thus the tendency of bishops acquiring civil power was much weaker than in the West. However, the role of Western bishops as civil authorities, often called prince bishops, continued throughout much of the Middle Ages.


title: Bishop

text: As well as being Archchancellors of the Holy Roman Empire after the 9th century, bishops generally served as chancellors to medieval monarchs, acting as head of the "justiciary" and chief chaplain. The Lord Chancellor of England was almost always a bishop up until the dismissal of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey by Henry VIII. Similarly, the position of Kanclerz in the Polish kingdom was always held by a bishop until the 16th century.


title: Bishop

text: In modern times, the principality of Andorra is headed by Co-Princes of Andorra, one of whom is the Bishop of Urgell and the other, the sitting President of France, an arrangement that began with the Paréage of Andorra (1278), and was ratified in the 1993 constitution of Andorra.


title: Bishop

text: The office of the Papacy is inherently held by the sitting Roman Catholic Bishop of Rome. Though not originally intended to hold temporal authority, since the Middle Ages the power of the Papacy gradually expanded deep into the secular realm and for centuries the sitting Bishop of Rome was the most powerful governmental office in Central Italy. In modern times, the Pope is also the sovereign Prince of Vatican City, an internationally recognized micro-state located entirely within the city of Rome.


title: Bishop

text: In France, prior to the Revolution, representatives of the clergy — in practice, bishops and abbots of the largest monasteries — comprised the First Estate of the Estates-General. This role was abolished after separation of Church and State was implemented during the French Revolution.


title: Bishop

text: In the 21st century, the more senior bishops of the Church of England continue to sit in the House of Lords of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, as representatives of the established church, and are known as Lords Spiritual. The Bishop of Sodor and Man, whose diocese lies outside the United Kingdom, is an "ex officio" member of the Legislative Council of the Isle of Man. In the past, the Bishop of Durham had extensive vice-regal powers within his northern diocese, which was a county palatine, the County Palatine of Durham, (previously, Liberty of Durham) of which he was "ex officio" the earl. In the 19th century, a gradual process of reform was enacted, with the majority of the bishop's historic powers vested in The Crown by 1858.


title: Bishop

text: Eastern Orthodox bishops, along with all other members of the clergy, are canonically forbidden to hold political office. Occasional exceptions to this rule are tolerated when the alternative is political chaos. In the Ottoman Empire, the Patriarch of Constantinople, for example, had de facto administrative, cultural and legal jurisdiction, as well as spiritual authority, over all Eastern Orthodox Christians of the empire, as part of the Ottoman millet system. An Orthodox bishop headed the Prince-Bishopric of Montenegro from 1516 to 1852, assisted by a secular "guvernadur". More recently, Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus, served as President of the Cyprus from 1960 to 1977, an extremely turbulent time period on the island.


title: Bishop

text: In 2001, Peter Hollingworth, AC, OBE – then the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane – was controversially appointed Governor-General of Australia. Although Hollingworth gave up his episcopal position to accept the appointment, it still attracted considerable opposition in a country which maintains a formal separation between Church and State.


title: Bishop

text: During the period of the English Civil War, the role of bishops as wielders of political power and as upholders of the established church became a matter of heated political controversy. Presbyterianism was the polity of most Reformed Churches in Europe, and had been favored by many in England since the English Reformation. Since in the primitive church the offices of "presbyter" and were not clearly distinguished, many Puritans held that this was the only form of government the church should have. The Anglican divine, Richard Hooker, objected to this claim in his famous work "Of the Laws of Ecclesiastic Polity" while, at the same time, defending Presbyterian ordination as valid (in particular Calvin's ordination of Beza). This was the official stance of the English Church until the Commonwealth, during which time, the views of Presbyterians and Independents (Congregationalists) were more freely expressed and practiced.


title: Bishop

text: Bishops form the leadership in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, certain Lutheran Churches, the Anglican Communion, the Independent Catholic Churches, the Independent Anglican Churches, and certain other, smaller, denominations.


title: Bishop

text: The traditional role of a bishop is as pastor of a diocese (also called a bishopric, synod, eparchy or see), and so to serve as a "diocesan bishop", or "eparch" as it is called in many Eastern Christian churches. Dioceses vary considerably in size, geographically and population-wise. Some dioceses around the Mediterranean Sea which were Christianised early are rather compact, whereas dioceses in areas of rapid modern growth in Christian commitment—as in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and the Far East—are much larger and more populous.


title: Bishop

text: As well as traditional diocesan bishops, many churches have a well-developed structure of church leadership that involves a number of layers of authority and responsibility.


title: Bishop

text: In Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, High Church Lutheranism, and Anglicanism, only a bishop can ordain other bishops, priests, and deacons.


title: Bishop

text: In the Eastern liturgical tradition, a priest can celebrate the Divine Liturgy only with the blessing of a bishop. In Byzantine usage, an antimension signed by the bishop is kept on the altar partly as a reminder of whose altar it is and under whose omophorion the priest at a local parish is serving. In Syriac Church usage, a consecrated wooden block called a thabilitho is kept for the same reasons.


title: Bishop

text: The bishop is the ordinary minister of the sacrament of confirmation in the Latin Rite Catholic Church, and in the Old Catholic communion only a bishop may administer this sacrament. In the Lutheran and Anglican churches, the bishop normatively administers the rite of confirmation, although in those denominations that do not have an episcopal polity, confirmation is administered by the priest. However, in the Byzantine and other Eastern rites, whether Eastern or Oriental Orthodox or Eastern Catholic, chrismation is done immediately after baptism, and thus the priest is the one who confirms, using chrism blessed by a bishop.


title: Bishop

text: Ordination of a bishop, and thus continuation of apostolic succession, takes place through a ritual centred on the imposition of hands and prayer.


title: Bishop

text: Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Old Catholic and some Lutheran bishops claim to be part of the continuous sequence of ordained bishops since the days of the apostles referred to as apostolic succession.


title: Bishop

text: In Scandinavia and the Baltic region, Lutheran churches participating in the Porvoo Communion (those of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Lithuania), as well as many non-Porvoo membership Lutheran churches (including those of Kenya, Latvia, and Russia), as well as the confessional Communion of Nordic Lutheran Dioceses, believe that they ordain their bishops in the apostolic succession in lines stemming from the original apostles. "The New Westminster Dictionary of Church History" states that "In Sweden the apostolic succession was preserved because the Catholic bishops were allowed to stay in office, but they had to approve changes in the ceremonies."


title: Bishop

text: While traditional teaching maintains that any bishop with apostolic succession can validly perform the ordination of another bishop, some churches require two or three bishops participate, either to ensure sacramental validity or to conform with church law. Catholic doctrine holds that one bishop can validly ordain another (priest) as a bishop. Though a minimum of three bishops participating is desirable (there are usually several more) in order to demonstrate collegiality, canonically only one bishop is necessary. The practice of only one bishop ordaining was normal in countries where the Church was persecuted under Communist rule.


title: Bishop

text: The title of archbishop or metropolitan may be granted to a senior bishop, usually one who is in charge of a large ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He may, or may not, have provincial oversight of suffragan bishops and may possibly have auxiliary bishops assisting him.


title: Bishop

text: Apart from the ordination, which is always done by other bishops, there are different methods as to the actual selection of a candidate for ordination as bishop. In the Catholic Church the Congregation for Bishops generally oversees the selection of new bishops with the approval of the pope. The papal nuncio usually solicits names from the bishops of a country, consults with priests and leading members of a laity, and then selects three to be forwarded to the Holy See. In Europe, some cathedral chapters have duties to elect bishops. The Eastern Catholic churches generally elect their own bishops. Most Eastern Orthodox churches allow varying amounts of formalised laity or lower clergy influence on the choice of bishops. This also applies in those Eastern churches which are in union with the pope, though it is required that he give assent.


title: Bishop

text: The pope, in addition to being the Bishop of Rome and spiritual head of the Catholic Church, is also the Patriarch of the Latin Rite. Each bishop within the Latin Rite is answerable directly to the Pope and not any other bishop except to metropolitans in certain oversight instances. The pope previously used the title "Patriarch of the West", but this title was dropped from use in 2006, a move which caused some concern within the Eastern Orthodox Communion as, to them, it implied wider papal jurisdiction.


title: Bishop

text: The Catholic Church does recognise as valid (though illicit) ordinations done by breakaway Catholic, Old Catholic or Oriental bishops, and groups descended from them; it also regards as both valid and licit those ordinations done by bishops of the Eastern churches, so long as those receiving the ordination conform to other canonical requirements (for example, is an adult male) and an eastern orthodox rite of episcopal ordination, expressing the proper functions and sacramental status of a bishop, is used; this has given rise to the phenomenon of (for example, clergy of the Independent Catholic groups which claim apostolic succession, though this claim is rejected by both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy). With respect to Lutheranism, "the Catholic Church has never officially expressed its judgement on the validity of orders as they have been handed down by episcopal succession in these two national Lutheran churches" (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland) though it does "question how the ecclesiastical break in the 16th century has affected the apostolicity of the churches of the Reformation and thus the apostolicity of their ministry". Since Pope Leo XIII issued the bull in 1896, the Catholic Church has insisted that Anglican orders are invalid because of the Reformed changes in the Anglican ordination rites of the 16th century and divergence in understanding of the theology of priesthood, episcopacy and Eucharist. However, since the 1930s, Utrecht Old Catholic bishops (recognised by the Holy See as validly ordained) have sometimes taken part in the ordination of Anglican bishops. According to the writer Timothy Dufort, by 1969, all Church of England bishops had acquired Old Catholic lines of apostolic succession recognised by the Holy See. This development has muddied the waters somewhat as it could be argued that the strain of apostolic succession has been re-introduced into Anglicanism, at least within the Church of England.


title: Bishop

text: The Eastern Orthodox Churches do not accept the validity of any ordinations performed by the Independent Catholic groups, as Eastern Orthodoxy considers to be spurious any consecration outside the Church as a whole. Eastern Orthodoxy considers apostolic succession to exist only within the Universal Church, and not through any authority held by individual bishops; thus, if a bishop ordains someone to serve outside the (Eastern Orthodox) Church, the ceremony is ineffectual, and no ordination has taken place regardless of the ritual used or the ordaining prelate's position within the Eastern Orthodox Churches.


title: Bishop

text: The position of the Catholic Church is slightly different. Whilst it does recognise the validity of the orders of certain groups which separated from communion with Holy See. The Holy See accepts as valid the ordinations of the Old Catholics in communion with Utrecht, as well as the Polish National Catholic Church (which received its orders directly from Utrecht, and was—until recently—part of that communion); but Catholicism does not recognise the orders of any group whose teaching is at variance with what they consider the core tenets of Christianity; this is the case even though the clergy of the Independent Catholic groups may use the proper ordination ritual. There are also other reasons why the Holy See does not recognise the validity of the orders of the Independent clergy:


title: Bishop

text: Whilst members of the Independent Catholic movement take seriously the issue of valid orders, it is highly significant that the relevant Vatican Congregations tend not to respond to petitions from Independent Catholic bishops and clergy who seek to be received into communion with the Holy See, hoping to continue in some sacramental role. In those instances where the pope does grant reconciliation, those deemed to be clerics within the Independent Old Catholic movement are invariably admitted as laity and not priests or bishops.


title: Bishop

text: There is a mutual recognition of the validity of orders amongst Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Old Catholic, Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian Church of the East churches.


title: Bishop

text: Some provinces of the Anglican Communion have begun ordaining women as bishops in recent decades – for example, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Cuba. The first woman to be consecrated a bishop within Anglicanism was Barbara Harris, who was ordained in the United States in 1989. In 2006, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Episcopal Bishop of Nevada, became the first woman to become the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.


title: Bishop

text: In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), the largest Lutheran Church bodies in the United States and Canada, respectively, and roughly based on the Nordic Lutheran national churches (similar to that of the Church of England), bishops are elected by Synod Assemblies, consisting of both lay members and clergy, for a term of six years, which can be renewed, depending upon the local synod's "constitution" (which is mirrored on either the ELCA or ELCIC's national constitution). Since the implementation of concordats between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church of the United States and the ELCIC and the Anglican Church of Canada, all bishops, including the presiding bishop (ELCA) or the national bishop (ELCIC), have been consecrated using the historic succession in line with bishops from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden, with at least one Anglican bishop serving as co-consecrator.


title: Bishop

text: Since going into ecumenical communion with their respective Anglican body, bishops in the ELCA or the ELCIC not only approve the "rostering" of all ordained pastors, diaconal ministers, and associates in ministry, but they serve as the principal celebrant of all pastoral ordination and installation ceremonies, diaconal consecration ceremonies, as well as serving as the "chief pastor" of the local synod, upholding the teachings of Martin Luther as well as the documentations of the Ninety-Five Theses and the Augsburg Confession. Unlike their counterparts in the United Methodist Church, ELCA and ELCIC synod bishops do not appoint pastors to local congregations (pastors, like their counterparts in the Episcopal Church, are called by local congregations). The presiding bishop of the ELCA and the national bishop of the ELCIC, the national bishops of their respective bodies, are elected for a single 6-year term and may be elected to an additional term.


title: Bishop

text: Although ELCA agreed with the Episcopal Church to limit ordination to the bishop "ordinarily", ELCA pastor-"ordinators" are given permission to perform the rites in "extraordinary" circumstance. In practice, "extraordinary" circumstance have included disagreeing with Episcopalian views of the episcopate, and as a result, ELCA pastors ordained by other pastors are not permitted to be deployed to Episcopal Churches (they can, however, serve in Presbyterian Church USA, United Methodist Church, Reformed Church in America, and Moravian Church congregations, as the ELCA is in full communion with these denominations). The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), the second and third largest Lutheran bodies in the United States and the two largest Confessional Lutheran bodies in North America, do not follow an episcopal form of governance, settling instead on a form of quasi-congregationalism patterned off what they believe to be the practice of the early church. The second largest of the three predecessor bodies of the ELCA, the American Lutheran Church, was a congregationalist body, with national and synod presidents before they were re-titled as bishops (borrowing from the Lutheran churches in Germany) in the 1980s. With regard to ecclesial discipline and oversight, national and synod presidents typically function similarly to bishops in episcopal bodies.


title: Bishop

text: In the African Methodist Episcopal Church, "Bishops are the Chief Officers of the Connectional Organization. They are elected for life by a majority vote of the General Conference which meets every four years."


title: Bishop

text: In the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, bishops are administrative superintendents of the church; they are elected by "delegate" votes for as many years deemed until the age of 74, then the bishop must retire. Among their duties, are responsibility for appointing clergy to serve local churches as pastor, for performing ordinations, and for safeguarding the doctrine and discipline of the Church. The General Conference, a meeting every four years, has an equal number of clergy and lay delegates. In each Annual Conference, CME bishops serve for four-year terms. CME Church bishops may be male or female.


title: Bishop

text: In the United Methodist Church (the largest branch of Methodism in the world) bishops serve as administrative and pastoral superintendents of the church. They are elected for life from among the ordained elders (presbyters) by vote of the delegates in regional (called jurisdictional) conferences, and are consecrated by the other bishops present at the conference through the laying on of hands. In the United Methodist Church bishops remain members of the "Order of Elders" while being consecrated to the "Office of the Episcopacy". Within the United Methodist Church only bishops are empowered to consecrate bishops and ordain clergy. Among their most critical duties is the ordination and appointment of clergy to serve local churches as pastor, presiding at sessions of the Annual, Jurisdictional, and General Conferences, providing pastoral ministry for the clergy under their charge, and safeguarding the doctrine and discipline of the Church. Furthermore, individual bishops, or the Council of Bishops as a whole, often serve a prophetic role, making statements on important social issues and setting forth a vision for the denomination, though they have no legislative authority of their own. In all of these areas, bishops of the United Methodist Church function very much in the historic meaning of the term. According to the "Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church", a bishop's responsibilities are:


title: Bishop

text: In each Annual Conference, United Methodist bishops serve for four-year terms, and may serve up to three terms before either retirement or appointment to a new Conference. United Methodist bishops may be male or female, with Marjorie Matthews being the first woman to be consecrated a bishop in 1980.


title: Bishop

text: The collegial expression of episcopal leadership in the United Methodist Church is known as the Council of Bishops. The Council of Bishops speaks to the Church and through the Church into the world and gives leadership in the quest for Christian unity and interreligious relationships. The Conference of Methodist Bishops includes the United Methodist "Council of Bishops" plus bishops from affiliated autonomous Methodist or United Churches.


title: Bishop

text: John Wesley consecrated Thomas Coke a "General Superintendent", and directed that Francis Asbury also be consecrated for the United States of America in 1784, where the Methodist Episcopal Church first became a separate denomination apart from the Church of England. Coke soon returned to England, but Asbury was the primary builder of the new church. At first he did not call himself bishop, but eventually submitted to the usage by the denomination.


title: Bishop

text: Notable bishops in United Methodist history include Coke, Asbury, Richard Whatcoat, Philip William Otterbein, Martin Boehm, Jacob Albright, John Seybert, Matthew Simpson, John S. Stamm, William Ragsdale Cannon, Marjorie Matthews, Leontine T. Kelly, William B. Oden, Ntambo Nkulu Ntanda, Joseph Sprague, William Henry Willimon, and Thomas Bickerton.


title: Bishop

text: In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Bishop is the leader of a local congregation, called a ward. As with most LDS priesthood holders, the bishop is a part-time lay minister and earns a living through other employment. As such, it is his duty to preside, call local leaders, and judge the worthiness of members for certain activities. The bishop does not deliver sermons at every service (generally asking members to do so), but is expected to be a spiritual guide for his congregation. It is therefore believed that he has both the right and ability to receive divine inspiration (through the Holy Spirit) for the ward under his direction. Because it is a part-time position, all able members are expected to assist in the management of the ward by holding delegated lay positions (for example, women's and youth leaders, teachers) referred to as callings. The bishop is especially responsible for leading the youth, in connection with the fact that a bishop is the president of the Aaronic priesthood in his ward (and is thus a form of Mormon Kohen). Although members are asked to confess serious sins to him, unlike the Catholic Church, he is not the instrument of divine forgiveness, but merely a guide through the repentance process (and a judge in case transgressions warrant excommunication or other official discipline). The bishop is also responsible for the physical welfare of the ward, and thus collects tithing and fast offerings and distributes financial assistance where needed.


title: Bishop

text: A literal descendant of Aaron has "legal right" to act as a bishop after being found worthy and ordained by the First Presidency. In the absence of a literal descendant of Aaron, a high priest in the Melchizedek priesthood is called to be a bishop. Each bishop is selected from resident members of the ward by the stake presidency with approval of the First Presidency, and chooses two "counselors" to form a "bishopric". An priesthood holder called as bishop must be ordained a high priest if he is not already one, unlike the similar function of branch president. In special circumstances (such as a ward consisting entirely of young university students), a bishop may be chosen from outside the ward. Traditionally, bishops are married, though this is not always the case. A bishop is typically released after about five years and a new bishop is called to the position. Although the former bishop is released from his duties, he continues to hold the Aaronic priesthood office of bishop. Church members frequently refer to a former bishop as "Bishop" as a sign of respect and affection.


title: Bishop

text: Latter-day Saint bishops do not wear any special clothing or insignia the way clergy in many other churches do, but are expected to dress and groom themselves neatly and conservatively per their local culture, especially when performing official duties. Bishops (as well as other members of the priesthood) can trace their line of authority back to Joseph Smith, who, according to church doctrine, was ordained to lead the Church in modern times by the ancient apostles Peter, James, and John, who were ordained to lead the Church by Jesus Christ.


title: Bishop

text: At the global level, the presiding bishop oversees the temporal affairs (buildings, properties, commercial corporations, and so on) of the worldwide Church, including the Church's massive global humanitarian aid and social welfare programs. The presiding bishop has two counselors; the three together form the presiding bishopric. As opposed to ward bishoprics, where the counselors do not hold the office of bishop, all three men in the presiding bishopric hold the office of bishop, and thus the counselors, as with the presiding bishop, are formally referred to as "Bishop".


title: Bishop

text: The New Apostolic Church (NAC) knows three classes of ministries: Deacons, Priests and Apostles. The Apostles, who are all included in the apostolate with the Chief Apostle as head, are the highest ministries.


title: Bishop

text: Of the several kinds of priest...ministries, the bishop is the highest. Nearly all bishops are set in line directly from the chief apostle. They support and help their superior apostle.


title: Bishop

text: In the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), the ecclesiastical structure is composed of large dioceses that are called "jurisdictions" within COGIC, each under the authority of a bishop, sometimes called "state bishops". They can either be made up of large geographical regions of churches or churches that are grouped and organized together as their own separate jurisdictions because of similar affiliations, regardless of geographical location or dispersion. Each state in the U.S. has at least one jurisdiction while others may have several more, and each jurisdiction is usually composed of between 30 and 100 churches. Each jurisdiction is then broken down into several districts, which are smaller groups of churches (either grouped by geographical situation or by similar affiliations) which are each under the authority of District Superintendents who answer to the authority of their jurisdictional/state bishop. There are currently over 170 jurisdictions in the United States, and over 30 jurisdictions in other countries. The bishops of each jurisdiction, according to the COGIC Manual, are considered to be the modern day equivalent in the church of the early apostles and overseers of the New Testament church, and as the highest ranking clergymen in the COGIC, they are tasked with the responsibilities of being the head overseers of all religious, civil, and economic ministries and protocol for the church denomination. They also have the authority to appoint and ordain local pastors, elders, ministers, and reverends within the denomination. The bishops of the COGIC denomination are all collectively called "The Board of Bishops". From the Board of Bishops, and the General Assembly of the COGIC, the body of the church composed of clergy and lay delegates that are responsible for making and enforcing the bylaws of the denomination, every four years, twelve bishops from the COGIC are elected as "The General Board" of the church, who work alongside the delegates of the General Assembly and Board of Bishops to provide administration over the denomination as the church's head executive leaders. One of twelve bishops of the General Board is also elected the "presiding bishop" of the church, and two others are appointed by the presiding bishop himself, as his first and second assistant presiding bishops.


title: Bishop

text: Bishops in the Church of God in Christ usually wear black clergy suits which consist of a black suit blazer, black pants, a purple or scarlet clergy shirt and a white clerical collar, which is usually referred to as "Class B Civic attire". Bishops in COGIC also typically wear the Anglican Choir Dress style vestments of a long purple or scarlet chimere, cuffs, and tippet worn over a long white rochet, and a gold pectoral cross worn around the neck with the tippet. This is usually referred to as "Class A Ceremonial attire". The bishops of COGIC alternate between Class A Ceremonial attire and Class B Civic attire depending on the protocol of the religious services and other events they have to attend.


title: Bishop

text: In the polity of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), the international leader is the presiding bishop, and the members of the executive committee are executive bishops. Collectively, they supervise and appoint national and state leaders across the world. Leaders of individual states and regions are administrative bishops, who have jurisdiction over local churches in their respective states and are vested with appointment authority for local pastorates. All ministers are credentialed at one of three levels of licensure, the most senior of which is the rank of ordained bishop. To be eligible to serve in state, national, or international positions of authority, a minister must hold the rank of ordained bishop.


title: Bishop

text: In 2002, the general convention of the Pentecostal Church of God came to a consensus to change the title of their overseer from general superintendent to bishop. The change was brought on because internationally, the term "bishop" is more commonly related to religious leaders than the previous title.


title: Bishop

text: The title "bishop" is used for both the general (international leader) and the district (state) leaders. The title is sometimes used in conjunction with the previous, thus becoming general (district) superintendent/bishop.


title: Bishop

text: "The "elders" (Greek, ) or "bishops" () were the most important officers of the church. The term elder means older one, implying dignity and respect. His position was similar to that of the one who had supervision of the synagogue. The term bishop means "overseer". Paul used these terms interchangeably, equating elders with overseers or bishops (Acts 20:17,; Titus 1:5, 7).


title: Bishop

text: "Those who held this position supervised the newly formed churches. Elder referred to the status or rank of the office, while bishop denoted the duty or responsibility of the office—"overseer". Since the apostles also called themselves elders (1 Peter 5:1; 2 John 1; 3 John 1), it is apparent that there were both local elders and itinerant elders, or elders at large. But both kinds of elder functioned as shepherds of the congregations."


title: Bishop

text: The above understanding is part of the basis of Adventist organizational structure. The world wide Seventh-day Adventist church is organized into local districts, conferences or missions, union conferences or union missions, divisions, and finally at the top is the general conference. At each level (with exception to the local districts), there is an elder who is elected president and a group of elders who serve on the executive committee with the elected president. Those who have been elected president would in effect be the "bishop" while never actually carrying the title or ordained as such because the term is usually associated with the episcopal style of church governance most often found in Catholic, Anglican, Methodist and some Pentecostal/Charismatic circles.


title: Bishop

text: In some smaller Protestant denominations and independent churches, the term "bishop" is used in the same way as "pastor", to refer to the leader of the local congregation, and may be male or female. This usage is especially common in African-American churches in the US.


title: Bishop

text: In the Church of Scotland, which has a Presbyterian church structure, the word "bishop" refers to an ordained person, usually a normal parish minister, who has temporary oversight of a trainee minister. In the Presbyterian Church (USA), the term bishop is an expressive name for a Minister of Word and Sacrament who serves a congregation and exercises "the oversight of the flock of Christ." The term is traceable to the 1789 Form of Government of the PC (USA) and the Presbyterian understanding of the pastoral office.


title: Bishop

text: While not considered orthodox Christian, the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica uses roles and titles derived from Christianity for its clerical hierarchy, including bishops who have much the same authority and responsibilities as in Catholicism.


title: Bishop

text: The Salvation Army does not have bishops but has appointed leaders of geographical areas, known as Divisional Commanders. Larger geographical areas, called Territories, are led by a Territorial Commander, who is the highest-ranking officer in that Territory.


title: Bishop

text: Jehovah's Witnesses do not use the title 'Bishop' within their organizational structure, but appoint elders to be overseers (to fulfill the role of oversight) within their congregations.


title: Bishop

text: The HKBP of Indonesia, the most prominent Protestant denomination in Indonesia, uses the term "ephorus" instead of "bishop".


title: Bishop

text: In the Vietnamese syncretist religion of Caodaism, bishops () comprise the fifth of nine hierarchical levels, and are responsible for spiritual and temporal education as well as record-keeping and ceremonies in their parishes. At any one time there are seventy-two bishops. Their authority is described in Section I of the text (revealed through seances in December 1926). Caodai bishops wear robes and headgear of embroidered silk depicting the Divine Eye and the Eight Trigrams. (The color varies according to branch.) This is the full ceremonial dress; the simple version consists of a seven-layered turban.


title: Bishop

text: Traditionally, a number of items are associated with the office of a bishop, most notably the mitre, crosier, and ecclesiastical ring. Other vestments and insignia vary between Eastern and Western Christianity.


title: Bishop

text: In the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, the choir dress of a bishop includes the purple cassock with amaranth trim, rochet, purple zucchetto (skull cap), purple biretta, and pectoral cross. The cappa magna may be worn, but only within the bishop's own diocese and on especially solemn occasions. The mitre, zuchetto, and stole are generally worn by bishops when presiding over liturgical functions. For liturgical functions other than the Mass the bishop typically wears the cope. Within his own diocese and when celebrating solemnly elsewhere with the consent of the local ordinary, he also uses the crosier. When celebrating Mass, a bishop, like a priest, wears the chasuble. The Caeremoniale Episcoporum recommends, but does not impose, that in solemn celebrations a bishop should also wear a dalmatic, which can always be white, beneath the chasuble, especially when administering the sacrament of holy orders, blessing an abbot or abbess, and dedicating a church or an altar. The Caeremoniale Episcoporum no longer makes mention of episcopal gloves, episcopal sandals, liturgical stockings (also known as buskins), or the accoutrements that it once prescribed for the bishop's horse. The coat of arms of a Latin Rite Catholic bishop usually displays a galero with a cross and crosier behind the escutcheon; the specifics differ by location and ecclesiastical rank (see Ecclesiastical heraldry).


title: Bishop

text: Anglican bishops generally make use of the mitre, crosier, ecclesiastical ring, purple cassock, purple zucchetto, and pectoral cross. However, the traditional choir dress of Anglican bishops retains its late mediaeval form, and looks quite different from that of their Catholic counterparts; it consists of a long rochet which is worn with a chimere.


title: Bishop

text: In the Eastern Churches (Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Rite Catholic) a bishop will wear the mandyas, panagia (and perhaps an enkolpion), sakkos, omophorion and an Eastern-style mitre. Eastern bishops do not normally wear an episcopal ring; the faithful kiss (or, alternatively, touch their forehead to) the bishop's hand. To seal official documents, he will usually use an inked stamp. An Eastern bishop's coat of arms will normally display an Eastern-style mitre, cross, eastern style crosier and a red and white (or red and gold) mantle. The arms of Oriental Orthodox bishops will display the episcopal insignia (mitre or turban) specific to their own liturgical traditions. Variations occur based upon jurisdiction and national customs.


title: Bishop

text: In Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican cathedrals there is a special chair set aside for the exclusive use of the bishop. This is the bishop's "cathedra" and is often called the throne. In some Christian denominations, for example, the Anglican Communion, parish churches may maintain a chair for the use of the bishop when he visits; this is to signify the parish's union with the bishop.


title: Bishop

text: The leader of the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) is their bishop, which since April 23, 2020 is Marvin Harada. The Japanese title for the bishop of the BCA is , although the English title is favored over the Japanese. When it comes to many other Buddhist terms, the BCA chose to keep them in their original language (terms such as and ), but with some words (including ), they changed/translated these terms into English words.


title: Bishop

text: Between 1899 and 1944, the BCA held the name Buddhist Mission of North America. The leader of the Buddhist Mission of North America was called (superintendent/director) between 1899 and 1918. In 1918 the was promoted to bishop (). However, according to George J. Tanabe, the title "bishop" was in practice already used by Hawaiian Shin Buddhists (in Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii) even when the official title was "kantoku".


title: Bishop

text: Bishops are also present in other Japanese Buddhist organizations. Higashi Hongan-ji's North American District, Honpa Honganji Mission of Hawaii, Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Temples of Canada, a Jodo Shu temple in Los Angeles, the Shingon temple Koyasan Buddhist Temple, Sōtō Mission in Hawai‘i (a Soto Zen Buddhist institution), and the Sōtō Zen Buddhist Community of South America () all have or have had leaders with the title bishop. As for the Sōtō Zen Buddhist Community of South America, the Japanese title is , but the leader is in practice referred to as "bishop".


title: Bishop

text: Tenrikyo is a Japanese New Religion with influences from both Shinto and Buddhism. The leader of the Tenrikyo North American Mission has the title of bishop.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Charlotte Marie Pomeline Casiraghi (born 3 August 1986) is a Monégasque model, socialite, writer, editor, equestrian, journalist, film producer, and humanitarian. She is the second child and only daughter of Caroline, Princess of Hanover, and Stefano Casiraghi, an Italian industrialist. She is eleventh in line to the throne of Monaco. Her maternal grandparents were Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, and American actress Grace Kelly. She is named after her maternal great-grandmother, Princess Charlotte, Duchess of Valentinois.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Charlotte Casiraghi was born in Princess Grace Hospital Centre in La Colle, Monaco on 3 August 1986 to Caroline, Princess of Hanover and Stefano Casiraghi. She was christened on 20 September 1986. Her godparents are Albina du Boisrouvray and Stefano Casiraghi's brother-in-law, Massimo Bianchi. She has two brothers: Andrea (b. 1984) and Pierre (b. 1987). When she was four years old, her father was killed in a boating accident. After his death, Princess Caroline moved the family to the Midi village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in France, with the intention of minimising their exposure to the press.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In January 1999, Charlotte gained a stepfather and two stepbrothers, (Prince Ernst of Hanover and Prince Christian of Hanover), when her mother married Ernst August, Prince of Hanover. Six months later, Casiraghi's half-sister, Princess Alexandra of Hanover, was born at a clinic in Vöcklabruck, Austria. Casiraghi is one of the godmothers to her sister. The family then moved to the Parisian suburb of Fontainebleau.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: From 2001 through 2004, as a member of Marcel Rozier's Team Marionnaud, Casiraghi participated in a number of Junior and Amateur class show jumping competitions. She was trained by his son Thierry Rozier.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: From the ages of two to six, Casiraghi attended Les Dames de Saint Maur, which is part of the Catholic schools of François d'Assise Nicolas Barré in Monaco. At the age of six, she moved on to the "École de la République" (state school system) in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. From 2000 to 2004 she attended the Lycée François-Couperin, Fontainebleau.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: She obtained an "excellent" (in French: "très bien", the highest possible) mark on her baccalaureate exam in July 2004. After passing her "bac", she enrolled in the "hypokhâgne" and "khâgne" course at the Lycée Fénelon, in St-Germain-des-Près, Paris, in the hope of entering the École normale supérieure (Paris). She took the written entrance exam for ENS in June 2006, but failed to make the list of candidates eligible to proceed to the oral exam.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In 2007, Casiraghi earned a License of Philosophy (B.A.) from the ; Casiraghi completed two internships, firstly with the publishing house of Robert Laffont in Paris, and then later from October 2007 with the Sunday magazine supplement of "The Independent" newspaper of London. In 2018, Casiraghi told Clara Le Fort of "Billionaire" magazine: "I continued studying philosophy while at the Sciences Po Doctoral School."


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In 2010, Casiraghi became the official ambassador for the equestrian collections of Gucci. In 2014, she became the face of Gucci Cosmetics. Casiraghi modelled for Yves Saint Laurent's campaign for its Fall 2018 collection, giving it the hashtag #YSL15. Casiraghi was photographed by David Sims to be the face of the campaign.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Casiraghi modeled for the lens of Collier Schorr in the eighth issue of "System" magazine. In a gender fluid framework, Casiraghi modeled clothing from the Gucci menswear line. On 22 December 2020, Casiraghi became the brand ambassador of Chanel. She was the global face for Chanel's Spring/Summer 2021 campaign.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In 2018, Casiraghi collaborated with Montblanc on a line of jewellery called "Les Aimants" and inspired by Nancy Cunard.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In 2015, Casiraghi founded "Les Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco" (literally, "Philosophical Encounters"). Her co-founders include her former teacher in Fontainebleau, the philosopher . The others founders are and . Her mother is among the many honorary members of the group, which is really a think tank on philosophy. They discuss contemporary issues and new publications in the field of philosophy. The writings and the life of Anne Dufourmantelle made a strong impact on Casiraghi, who wrote in particular about Dufourmantelle's book "Défense du Secret" in an article for Libération. Casiraghi and Dufourmantelle, who died in 2017, were friends, sharing, by the admission of Casiraghi herself, a passion for not only philosophy but for horses.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Casiraghi wrote the preface for a book published in 2017 by the psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva. The two women also published their letters to each other, reflecting on philosophy.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In March 2018, Casiraghi and Maggiori published their Kindle book, through Éditions du Seuil. The title is "Archipel des Passions" (Archipelago of the Passions). It is a series of dialogues between the professor and the student about the various passions (i.e. arrogance, joy, cruelty, love) and their affects. It is also "an essay on the passion of thought." The book is dedicated to her father and the passions explored amount to about forty. It "reads like a treatise of the passions."


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In June 2009, Casiraghi, accompanied by her uncle Albert II, Prince of Monaco, appeared on the French television programme Stade 2 to speak about her recent enrollment in the Global Champions Tour.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Since returning to the show jumping sport in April 2009 (after a four-year hiatus), she continues to train with Thierry Rozier. Casiraghi and the bay gelding named GI Joe (owner: Jan Tops), participated in the 2009 Global Champions Tour in Valencia, Spain, Monte Carlo, Cannes, Estoril, Rio de Janeiro, and Valkenswaard.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Casiraghi continued participation in the Global Champions Tour throughout 2010. For the most part, she rode horses Troy (a chestnut stallion) and Tintero (a grey gelding). The GCT "Pro-Am Cup" (Professional-Amateur) relay was her original concept. It is a staple of the GCT Monaco event to this day.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In 2010, she assumed the role of honorary president of the Global Champions Tour (now the Longines Global Champions Tour) in Monaco; her mother had been honorary president of the event as it existed prior to its inclusion in the Global Champions Tour. Since 2015, Casiraghi never participated in multiple phases of the Longines Global Champions Tour. After that year, she reduced her participation to the Monaco phase only.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Casiraghi is a published writer and magazine editor. Her credits include work for AnOther Magazine (its issue for January 2008) and the Sunday supplement to the British The Independent newspaper in the late months of 2007. She was the editor-at-large for "Above" magazine in 2009. With two friends, she left that role in order to focus on the founding of the ecological/fashion-related "Ever Manifesto".


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Through her work as the editor-at-large for "Above" magazine, Casiraghi befriended Stella McCartney, whom she interviewed for the magazine's first issue. McCartney enlightened Casiraghi and readers as to the many ways the fashion industry can harm the ecosystem. Also for "Above", Casiraghi was reported in Women's Wear Daily as being "instrumental in securing an interview with "Gomorrah" author Roberto Saviano (which took place in hiding thanks to Saviano's dissection of the Mafia)."


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: On 21 September 2009, Casiraghi announced plans to publish 3,000 copies of "Ever Manifesto," a free publication on what she considers the fashion industry's harmful impact on the global environment and to promote sustainability in fashion. Casiraghi revealed that her collaborators with the Loro Piana-funded project are the socialite Alexia Niedzielski and advertising executive Elizabeth von Guttman. She also revealed that the environmentally conscious designer Stella McCartney, as well as her own uncle Prince Albert II, greatly enlightened and influenced her. Specifically, she said: "It's only recently that I've questioned the way that I've been consuming. I haven't been as conscious as I should have been."


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: The debut issue of "Ever Manifesto" was distributed free at the 10 Corso Como boutique during Milan Fashion Week and again at Colette in Paris during Paris Fashion Week. Casiraghi explained that the magazine will not have a predetermined publication schedule. "We want to publish when we have something to say or people to support," she said. "It will be short and meaningful so that people will read it."


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: The day after the publication of her "La Stampa" interview, 22 September, Casiraghi joined her partners, Niedzielski and Guttman, at the gallery of Michelangelo Pistoletto, in the town of Biella, in the Italian region of Piedmont. Along with the artist and the Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani, Casiraghi unveiled plans for "Ever Manifesto" and the .


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In October 2009, Casiraghi was a guest at the Stella McCartney show in Paris. Sitting in the front row with Dasha Zhukova, Paul McCartney and Gwyneth Paltrow, she told Women's Wear Daily about "Ever Manifesto". Copies of the magazine's first issue were left on the seats before the show. "We will announce [succeeding issues] on the website soon," she said.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Casiraghi contributed to the October 2009 issue of "20", the free newspaper of Alex Dellal's gallery, 20 Hoxton Square Projects.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Casiraghi founded Swoon Productions in 2012 that focused on equestrian films. In 2014, Casiraghi bought the rights to the book "Our Lady of the Nile", which was released as a feature film in 2020, in which she was one of the producers.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: Casiraghi is a private citizen, but occasionally attends official functions in Monaco, such as a fundraising gala for AMADE Mondiale and Nelson Mandela's foundation in September 2007. In 2006, she made her debut appearance at Monaco's Rose Ball (in French: "Bal de la Rose"), which also raises money for the Princess Grace Foundation. In 2015, she joined the board of directors of FXB France, an organization founded by her godmother Albina du Boisrouvray in 1989 to combat AIDS and poverty.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: As a child, she was Monegasque delegate to the "Club des Habits Rouges". At the same time, her grandfather Rainier III, Prince of Monaco designated her patron of the Public Safety Division in Monaco.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: At the age of 16, Casiraghi was named number ten on a list of the world's most eligible young women. "Vanity Fair" selected Casiraghi as one of the International Best Dressed List of 2006.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In December 2011, Casiraghi started dating stand-up comedian and actor Gad Elmaleh. Their son, Raphaël, was born on Tuesday, 17 December 2013. As Raphaël's parents were not married, he is not included in the line of succession to the Monegasque throne. The couple split in June 2015.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: In March 2018, several credible media sources reported her engagement to Dimitri Rassam, the son of French actress Carole Bouquet, and it was widely noted that she wore a diamond ring at Monaco's Rose Ball on 24 March. Casiraghi was visibly pregnant by the summer and the couple chose to postpone a wedding until after the birth of their child. On 23 October 2018, Casiraghi gave birth to a second child, a son named Balthazar. The couple married civilly at the Prince's Palace of Monaco on 1 June 2019. They celebrated in a reception at nearby hotel Villa La Vigie.


title: Charlotte Casiraghi

text: On 29 June 2019, they married religiously at the Abbey of Sainte-Marie de Pierredon, outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: TBS (an abbreviation for Turner Broadcasting System) is an American pay television network owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery U.S. Networks division of Warner Bros. Discovery. It carries a variety of programming, with a focus on comedy, along with some sports events, including Major League Baseball, Stanley Cup playoffs, NCAA men's basketball tournament and professional wrestling show AEW Dynamite. As of September 2018, TBS was received by approximately 90.391 million households that subscribe to a pay television service throughout the United States.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: TBS was originally established on December 17, 1976, as the national feed of Turner's Atlanta, Georgia, independent television station, WTCG. The decision to begin offering WTCG via satellite transmission to cable and satellite subscribers throughout the United States expanded the small station into the first nationally distributed "superstation." With the assignment of WTBS as the broadcast station's call letters in 1979, the national feed became known as SuperStation WTBS, and later SuperStation TBS, TBS Superstation, or simply TBS. The channel broadcast a variety of programming during this era, including films, syndicated series, and sports (including Atlanta Braves baseball, basketball games involving the Atlanta Hawks and other NBA teams, and professional wrestling including Georgia Championship Wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions and later World Championship Wrestling).


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: WTBS maintained a nearly identical program schedule as the national feed, aside from FCC-mandated public affairs and educational programming that only aired on the local signal. By the early 2000s, TBS had begun to focus more intensively on comedic programming, including sitcoms and other series. On October 1, 2007, TBS was converted by Turner into a conventional basic cable network, at which time it began to be carried within the Atlanta market on area cable providers alongside its existing local carriage on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network. The former parent station in Atlanta was concurrently relaunched as WPCH-TV (branded as "Peachtree TV", which Turner sold to the Meredith Corporation in 2017, and later acquired by Gray Television in 2021) and reformatted as a traditional independent station with a separate schedule exclusively catering to the Atlanta market.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: TBS originated as a terrestrial television station in Atlanta, Georgia that began operating on UHF channel 17 on September 1, 1967, under the WJRJ-TV call letters. That station—which its original parent originally filed to transmit UHF channel 46, before modifying it to assign channel 17 as its frequency in February 1966—was founded by Rice Broadcasting Inc. (owned by Atlanta entrepreneur Jack M. Rice, Jr., owner of locally based pay television firms Atlanta Telemeter Inc. and Home Theaters of Georgia Inc.). Rice built a massive new self-supporting transmission tower (later known as the Turner Broadcasting tower), which, at a height of , was the tallest freestanding structure ever built in Atlanta and provided Channel 17 a stronger signal than other UHF stations, which was particularly beneficial as television sets of that era were often equipped with low-sensitivity tuners and substandard antennas. Under Rice, WJRJ—the first independent station to begin operation in the Atlanta market since WQXI-TV (channel 36, allocation now occupied by MyNetworkTV affiliate WATL) ceased operations on May 31, 1955—operated on a shoestring budget, general entertainment format with a schedule consisting of a few off-network reruns (such as "Father Knows Best", "The Danny Thomas Show", "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" and "The Rifleman") and older feature films as well as a 15-minute news program.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: In July 1969, Rice Broadcasting reached an agreement to merge with the Turner Communications Corporation—an Atlanta-based group owned by entrepreneur Robert E. "Ted" Turner III, who ran his late father's billboard advertising business and had also expanded his interests to include radio stations in Chattanooga, Tennessee (WGOW), Charleston, South Carolina (WTMA-AM-FM, the FM station is now WSSX-FM), and Jacksonville, Florida (WMBR, now WBOB)—in an all-stock transaction. Under the sale terms, Rice would acquire Turner in an exchange of stock and adopt the Turner Communications name; however, Turner would acquire about 75% of the merged company and own 48.2% of its stock, receiving 1.2 million shares of Rice stock worth an estimated $3 million. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted approval of the acquisition on December 10, 1969, giving Turner its first television property. Soon after Turner received approval of its purchase of WJRJ-TV in January 1970, Turner changed the station's call letters to WTCG (which officially stood for We're Turner Communications Group, although the station used "Watch This Channel Grow" as a promotional slogan). The sale was formally completed four months later on April 6, 1970, at which time Turner was assigned as licensee of WJRJ-TV.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: The channel 17 transmitter was originally located at 1018 West Peachtree Street Northwest (it has since been relocated to the Atlanta suburb of North Druid Hills, Georgia), with the antenna located on the Turner Broadcasting tower. The building at this site was once home to the studios of CBS affiliate WAGA-TV (channel 5, now a Fox owned-and-operated station) and, later, channel 17, during its first three years as WJRJ-TV. By 1980, the station moved to new studio facilities a few blocks west at the former site of the Progressive Club, along with overflow offices on Williams Street, across Interstate 75/85, those facilities now house Adult Swim and Williams Street Productions. (It shared the ex-Progressive Club studios with CNN and Headline News until the latter two moved their operations into the CNN Center downtown in 1987). Early programming included movies from the 1930s and 1940s, sitcoms (such as "Father Knows Best", "Green Acres", "Hazel", "I Love Lucy", and "The Lucy Show"), and Japanese animated series (such as "Astro Boy", "Kimba the White Lion", "Marine Boy", "The Space Giants", "Speed Racer", and "Ultraman"). The station also carried sports, such as Atlanta Braves baseball, Atlanta Hawks basketball, Atlanta Flames hockey, and Georgia Championship Wrestling.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: WTCG also made very low bids to acquire the rights to syndicated programming and film packages, leaving the network-affiliated stations in the market—WAGA-TV, NBC affiliate WSB-TV (channel 2, now an ABC affiliate) and ABC affiliate WXIA-TV (channel 11, now an NBC affiliate)—to acquire the stronger shows. But, because of programming commitments that the affiliates had to their networks, those stations only kept the shows for a few years at a time and rarely renewed their contractual rights to continue airing them, after which WTCG bought the syndicated programs second-hand at much lower rates. By the mid-1970s, "The Andy Griffith Show", "The Flintstones", "Leave It to Beaver", "The Little Rascals", "My Three Sons", "", "The Three Stooges", and many others were added to the station's schedule.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: By the time Turner acquired WTCG, most U.S. cities below the top 20 media markets lacked independent stations running general entertainment programs, and largely only had access to television stations affiliated with ABC, NBC, and CBS, along with a non-commercial educational station. Cable providers in these areas carried network-affiliated commercial and non-commercial television stations from neighboring markets—usually to serve as default outlets where one or more networks were not available locally—and if possible, an independent station (often located anywhere between away). Still, many places were far enough out of the reach of an independent station's signal that this was not an option. There were cable systems that carried three stations affiliated with each of the major commercial networks and three stations that were PBS member outlets (one station from within the home market and two stations from neighboring markets of each network).


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: WTCG started to reach far beyond the Atlanta television market in the early 1970s to serve such areas lacking an independent station, as many cable television systems in middle and southern Georgia and surrounding areas of the Southeastern United States—particularly Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina—began picking up the UHF signal off-air and retransmitted the Atlanta studio/transmitter link feed to microwave relay towers (sometimes several times) back to their headends. (By June 1976, WTCG was carried by 95 cable systems in six Southeastern states, reaching an estimated 440,000 households).


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: Turner began formulating plans to take WTCG national upon hearing of the groundbreaking innovation that premium cable service Home Box Office (HBO) (which would eventually become a sister property to channel 17 as a result of Time Warner's 1996 acquisition of the Turner Broadcasting System) engaged in to retransmit its programming nationwide utilizing communications satellites beginning with its September 30, 1975 telecast of the "Thrilla in Manila" boxing match. In December 1975, Ted Turner unveiled plans to distribute his station over communications satellite, enabling WTCG to extend distribution of its programming to cable and C-band satellite subscribers throughout the United States, especially in markets lacking even a distant independent station. With a more cost-effective and expeditious distribution method in place than would be capable through setting up microwave and coaxial telephone relay systems across the entire country, Turner got his idea off the ground by founding Southern Satellite Systems (SSS)—a common carrier uplink provider based in Tulsa, Oklahoma—to serve as the station's satellite redistributor, and subsequently purchased an earth-to-satellite transmitting station to be set up outside of WTCG's Peachtree Street studios in Atlanta. In order to get around FCC rules in effect at the time that prohibited a common carrier from having involvement in program origination, Turner decided to sell SSS to former Western Union vice president of marketing Edward L. Taylor for $1 and sold the transmitting station to RCA American Communications. Upon the sale's consummation in March 1976, Turner reached an agreement with Taylor to have the firm uplink the WTCG signal to the Satcom 1 satellite.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: Turner's plans to turn WTCG into a national cable service were made possible through various FCC deregulatory actions on signal importation during the 1970s, among them was a cable rules package passed in March 1972 that allowed cable systems in the 100 largest markets the right to carry imported signals (including the addition of two distant signals not already available in the market), restricted cable systems in smaller markets to carrying only three network stations and one independent station (except for undefinable markets that would not be limited in the number of carried imported signals), and instituted leapfrogging rules that required systems importing distant independent stations from the top-25 markets to choose from one or both of the two markets closest to the provider's city of license and any systems carrying the signal of a third independent being required to pick up a UHF or, if such a station is not available, VHF station located within a radius. Further changes to signal importation regulations occurred with the August 1975 passage of a policy allowing unlimited importation of distant signals either following a local "must carry" station's final daily sign-off or at 1:00 a.m. (Eastern and Pacific Time) and 12:00 a.m. (in all other time zones), and the December 1975 repeal of the agency's 1972 "leapfrogging" rules (which restricted cable systems from selecting a distant signal from among stations in the top-25 media markets beyond those closest to the licensed system). Furthermore, the Congressional passage of the Copyright Act of 1976 on October 1 of that year provided compulsory licenses to cable systems and "passive" satellite carriers, allowing them to retransmit any broadcast television station throughout the country, regardless of prior consent, without incurring copyright liability; this legislation also granted the U.S. Copyright Office the ability to charge cable systems royalty fees to be compensated to the owners of a copyrighted program. The station would still be subjected to program duplication restrictions covered under the original 1972 incarnation of the Syndication Exclusivity Rules (or "SyndEx"), which—prior to its repeal in July 1980—allowed television stations to claim local exclusivity over syndicated programs and required cable systems to either black out or secure an agreement with the claimant station or a syndication distributor to continue carrying a claimed program through an out-of-market station.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: At 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time on December 17, 1976, WTCG became America's first "superstation"—independent stations distributed to cable providers throughout their respective regions, or the entire country—when its signal began to be beamed via the Satcom 1 satellite to four cable systems in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States: Multi-Vue TV in Grand Island, Nebraska, Hampton Roads Cablevision in Newport News, Virginia, Troy Cablevision in Troy, Alabama, and Newton Cable TV in Newton, Kansas. At that moment, approximately 24,000 additional households began receiving the WTCG signal. The station's first national broadcast was the 1948 Dana Andrews–Cesar Romero film "Deep Waters", which had been in progress for 30 minutes on channel 17 in Atlanta.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: With this move, WTCG would become one of the first television stations, and only the second U.S. broadcaster—after HBO—to be transmitted via satellite, instead of the then-standard method of using microwave relay to distribute a programming feed. Turner's decision to turn his television station into a national programming service was an expensive gamble on his part, given that he spent about $6 million of the $14 million that the station made in annual gross revenue at the time on satellite transmission. SSS initially charged prospective cable systems 10¢ per subscriber to transmit the WTCG signal as a 24-hour channel and 2¢ per subscriber to carry it as a part-time, overnight-only service (with the intent of acting as a timeshare feed on a cable channel otherwise occupied by a local or out-of-market broadcast station during their normal sign-off period).


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: Instantly, WTCG went from being a small independent television station that regularly placed near the bottom of the ratings among Atlanta's television stations well into the 1970s and was available only in Georgia and neighboring states to a major coast-to-coast operation, pioneering the distribution of broadcast television stations via satellite transmission to pay television subscribers nationwide. Ted Turner's innovation set a precedent for today's basic cable television and signaled the start of the revolution of basic cable programming in the United States. Soon after, an increasing number of cable television providers throughout the United States sought to carry WTCG on their systems. Within three years of WTCG achieving national status, the signals of fellow independent stations WOR-TV (now MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station WWOR-TV) in New York City and WGN-TV in Chicago were also uplinked to satellite for distribution as national superstations; eventually, other independents such as KTVT (now a CBS owned-and-operated station) in Dallas, KTVU (now a Fox owned-and-operated station) in San Francisco and KTLA (now a CW affiliate) in Los Angeles were uplinked to satellite as well, primarily being carried on a regional basis.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: The expansion of WTCG into a superstation would serve as the linchpin for what would later be renamed the Turner Broadcasting System to eventually launch or acquire other cable-originated channels in subsequent years, including the Cable News Network (CNN) (launched on June 1, 1980), HLN (launched as CNN2 on January 1, 1982, and later known as CNN Headline News from 1983 to 2007), Turner Network Television (TNT) (launched on October 3, 1988), Cartoon Network (launched on October 1, 1992), Turner Classic Movies (TCM) (launched on April 14, 1994), and TruTV (folded into Turner, as Court TV, following the closure of parent Time Warner's acquisition of Liberty Media's 50% interest in the channel in May 2006).


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: Turner and station management treated WTCG as an "active" superstation, directly asserting national promotional responsibilities, investing in programming, and charging advertising rates at the national and local levels. This resulted in the station paying for syndicated programming at (albeit reasonably cheaper) rates comparable to other national networks, rather than merely receiving royalty payments from cable systems for programs to which it held the copyright as "passive" superstations—like WGN and WWOR, which opted to take a neutral position on their national distribution and left national promotional duties to the satellite carriers that retransmitted their signals—did. (Unlike WTCG, most other superstations had their signals redistributed without their owner's express permission under a provision in Section 111 of the Copyright Act of 1976, which allowed local cable systems to "retransmit copyrighted programming from any over-the-air stations across the country to their subscribers under a compulsory license").


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: WTCG initially was identified as "Channel 17" or "Super 17" both locally in Atlanta and on cable providers outside of that area; by 1979, the station identified primarily by its call letters locally and nationally. Over time, as WTCG was also beginning to gain traction in the Atlanta market, the station also began to gain traction nationally as more cable systems added the WTCG signal to their lineups; by 1978, WTCG was carried on cable providers in all 50 U.S. states, reaching over 2.3 million subscribers, a total that would substantially double each year into the next decade. Because it utilized a broadcast television station as the origination point for its programming, throughout its existence as a superstation, all programs on WTCG/WTBS—which transmitted exactly the same schedule nationally as that seen on the local Atlanta broadcast feed—were broadcast on an Eastern Time schedule (with programs shown at earlier or, for those viewing in the Atlantic Time Zone in far eastern Canada and the Maritimes, later times depending on the location), resulting in programs being shown simultaneously in all six continental U.S. and all five Canadian time zones as they did in the Atlanta area on channel 17. (Promos for WTCG/WTBS programs referenced airtimes for both the Eastern and Central Time Zones until 1987, and the Eastern and Pacific time zones thereafter until 1992 and occasionally beforehand for certain scheduled live sports and event telecasts).


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: In May 1979, Turner made a $25,000 donation to a group associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to fund the construction of a new transmitter, in exchange for acquiring the WTBS call letters that had been assigned to the university's Cambridge-based student radio station for use on the channel 17 license; Turner also agreed to donate an additional $25,000 to the group if the FCC agreed to assign the WTBS calls to Turner Communications. (MIT subsequently changed the radio station's calls to WMBR.) On August 27, 1979, the Atlanta parent station changed its call letters to WTBS (for "Turner Broadcasting System," the name its parent company adopted in accordance with the callsign change).


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: Concurrently, Turner began branding the station as "SuperStation WTBS"—the prefix word was re-rendered in mixed case in October 1980, with both "S"s capitalized—with occasional references within the logo to the channel 17 frequency in Atlanta. (Accordingly, many cable providers throughout the country even carried it on channel 17 during some part of its existence as a superstation). However, the national feed continued to occasionally use the same on-air branding as the Atlanta area signal (which was referred to on-air at the time as "WTBS Channel 17") until October 1980. By 1981, the Atlanta station would be branded as "SuperStation 17," on the national feed available outside of the Atlanta area, though, references to the station's over-the-air channel number were completely removed—outside of minor technical issues where local ads and promos aired erroneously on the national feed.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: The on-air look of the station by this time was heavily reliant on then state-of-the-art Quantel Paintbox graphics, with slick animation created by a team of in-house graphic designers, led by creative services director John Christopher Burns. He and others would develop this look further in the years that followed, eventually forming the design firm Television by Design to provide services to other television stations around the country (including WXIA-TV, rival independent WGNX [channel 46, now CBS affiliate WANF] and PBS member station WPBA [channel 30] within the Atlanta market). Burns would leave TVbD, but continued to be employed by Turner Broadcasting for other projects, including the 1989 revamp of Headline News and the 1991 redesign of WTBS itself (handled by Burns' brother James). John Young, an Atlanta-area radio DJ, became the voice of SuperStation WTBS during this time and would go on to provide promotional voiceover services for other local and national clients as a direct result of his work for the channel. Other voiceovers were handled by Turner employees, most notably music director Bill "Troll" Tullis, who generally voiced station IDs and other miscellaneous work with a distinctive monotone; he would become the voice heard during Headline News' half-hourly network IDs by the mid-1980s.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: During the late 1970s and early 1980s, WTBS continued to acquire second-hand programming such as made-for-TV "Popeye" cartoons, "The Brady Bunch", "The Munsters", and other programs. The station acquired reruns of "All in the Family" and "Sanford and Son" in 1979, as well as "Little House on the Prairie" and "CHiPs" in 1981. Other older shows would eventually be removed from the schedule. WTCG also mixed more movie releases from the 1950s through the 1970s into its schedule. By July 1979, WTCG/WTBS was available to 1,000 cable systems throughout the United States, with a total of 4.8 million cable subscribers receiving the signal. In 1981, Turner decided to split the WTBS satellite feed from its terrestrial signal; under this structure, all of the shows seen on WTBS continued to air nationally over its superstation feed (in a move that preceded fellow superstations WGN-TV and WWOR-TV doing the same thing, though only after the FCC's re-implementation of the Syndication Exclusivity Rights rule in 1990). Although, separate national advertising or per inquiry ads replaced the local commercials intended for broadcast in the Atlanta area—which became exclusively carried by channel 17 locally—on the superstation feed.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: The 1980s also saw WTBS begin to venture into original programming, in 1980, the station premiered "Tush", a late night sketch comedy and variety series hosted and developed by comedian Bill Tush (who had hosted newsbriefs and, occasionally, movie presentations for WTBS, in addition to serving as a staff announcer), with Jan Hooks (who would later gain fame during her stint as a cast member on "Saturday Night Live"). "Starcade", a game show that ran from 1982 to 1983 (with a further run in syndication via Turner Program Services until 1984), where people competed to win their very own arcade cabinet by playing various games. Other programming efforts included "The Catlins" (a "Dynasty"-style prime time soap opera which ran for two seasons from 1983 to 1985, and was the only Procter & Gamble serial to be produced for cable television), and sitcoms "Down to Earth", "Rocky Road", and "Safe at Home" (all three of which were produced by The Arthur Company, and formed a block of first-run comedy series aimed at a family audience). In addition, from 1986 through 1989, TBS also produced more than 70 original episodes of "The New Leave It To Beaver", which it picked up after that series was canceled by The Disney Channel in 1985. (TBS's addition of "The New Leave It To Beaver" to its lineup also coincided with the original "Leave it to Beaver" airing in reruns on the channel, as Ted Turner felt that the former would make a good programming fit with the latter.)


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: On September 7, 1987, the "W" from the "WTBS" callsign was dropped from the superstation's on-air branding—changing its name to SuperStation TBS—in order to emphasize the channel's national programming prominence, with the WTBS Atlanta signal continuing to use the separate "SuperStation 17" branding; this coincided with a major promotional campaign centered around "Great American Television". By 1987, SuperStation WTBS was available to 41.6 million households with a cable or satellite subscription nationwide; this total jumped to 49 million cable homes by the summer of 1988.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: On May 18, 1988, the FCC reinstated syndication exclusivity restrictions through the passage of a new version of the Syndication Exclusivity Rights Rule. This version granted cable systems and satellite carrier firms the ability to secure an agreement to air a claimed syndicated program with the claimant local rightsholder or a syndication distributor, effectively allowing for superstations to acquire national cable rights for syndicated programs (either directly or through their satellite carrier). In preparation for the new rules taking effect on January 1, 1990, Turner Broadcasting began to fill the WTBS schedule with additional programming—primarily, off-network syndicated comedy and drama series (such as "The Jeffersons" and "Good Times") as well as acquired film packages (consisting of both theatrical features and made-for-television films) and original programs (such as Jacques Cousteau specials, and National Audubon Society and National Geographic programs)—for which it would hold exclusive cable rights in order to make the national feed "100% blackout-free." Combined with the utilization of indemnification provisions designed to protect against monetary damages if a superstation has "a reasonable basis for concluding that[...] programing deletion is not required," this ensured that the TBS national feed would be absolved from potential blackouts necessitated by any local syndication exclusivity claims and, therefore, prevent defections by cable affiliates that indicated it would remove any distant signals rather than shoulder the expense of blacking out or substituting non-compliant programs.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: On September 28, 1989, the channel's name was changed to TBS SuperStation to reflect the strong national standing of the channel. Debuting concurrently with the name change was a promotional campaign utilizing the slogan "TBYes!," featuring various stars of programs seen on TBS—including, among others, Bob Denver and Alan Hale of "Gilligan's Island" (as their respective characters Gilligan and Captain Jonas Grumby aka "The Skipper"), Al Lewis of "The Munsters" (as his character Grandpa), Buddy Ebsen of "The Beverly Hillbillies" (as his character J.D. "Jed" Clampett) and Jimmie Walker of "Good Times" (appearing as himself)—with graphical elements of fireworks and a large rotating glass pane, which could display the TBS logo, change to or from a slogan (depending on the promotional spot) to the logo, or be used to show the airtime of programs mentioned in a specific promotion or summarize the next three programs set to air. Title sequences for movies and special presentations—which were accompanied by music incorporating variants of the "TBYes" promotional theme's signature—showed people in a main street setting flocking to a TBS-branded theater, which transitions to a panning shot stopping at a couch in the front row of the theater's seating area where either a family or a couple (depending on the daypart presentation, as identified at the end of the sequence) sit down in time for the start of the film.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: On September 10, 1990, the word "Superstation" was removed from the cable channel's on-air branding and promotions, rebranding it as simply "TBS," which had been used verbally in on-air promotions since the beginning of that year. By 1992, TBS was available in 58 million households with cable and satellite television service, accounting for more than half of all homes in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands—and carried by 14,815 cable systems throughout the country.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: During the 1980s, WTBS focused heavily on movies—running two films during the day, and a largely movie-exclusive schedule during the nighttime hours after 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time (with exceptions made for scheduled sporting events, specials, original programs and, in the case of Sunday nights, off-network syndicated series and paid programming). At other times, mainly during the daytime hours each weekday and on weekend mornings, WTBS continued to run mostly classic sitcoms and vintage cartoons. In 1986, when Ted Turner purchased Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists (which he would sell back to previous owner Kirk Kerkorian that October due to debt incurred by the Turner Broadcasting System from its purchase of the film studio), WTBS gained the rights to the entire MGM/UA film library (including certain acquisitions by MGM). It gave WTBS the rights to air many theatrical cartoon shorts such as "Tom & Jerry", as well as shows like "Gilligan's Island" and "CHiPs".


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: Along with "Tom & Jerry", WTBS began to run "The Little Rascals", "Looney Tunes"/"Merrie Melodies" cartoons released prior to August 1948, theatrical "Popeye" cartoon shorts, and "Three Stooges" shorts under the banner "The TBS Tom & Jerry Funhouse" running for either one hour or 90 minutes during the morning hours and for an hour (later, half-hour) in the afternoon from 1986 to 1995. In the late 1980s, WTBS decreased the number of movies broadcast during the day slightly and began to add sitcoms from the 1970s (such as "Happy Days", "The Jeffersons", "Good Times", and "One Day at a Time") to the evening lineup; "Little House on the Prairie" aired during the late mornings continuously from 1986 to 2003.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: Music videos also aired during its late night lineup on weekends from June 1983 to May 1992 as part of the program "Night Tracks", which aired in the form of two three-hour-long blocks (later reduced to two two-hour blocks in August 1989, and then to two 90-minute blocks in the spring of 1990), barring pre-emptions from sporting events that ran over their scheduled end-time. (The success of "Night Tracks" served as the basis for Turner to develop Cable Music Channel, an attempt at a competitor to MTV that operated for five weeks from October 26 to November 30, 1984, and was one of the shortest-lived channels in American cable television history.) Beginning in 1991, a handful of shows (mostly movies) that were shown nationally were pre-empted in the Atlanta market in order to broadcast FCC-mandated news, public affairs, and children's programming; this continued until the split of the TBS national feed from the Atlanta station in October 2007.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: In addition to offering conventional television programming over the main video-audio feed viewable to all multichannel television subscribers receiving the channel, Southern Satellite Systems transmitted two teletext services over the TBS superstation feed's vertical blanking interval (VBI) that required a special decoder to receive the provided information services over the feed. SSS began transmitting the United Press International (UPI) teletext news service over the national feed's VBI signal in 1979. 1981 saw the VBI signal begin to carry the Keyfax service out of Chicago. In 1985, SSS repurposed the VBI signal to transmit the Electra teletext service, Electra was transmitted over the VBI until the service was shut down in 1993 due to a lack of funding and interest. (The other partners in the venture, Zenith Electronics and Taft Broadcasting [formerly known as Taft Television & Radio Company during its earlier existence as both an electronics manufacturer and broadcaster] had respectively stopped manufacturing TV sets with teletext capability and had undergone several corporate buyouts).


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: In the early 1990s, shows such as "The Flintstones", "The Brady Bunch", "Scooby-Doo", "The Jetsons", "Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies" shorts, "Gilligan's Island", and others remained on the schedule as other older shows such as "The Three Stooges" and "Little Rascals" shorts and "Leave it to Beaver" were dropped from the channel to make way for more sitcoms from the 1980s such as "Three's Company", "Who's the Boss?", "Growing Pains", "The Cosby Show", "Family Ties", and "Saved by the Bell". Original animated programs such as "Captain Planet and the Planeteers", "2 Stupid Dogs", and "" were also added as part of the "Sunday Morning In Front of the TV" block. Following Turner's acquisition by Time Warner, among the programming changes instituted after the merger was the addition of "Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies" cartoons that were released after August 1, 1948, which began airing on TBS as well as sister channel Cartoon Network in January 1997.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: On September 22, 1995, Time Warner—a New York City-based media company formed in 1990 through the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Bros. corporate parent Warner Communications—reached an agreement to acquire the Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) and its associated properties (including TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, CNN and CNN Headline News as well as Turner Entertainment) for $7.5 billion; the deal would also expand Time Warner's pay television holdings, as it had owned HBO and sister premium service Cinemax as well as cable television provider Time Warner Cable since the Time-Warner Communications merger six years prior. (Time Warner and predecessor Warner Communications had owned an 18% interest in Turner Broadcasting since 1987, as part of a cable television industry-backed bailout of the company amid severe financial issues.) Under the terms, Turner would acquire an approximate 10% interest in Time Warner as well as oversee its subscription network group—comprising the Turner and Home Box Office units and its minority interests in Comedy Central and E!—and hold a position on the company's board of directors (which he retained until he stepped down from the company in February 2006) upon the merger's closure. The merger received regulatory approval on September 12, 1996; the Turner–Time Warner deal was finalized one month later on October 10, forming what at the time was the largest media company in the world. In September 1996, TBS replaced religious programs and infomercials that had aired on Sunday mornings and late nights with animated series and feature films, respectively, in those time slots.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: On December 17, 1996, when TBS celebrated its 20th anniversary as a national service, the channel reincorporated the "Superstation" moniker into its name, rebranding as "TBS Superstation" (this time with the second "s" rendered in lower case). (Promotions for the channel's programming beginning at this time until 2004 often verbally referred to the national feed only as "the Superstation", a moniker that had previously been used in certain on-air promotions on an alternating basis or in conjunction with the WTBS/TBS name from its national launch as a superstation in December 1976 until December 1989). During this time, the network's look included a spiral/swirl shape (frequently positioned behind the TBS logo, presumably to depict the superstation's broadcast signal radiating outwards), as well as "Super"-branded blocks (such as "Super Prime" for prime time movie presentations, "Super TV" for weekday daytime films and series, and "Super Weekend" for film telecasts on Saturdays and Sundays).


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: On December 17, 1997, Time Warner purchased Southern Satellite Systems from Liberty Media for $213 million in cash, as part of a purchase option that Time Warner chose to exercise on September 16. Time Warner held out on an option to acquire SSS through a common stock buyout and instead chose a cash payment citing the "strong overall financial performance of its businesses and its belief that its stock remains undervalued" in spite of price appreciation having been appreciated. The purchase gave Time Warner control over uplink responsibilities for TBS.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: On January 1, 1998, the TBS national feed—although continuing to operate as a superstation by technicality—began operating under the conventions of a basic cable channel. At that time, the Turner Broadcasting System began to collect subscriber fees (averaging 26¢ per subscriber per month) directly from cable and satellite providers that had previously paid a 30¢-per-month licensing fee to Southern Satellite Systems for access to the TBS signal and a 10¢-per-month copyright fee to a federal copyright tribunal (which, in turn, paid the fee directly to program distributors) for rights to carry its programming. The additional revenue was intended to be used for programming acquisitions, particularly rights to first-run theatrical films. In exchange, TBS began to lease two minutes of advertising time per hour to multichannel subscription television providers to allow them to locally insert commercials catering to viewers in the provider's service area; as a result, the channel began to broadcast fewer Atlanta Braves regular season games to a national audience, under amended contractual agreements between Turner and Major League Baseball in conjunction with the league's cable-originated rightsholders, ESPN and Fox Sports Net/Liberty Sports, to allow TBS to continue carrying Braves telecasts nationwide.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: In 1998, TBS Superstation—which continued to run a mix of movies, sitcoms and drama series—removed all of its remaining cartoon shorts and animated series (which at the time were running under the "Disaster Area" banner), migrating those shows exclusively to Cartoon Network. (Many of these series also later became the core of a new channel devoted to classic cartoons, Boomerang, which launched in April 2000.) In 1999, TBS also refocused its original program offerings, removing documentaries and "National Geographic" specials—which were shifted over to CNN—in favor of carrying original made-for-TV movies and weekly series such as the reality show "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" and the short-lived comedy series "The Chimp Channel" (a series based on the "Monkey-ed Movies" series of interstitial shorts parodying recent and classic theatrical movies with chimpanzees, voiced by human actors, in the roles). By 2001, several sitcoms from the 1980s and 1990s such as "Full House", "Family Matters", "The Cosby Show", "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", "Friends", "Seinfeld", and "Home Improvement" became part of the channel's schedule; many of these shows aired as part of the "Non-Stop Comedy Block", a late-afternoon block of mostly adult-targeted comedy series that debuted in January 2002.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: In September 2003, TBS dropped "Little House on the Prairie" and other dramatic programming as a part of a format shift toward comedic programs, such as sitcom reruns, original reality television series, and theatrically released comedy films. As part of this refocusing, the "Superstation" sub-brand was once again dropped in February 2004, with the channel reverting to being branded as simply TBS. Subsequently, on June 4, 2004, to signify the channel's new comedy programming focus, TBS introduced a new logo (designed by Publicis New York) that rendered the channel's name in lowercase and incorporated a semicircle made to resemble a mouth open as if it were laughing and adopted the slogan "veryfunny." The semicircle element took on a motif with half a baseball or basketball rendered within it for Turner Sports programming. The refocusing was intended to position its programming as a direct contrast to sister channel TNT, which had initially focused mainly around older movies and sports but moved toward and now focuses primarily on drama series and films.


title: TBS (American TV channel)

text: In late June 2007, the Turner Broadcasting System announced that WTBS would change its callsign to WPCH-TV, and would be rebranded as "Peachtree TV." The rebranded channel 17 would offer sitcoms and movies geared specifically toward the station's Atlanta audience, and would also broadcast 45 Braves baseball games starting with the team's 2008 season. The change occurred on October 1, 2007, with the national feed becoming a separate cable/satellite channel that retained the TBS name. In addition, the channel 17 changeover allowed Atlanta-area cable and IPTV subscribers—including those of Comcast and Charter Communications—that previously were only able to receive WTBS's local Atlanta signal to begin receiving the national TBS feed for the first time since the early 1980s. (Despite the separation of TBS and its former Atlanta parent station, some local television listings publications have continued to refer to the channel as an Atlanta station in their channel charts and/or by that station's former WTBS call letters in said charts and as an identifier in listings grids). Following the change, Canadian subscription television providers were legally required to continue carrying the local Peachtree TV signal, instead of switching to the national TBS feed. Beginning with the 2008 season, TBS began airing Major League Baseball postseason games, with regular season baseball coverage expanding to include games from other MLB teams.