title: Television in the United States

text: Although most networks make viewers pay a fee to receive their programming, some networks broadcast using unencrypted feeds. After broadcast television switched to a digital infrastructure, new channels became available on unencrypted satellites to bring more free television to Americans; some of these are available as a digital subchannel to local broadcasters, this reason may be for the expensive costs of the DVB-S equipment. NASA TV, Pentagon Channel, Antenna TV, This TV, TheCoolTV and the Retro Television Network (through its affiliates) are examples, international news channels like NHK World, France 24, i24news and Al Jazeera English until the launch of Al Jazeera America are commonly watched this way as a result to the lack of availability on cable, DBS and IPTV.


title: Television in the United States

text: Some cable providers use interactive features built into set-top boxes leased to their subscribers to distribute video on demand services within their internal networks. Many providers of subscription television services – both networks and system operators – also have TV Everywhere services, which usually mix the video on demand model with live streaming capabilities (allowing viewers to watch broadcasts from over-the-air networks and stations, and cable channels in near real-time), but require password and username authentication through participating pay television providers.


title: Television in the United States

text: Streaming television is similar to a cable subscription model, but instead of the set-top box receiving information via a dedicated wire, video is transmitted over the public Internet or private internet protocol-based network to a set-top box or in some cases directly to an enabled television.


title: Television in the United States

text: OTT, or Over-the-top content bypasses multiple system operators entirely, and allows viewing of programs hosted by independent providers. Internet television, also known as web television, began in the 1990s and has become popular in the 2000s onward, resulting in a trend of cord-cutting – the canceling of cable subscriptions in favor of online content that consumers supplement with either over-the-air broadcasts, DVD rentals or a combination of all three viewing methods.


title: Television in the United States

text: Web television providers in the U.S. include Netflix (which was originally structured as a mail-order DVD rental service), Hulu, MyTV, and many international websites such as YouTube, Myspace, Newgrounds, Blip and Crackle. In addition, services like Vudu, Apple TV+, and Amazon Prime Video are digital services that you can buy a movie or a collection of movies and shows for payment or rent. Streaming services such as Disney+, HBO Max, and Peacock allow people to watch all the shows and movies in their catalog for a price every month or year. Viewers can watch these programs from any web browser, whether on a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone, or a Smart TV. Mobile television services also include mobile apps for both traditional and new programming providers, usually optimized for a small screen and mobile bandwidth constraints. Mobile video is available for direct download or streaming (usually for a one-time download fee) from the iTunes Store, Google Play and Amazon Prime Video.


title: Television in the United States

text: Internet-connected video game consoles and dedicated Smart TV boxes are available that connect televisions to Internet television and/or online video services. These devices are marketed as more convenient for consumers who would otherwise have trouble connecting a computer to a full-size television and using a web browser to view content. Some televisions have built-in capabilities; dedicated boxes include Android TV, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Netgear Digital Entertainer, Amkette EvoTV and formerly the Nexus Q and Google TV. Devices that require a PC and television include Windows Media Center Extender, HP MediaSmart Connect, Boxee and Hauppauge MediaMVP.


title: Television in the United States

text: Aereo provided a cloud-based digital video recorder service for over-the-air broadcasts, which it also streamed; although it and the similarly structured FilmOn have run into legal problems with broadcasters who accused the services of transmitting programs from broadcast television stations in violation of copyrights. Although Aereo and FilmOn both stated that their use of "miniature" antennas for transmission of programs to individual users is legal, following mixed decisions by circuit courts that declared them either legal or in infringement of copyrights, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in July 2014 that Aereo's business model had an "overwhelming likeness to cable companies," and its transmission of local station signals constituted an unauthorized public performance in violation of copyright rules, forcing Aereo and FilmOn to stop transmitting local stations from several markets. Aereo eventually suspended operations and filed for bankruptcy in November of that year, later choosing to auction off its assets and technology; FilmOn however remains in operation, offering other free-to-air U.S.-based networks in addition to its own exclusive channels, but was found in contempt by New York district court in July 2014 for briefly continuing to stream U.S. stations after the Supreme Court ruling.


title: Television in the United States

text: Over-the-top subscription services that mirrored cable and TV Everywhere services began emerging in the mid-2010s. In 2015, Dish Network and Sony respectively launched Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, cable-style online and mobile streaming services priced at lower monthly rates than packages offered by traditional pay television system operators. Each include slimmed down tiers of cable and satellite-originated networks from a relatively limited number of network owners. Sling TV, in an effort to cap programming costs, does not include local broadcast stations or regional sports networks; conversely, PlayStation Vue does carry ABC-, NBC-, CBS- and Fox-affiliated stations in select cities where the service is available. PlayStation Vue shut down on January 30, 2020. YouTube TV and Philo are other examples of OTT services.


title: Television in the United States

text: Conventional broadcast and cable networks also launched OTT services during 2014 and 2015 to primarily reach cord-cutters – most of which are younger adults, particularly around college age, and to combat online copyright infringement of their programming. These networks include CBS (launched CBS All Access in October 2014, featuring both on-demand content and live streams of the network's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates), HBO (in April 2015, launched HBO Now, a standalone internet-only subscription service similar to its TV Everywhere service HBO Go), and Showtime (which launched a VOD/live streaming service of the same name in May 2015).


title: Television in the United States

text: Most of these services were initially subscription-based. Free, advertising-supported streaming services such as Pluto TV and Tubi TV are also available. These services generally do not offer most of the high-profile original content available on cable, satellite or subscription video services and instead package reruns and other archival programming into online-exclusive channels and other limited content.


title: Television in the United States

text: Licensing and distribution companies such as Funimation, VIZ Media, Aniplex of America, Discotek Media, NIS America, Media Blasters, Eleven Arts, AnimEigo, Sentai Filmworks, GKIDS, Crunchyroll in North America, Madman Entertainment, Manga Entertainment, Anime Limited, Siren Visual, and Hanabee Entertainment in Australia and the United Kingdom, and even mainstream streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have sections, streaming services, and content within the streaming services with foreign media such as anime, manga, J-Pop concert recordings, and Asian drama. Some of them also include digital stores where you can buy branded merchandise on their websites.


title: Television in the United States

text: Over-the-air (OTA) commercial stations and networks generate the vast majority of their revenue from advertisements. According to a 2001 survey, broadcast stations allocated 16 to 21 minutes of programming time per hour to commercials. Most cable networks also generate income from advertisements, although most basic cable networks also receive subscription fees, which are the other main source of revenue for the cable operators. However, "premium" cable networks (such as HBO) do not air commercials; instead, cable television subscribers must pay an extra fee to receive this type of pay television service.


title: Television in the United States

text: Networks traditionally allocate a portion of commercial time during their programs (usually totaling between five and 6 minutes per hour, depending on the length of the program being aired, sometimes less during sporting events) to their local affiliates, which allow the local stations to generate revenue. In the same manner, in addition to subscription fees, cable television providers generate some of their revenue by selling local commercial time (usually allocating around four minutes per hour) for each advertiser-supported cable network it carries. However, while much of this time is sold to local and national advertisers, portions of the allocated commercial time are reserved by network affiliates and cable providers for in-house advertising (cable providers use some of this time to carry commercials for their services, which may also include business solutions, residential telephone and broadband internet services; network affiliates, as do other commercial broadcast stations, use this reserved time to carry promotions for their programming or station imaging).


title: Television in the United States

text: Cable companies are required by the 1992 Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act to negotiate for retransmission consent, usually paying broadcasters for the right to carry their signals. This provision, over time, has resulted in problems between pay television providers and companies that own subscription television services as well as those own and/or operate over-the-air television stations, as disagreements over terms in retransmission contracts sometimes arise during negotiations to renew and (occasionally) strike new agreements to carry certain channels. The carriage disputes that occur because of these differences typically result in broadcast stations or cable channels being pulled for a protracted period of time, often due to carriage fee increases that a provider may consider to be too expensive (since retransmission consent fees are a form of subscriber fee, any increase in fees that a provider carries will be passed on to the subscriber, which providers are hesitant to do out of concern that it may result in subscriber defections due to the resulting rate increases for program packages).


title: Television in the United States

text: American television has had very successful programs that have inspired television networks across the world to develop shows of similar types. Some of these shows are still on the air and some have maintained decent runs in syndication. Conversely, many programs produced for U.S. television are also routinely syndicated to broadcasters in other countries, and a number of popular American programs have been based on shows that originated in other countries, especially the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Canada.


title: Television in the United States

text: The major networks (besides Fox) all offer a morning news program, with CBS's "CBS Mornings", NBC's "Today" and ABC's "Good Morning America" as standard bearers, as well as an early-evening newscast anchored by the "de facto" face of the network's news division like Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather for CBS; Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Tom Brokaw for NBC; and Peter Jennings for ABC. Successful news magazines have included "60 Minutes", "20/20" and "Dateline NBC" in prime time, and "Meet the Press", "Face the Nation" and "This Week" on Sunday mornings.


title: Television in the United States

text: Local news programming airs on many television stations, with individual markets supporting as few as two or as many as eight television news operations, depending on the number of available viewers that live in the market. Most stations originally aired locally produced newscasts only in evening time periods (usually at 6:00 and 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. local time) until the 1970s or as late as the mid-1980s on some stations. During that period, stations began local news programs in the midday and 5:00 p.m. time slots, while morning newscasts began to become common during the 1980s (first on weekdays, with weekend morning newscasts launching in many cities beginning in the early 1990s).


title: Television in the United States

text: Two television stations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, KYW-TV and WPVI-TV, were the respective progenitors of two popular news formats that shaped the modern presentation of television news, "Eyewitness News", which had reporters present their stories instead of having the anchor read them, and became popularized after the format expanded to WABC-TV in New York City in 1968, and "Action News", which placed set time limits on story packages presented during the program, to cover a broader array of stories. WPVI was itself heavily influenced by the sensationalist approach of WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York under Irv Weinstein, after the two stations' parent companies merged in 1972. WSVN in Miami also served as a pioneer in local news in 1989, when the station (which adopted the format in January of that year, after assuming the Fox affiliation from WCIX (now WFOR-TV) as a result of a three-way swap resulting from CBS' purchase of WCIX and NBC's purchase of longtime CBS affiliate WTVJ) originated the "news-intensive" programming format, which in its typical structure – which has become common of Fox affiliates, particularly as a result of affiliation deals signed following the network's acquisition of NFL rights, as well as certain other stations that are either affiliated with a non-Big Three network or operate as independent stations in recent years – mixes newscasts in traditional time periods with those in non-traditional ones (most commonly, in time periods that the major networks fill with national morning and evening news programs or prime time programming). This format spread to Big Three affiliates in a modified form during the 2000s and 2010s.


title: Television in the United States

text: Cable news channels traditionally carry blocks of more generalized news coverage during the morning and afternoon hours; programs focusing on politics (that are similar in format to the Sunday morning talk shows) and documentaries typically air on these channels during prime time and late night, with general news coverage during that time usually limited to occasional coverage of breaking news events.


title: Television in the United States

text: The game show has been one of the longest-running formats in American television history; game shows have aired regularly since the "CBS Television Quiz" began regular broadcasts in 1941.


title: Television in the United States

text: Game shows have typically followed one of several formats, some of which overlap. "Quiz shows" tend to be more serious in demeanor and are based on trivia, with their appeal drawn from the intelligence of the contestant and the often high prize payouts; they often air in prime time or fringe time were a major fad in the 1950s before a wide-ranging scandal exposed most of the quiz shows of the era (such as "Twenty One", "The $64,000 Question", "Dotto" and "The Big Surprise") as either rigged or outright fabricated and triggered major reforms. The fallout from the scandal led to stricter limits on game show prizes that lasted for the rest of the 20th century. High-stakes quiz shows made a comeback in the late 1990s, particularly with the American adaptation of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and an uptick in interest in the long-running answer-and-question quiz "Jeopardy!" under host Alex Trebek.


title: Television in the United States

text: Panel games featured a panel of celebrities or news personalities interacting with a contestant. Mark Goodson and Bill Todman were particularly well known for their panel games, which ranged from more erudite interview programs such as "What's My Line?" and "To Tell the Truth" to comedy-driven shows such as the "Match Game". Audience participation games, while having had a place in American television since the beginning with early examples including "Truth or Consequences" and Dennis James's "Okay, Mother", gained popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s with "Let's Make a Deal" (hosted and co-produced by Canadian Monty Hall) and the 1972 revival of "The Price Is Right" hosted by Bob Barker and (for its first five years in syndication) Dennis James; they changed the nature of game shows in that their atmosphere was more raucous than most panel games and quiz shows. Word guessing games are a format particularly associated with Bob Stewart, whose games involved celebrities giving clues to civilians (or vice versa) to guess a mystery word; examples included "Password" and "Pyramid". Survey games, in which contestants attempt to guess the results of polls, can be seen in the form of shows such as "Family Feud", "America Says", "Card Sharks" (which also incorporates a card game element) and "Power of 10". Puzzle games involve large-sized versions of common childhood games, including hangman ("Wheel of Fortune"), tic-tac-toe ("Hollywood Squares", "Tic-Tac-Dough"), crossword puzzles ("The Cross-Wits", "Merv Griffin's Crosswords", "People Puzzler"), and video games ("Starcade", "Nick Arcade"); Heatter-Quigley Productions produced a large number of puzzle games. Games that involve physical stunts include children's shows such as "Double Dare" and adult shows such as "Dog Eat Dog" and "Fear Factor". A few game shows do not fit neatly into any of these descriptions; one such example is "Supermarket Sweep", a grocery-shopping contest that became a cult hit on cable television in the 1990s under host David Ruprecht.


title: Television in the United States

text: Loosely fitting the description are dating shows. Chuck Barris was famous for the format; his "The Dating Game", "The Newlywed Game" and (notorious) "3's a Crowd" pioneered the format, with other entries including "Bzzz!", "Blind Date", "Singled Out", "Love Connection" and "Baggage".


title: Television in the United States

text: Game shows have historically been associated with daytime television in the United States. Quiz shows have typically aired in prime time, but ABC increased its output of non-quiz games in prime time beginning in the mid-2010s with its "Fun & Games" format, to substantial success.


title: Television in the United States

text: The soap opera genre experienced a gradual decline beginning in the 1980s due to the continued migration of women into the workplace, culminating in five soaps being canceled by NBC, CBS and ABC between 2007 and 2011 (of those, one, "Passions", moved to DirecTV-owned network The 101 for one additional season after its cancellation by NBC in 2007, while "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" were revived on Hulu for one additional season in 2013 with those series' second cancellations resulting from a dispute between originating broadcaster ABC and the production company that acquired them, Prospect Park, over various issues).


title: Television in the United States

text: Soap operas have also become common in prime time, which differ from their daytime counterparts as they use the traditional weekly format and maintain a visual style traditional of other nighttime network series (particularly, nighttime soaps are recorded on film in a single-camera setup, whereas daytime soaps are shot on multiple cameras that record the program on videotape). Prime time soaps of note have included "Peyton Place", "Dallas", "Dynasty", "Knots Landing", "Falcon Crest", "Beverly Hills, 90210", "Melrose Place", "Revenge" and "Scandal".


title: Television in the United States

text: Comedy programming on American television has been more noted for situation comedies such as "I Love Lucy", "The Honeymooners", "The Andy Griffith Show", "The Dick Van Dyke Show", "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", "All in the Family", "Happy Days", "Family Ties", "Cheers", "The Cosby Show", "Seinfeld", "Friends", "Frasier", "Everybody Loves Raymond", "The King of Queens", "How I Met Your Mother", "The Big Bang Theory" and "Modern Family". However, there have also existed sketch comedy/variety series during prime time such as "Texaco Star Theatre", "The Carol Burnett Show" and "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In". The most prominent as well as the longest-running sketch comedy program is "Saturday Night Live", a late-night series which debuted on NBC in November 1975, and has spawned the careers of many popular comedic actors (such as Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Dennis Miller and Will Ferrell).


title: Television in the United States

text: In the last 30 years, comedic adult animation has grown significantly. Popular shows such as The Simpsons, Beavis and Butt-Head, Family Guy, South Park, Futurama, American Dad, Rick and Morty, Bob's Burgers, Robot Chicken, King of the Hill, Daria, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Duncanville, and more have came out during this time period. Others, like Bless the Harts and Clone High have more tame themes but still aren't meant for children. Most adult animated cartoons air on Adult Swim, Comedy Central, FOX, TBS, MTV, The WB, NBC, Spike TV, and FXX.


title: Television in the United States

text: Dramatic series have taken many forms over the years. Westerns such as "Gunsmoke" (the longest-running prime time scripted drama series in U.S. television history, having aired from 1955 to 1975) and "Bonanza" had experienced their greatest popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. Medical dramas such as "Marcus Welby, M.D.", "St. Elsewhere", "ER", "House" and "Grey's Anatomy" have endured success; as well as family dramas such as "The Waltons", "Little House on the Prairie" and "7th Heaven"; and crime dramas such as "Dragnet", "Hawaii Five-O", "Hill Street Blues", "Miami Vice", "L.A. Law", "21 Jump Street", "Law & Order", "JAG", "" and "NCIS".


title: Television in the United States

text: Dramedy, a term for a television series that mixes elements of comedy and drama, have seen its popularity grown among viewers, thanks to programs like "M*A*S*H", "Ally McBeal", "Ugly Betty", "Desperate Housewives", "Psych", "Glee", "Devious Maids", "Jane the Virgin" and "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend".


title: Television in the United States

text: Television series featuring fantasy and science fiction are also popular with American viewers, since these programs take elements of comedy, drama, adventure, or a combination of all of the above. Among the most notable fantasy series in this genre include "Touched by an Angel" and "Highway to Heaven" (both centering on angels helping humans in times of personal crisis), "Bewitched" (a sitcom centering on a witch adjusting to married life with a mortal male), "Fantasy Island" (which was set at a resort where people live out their fantasies, but at a price), "The Twilight Zone" (an anthology series known for its twist endings), "Drop Dead Diva" (focusing on a deceased model inhabiting the body of a lawyer) and "Once Upon a Time" (centering on fairytale characters that are trapped in the present day after the enactment of a curse). Science fiction series were originally more child-oriented, taking cues from film serials of the era (such as "Flash Gordon" and "Captain Video and His Video Rangers"). "Star Trek" pioneered adult-oriented science fiction during and spawned seven spin-off series–two in syndication ("" and ""), three on network television ("", "" and "") and two exclusively streamed on the Internet ("" and ""). The film franchise "Star Wars" has spawned a number of television productions over the course of its existence, ranging from the Star Wars Holiday Special to "The Mandalorian".


title: Television in the United States

text: Reality television has long existed in the United States, both played for laughs (such as "Candid Camera" and "Real People") and as drama (such as "COPS" and "The Real World"). A new variant – competition series placing ordinary people in unusual circumstances or in talent contests, generally eliminating at least one participant per week, exploded in popularity in turn of the millennium (with shows such as "Survivor", "Big Brother", "The Amazing Race", "American Idol", "America's Next Top Model", "Dancing with the Stars", "The Bachelor" and its spin-off "The Bachelorette", "So You Think You Can Dance" and "The Voice").


title: Television in the United States

text: The most successful talk show has been "The Tonight Show", particularly during the 30-year run of third host Johnny Carson. "Tonight" ushered in a multi-decade period of dominance by one network – NBC – in American late-night programming and paved the way for many similar programs combining comedy and celebrity interviews, such as "The Merv Griffin Show" and "Late Night with David Letterman". Despite initial failed attempts during the late 1980s by Fox as well as the success of "The Arsenio Hall Show" in syndication during its first five-year run beginning in 1989, the late-night talk show genre would not become a more competitive field until the 1990s, when CBS gained a major foothold in the field with the "Late Show with David Letterman"; competition in the genre increased even further as cable networks entered into the genre in the 2000s and 2010s with the rise of parody news show "The Daily Show" under host Jon Stewart and newer shows such as "The Colbert Report", "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", and "Conan".


title: Television in the United States

text: Daytime talk show hits have included "Live with Kelly and Ryan" (and its previous iterations with Regis Philbin as co-host), "The Jenny Jones Show", "The Oprah Winfrey Show", "Rachael Ray", "Dr. Phil", "Ricki Lake (TV series)", "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", and "Harry" which run the gamut from serious to lighthearted in topicality and format; a subset of so-called "trash TV" talk shows such as "The Jerry Springer Show", which hit their peak during the 1990s, also veered into exploitation and titillation. Most daytime talk programs air in syndication, with various attempts airing on network television to mixed results among the more notable network efforts are the female-driven panel talk shows "The View", "The Talk", The Real and "Get It Girl" on LATV.


title: Television in the United States

text: Children's television programs are also quite popular. Early ventures into children's television in the 1950s aired on weekdays with shows such as "Howdy Doody", "Captain Kangaroo", "Mr. Wizard", and the "Mickey Mouse Club". However children's programing had experienced its greatest success on Saturday mornings from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Programs shown during these time periods mainly consisted of animated programming including classic cartoons (such as "Looney Tunes", "Tom and Jerry" and "Woody Woodpecker"), reruns of prime time animated sitcoms (such as "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons"), foreign acquisitions (such as "Astro Boy", "Kimba the White Lion", and "Speed Racer"), animated adaptations of films and television series (such as "Back to the Future", "Ghostbusters", "Batman", "ALF" and "Star Trek"), and original programs (such as "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show", "Scooby-Doo", "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids", "The Smurfs", "Alvin and the Chipmunks", "Garfield and Friends" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles").


title: Television in the United States

text: Some locally produced children's programs – which often mixed cartoons, special guests and audience-participation games – also became popular in the local markets where they were broadcast; one of the most popular was the Bozo the Clown franchise, which became most well known for its Chicago version, which began airing nationally when WGN-TV became a superstation in October 1978.


title: Television in the United States

text: However, in 1990, due to concerns regarding commercial advertising and cross-promotion in children's programs by parental advocacy groups, the Federal Communications Commission passed the Children's Television Act, legislation that among other provisions requires all broadcast television networks and stations to air at least three hours of educational children's programming each week. This has made it much harder for broadcast stations to profit from children's programs than was possible in previous years, eventually leading the major broadcast networks to abandon traditional scripted programs in favor of unscripted educational series with formats appealing to a more generalized audience to fulfill the requirements; noncommercial networks are exceptions to this new standard, as PBS Kids in particular has long excelled in providing E/I-compliant children's programs that mix educational and entertainment content (such as "Sesame Street", "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood", "Thomas the Tank Engine" and "Arthur").


title: Television in the United States

text: Since the mid-2000s, popular children's programs have been produced for cable networks such as Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network that are targeted at the demographic and only provide educational content voluntarily – in which case, it is primarily aimed at preschool-aged children and relegated to morning hours, unless incorporated full-time as part of the channel's format, as is the case with the spin-offs of the former two aforementioned networks Nick Jr. and Disney Junior – as they are not bound by the Children's Television Act's guidelines. Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network also have blocks that air late at night ("Adult Swim", "Nick at Nite"), that mainly show sitcoms, original and syndicated animation, and Japanese anime which have adult themes such as gore, sexual situations, and profanity.


title: Television in the United States

text: Adult instructional television, other than a few niche programs (such as the agriculture-themed "Ag PhD"), has typically been the province of noncommercial television. "The Joy of Painting", which during the lifetime of host Bob Ross was seen on public television, exploded in popularity several years after Ross died as younger viewers came to appreciate Ross's kind and quiet style of teaching oil painting, prompting his estate to reintroduce the show by way of various online media. The home improvement series "This Old House" is unusual among American television series in that it is available to both commercial and noncommercial broadcasters. In the form of expository bible readings, instructional television is a staple of religious broadcasting. A common form of instructional television, both noncommercially (such as "The French Chef" with Julia Child or Martin Yan's "Yan Can Cook") and commercially (such as Mr. Food and Paula Deen), is the cooking show, in which the host demonstrates various recipes that home viewers can prepare themselves.


title: Television in the United States

text: Professional wrestling had been aired on local television during its earliest days and began to be aired in national television during the 1950s. It underwent a resurgence in the 1980s as Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation and Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling (WCW) each built rivalling national wrestling empires. During the Monday Night Wars of the 1990s, WWF and WCW maintained a heated televised rivalry. The boom eventually collapsed by the turn of the millennium, and McMahon purchased WCW in 2001 and an upstart hardcore promotion, Paul Heyman's Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), and merged them into WWF to form the modern WWE. WWE maintains a dominant presence in professional wrestling; its largest rival as of 2020 is All Elite Wrestling. Other would-be rivals Impact Wrestling (formerly TNA) and Ring of Honor (ROH) also have a presence on American television (the latter primarily as a result of its 2011 acquisition by television station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group; ROH suspended operations and was sold to AEW in 2022).


title: Television in the United States

text: Regional professional wrestling circuits may see some national exposure through syndication; "Championship Wrestling from Hollywood" and Ohio Valley Wrestling have national carriage. Foreign wrestling promotions such as Lucha Underground and New Japan Pro-Wrestling have seen increased exposure in the 2010s.


title: Television in the United States

text: The broadcasting of sports events is a major component of the American commercial television industry. Sports tend to draw a large, wealthy audience that can command large sums of revenue from advertising and subscription fees.


title: Television in the United States

text: In the early days of television, sports quickly became a fixture of American broadcast television. Boxing was carried on almost every television station and network since the beginnings. The sport earned a negative reputation after Emile Griffith killed his opponent on national television in a 1962 contest, followed by the death of Davey Moore from an indirect in-ring injury during another televised contest a year later; by 1964, boxing was off national television. The rise of pay-per-view and premium channels led to most of the highest-profile matches returning to the airwaves via subscription television. While it still maintains a limited (and rising, thanks to the efforts of Premier Boxing Champions) presence on American broadcast television, boxing has declined in popularity since the 1990s with mixed martial arts, a more broad-based combat sport, rising to take its place.


title: Television in the United States

text: The major professional sports leagues began regular television broadcasts in the 1950s. The National Football League (NFL)'s embrace of television broadcasting at the early onset of the medium helped boost its popularity as a sport, and by the 1960s, the combined success of NFL and American Football League (AFL) telecasts helped earn professional football a status as a mainstay of the major television networks. American television pays the NFL billions of dollars each year to maintain their television rights; the Super Bowl, in return, is a cash windfall for the network which airs it as the broadcaster which holds the rights in a given year (which is rotated annually among the broadcast networks that hold rights to the league's regular season and playoff games) can make hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from advertising sales alone. Major League Baseball (MLB) has been televised on U.S. television since the inception of the medium, most notably by way of a "Game of the Week" that has usually aired on Saturdays on various broadcasters since 1954.


title: Television in the United States

text: The National Hockey League (NHL), in contrast, was much slower to embrace television, due to its initially regional nature and greater reliance on Canadian television, though it would begin broadcasting its events nationally on a wider basis after Fox acquired the rights to the league's game broadcasts in 1995; the NHL has struggled to gain competitive ratings for most of its time on television.


title: Television in the United States

text: College sports have also been a feature of American television. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) restricted television broadcasts of college football, as well as college basketball, from the early 1950s until 1984. In the latter year, the Supreme Court struck down the NCAA's collective television contract as a violation of antitrust law, deregulating the sale of college sports telecasts and allowing individual teams and athletic conferences to negotiate their own deals with broadcast and cable networks.


title: Television in the United States

text: Other sports that have maintained a regular presence on U.S. television include auto racing (NASCAR, in particular, rose rapidly in television popularity in the 1990s; the IndyCar series has also had some presence, particularly its signature event, the Indianapolis 500), professional golf (promintently through the Professional Golfers Association of America [PGA], Ladies Professional Golf Association [LPGA], and the United States Golf Association [USGA]), thoroughbred racing (particularly, the Triple Crown and Breeders Cup) and ten-pin bowling. Televised poker, while not an athletic sport, has been treated as a sport of sorts, with a boom in poker broadcasting between 2003 and 2011, after which federal pressure cut off most of the broadcasts' sponsors. Other sports have been televised through anthology series such as "ABC's Wide World of Sports" (that same network would launch a documentary-based anthology, "ESPN Sports Saturday", in 2011), "CBS Sports Spectacular" and "NBC SportsWorld", sometimes through time-buy arrangements with event organizers.


title: Television in the United States

text: Sports broadcasts are carried through a number of televised media. Most of the major sports have some presence on commercial broadcast television, including all NFL regular season and most playoff games. National cable networks, beginning with ESPN in 1979 (along with its later sister channels that gradually launched beginning in the 1990s) and later joined by competitors such as NBCSN and Fox Sports 1, carry packages of assorted major professional and college sports. The vast majority of MLB, NHL and National Basketball Association (NBA) games are carried through regional sports networks, however the NFL only permits preseason games to air on RSNs on a limited basis (the league otherwise prohibits regular season and playoff games from airing on regional sports networks, but does permit national cable networks to acquire the rights to air them); the leagues (as well as the NFL) restrict the broadcast of their sports on regional networks to specific territories and require any person outside those territories to purchase an out-of-market sports package to watch the majority of their favored team's games. Regional sports networks can also provide outlets for minor league sports to broadcast their events. Unlike in some other countries, public television does not own any sports rights, nor has it ever been a major factor in sports television.


title: Television in the United States

text: While the majority of programs broadcast on American television are produced domestically, some programs carried in syndication, on public television or on cable are imported from other countries – most commonly, from the primarily English-speaking countries of Canada and the United Kingdom. PBS in particular, is commonly known for its broadcasts of British sitcoms (such as "Monty Python's Flying Circus", "Fawlty Towers", "Keeping Up Appearances" and "Are You Being Served?"), which typically air on its member stations on weekend evenings (although their scheduling is at the discretion of the station as these programs are primarily syndicated on the behalf of outside distributors); PBS was also responsible for bringing the hit period drama "Downton Abbey" to the U.S. and for initially popularizing the long-running science-fiction series "Doctor Who" in the country (the latter show now airs first-run episodes on BBC America, an outlet launched in 1998 that was specifically designed to bring BBC programming direct to the United States, although through channel drift it now mainly carries American programming; "Doctor Who" continues to be syndicated to public television stations and, in reruns, is also syndicated to commercial digital multicast networks such as the Retro Television Network).


title: Television in the United States

text: The minimal differences between General American English and Standard Canadian English accents allows Canada to export shows to the United States, and vice versa, without a major culture barrier. Many of the programs imported from Canada are children's programs originally aired by channels such as YTV and Family Channel (such as "Are You Afraid of the Dark?", "You Can't Do That On Television", "Naturally, Sadie" and "Life with Derek"). However, other Canadian series aimed at adults or more general audiences have also been syndicated in the United States; one network, Ion Life (a spin-off of Ion Television), has much of its schedule composed of reruns of since-discontinued Canadian lifestyle series. Among some of the more well-known Canadian television series among American viewers include the "Degrassi High" franchise (which aired in Canada on CBC Television, with the later incarnation "" airing on CTV and presently MuchMusic), "Rookie Blue", "SCTV Network" and "The Red Green Show". Australian television shows have occasionally appeared on American television, but these have historically been limited to children's series (such as "Bananas in Pajamas" and "The Wiggles") and teen dramas (such as "Ship to Shore" and "HO: Just Add Water").


title: Television in the United States

text: Programming from Japan has had a niche market in American television, with some anime programs (generally dubbed into English) having been seen on American television since the 1960s. Channels that air such anime include Adult Swim, Disney XD, Nicktoons, TOKU, "Neon Alley", the Anime Network, Animax, and Aniplus. The "Power Rangers" series was heavily edited from a Japanese live-action tokusatsu series, "Super Sentai", with newly filmed bridging sequences involving American actors (as the action sequences were entirely done in full costume, those scenes only had to be dubbed). The success of "Power Rangers" led to a wave of tokusatsu adaptations in the mid-1990s, none of which survived beyond two years. More recently Japanese live-action series started to be shown in the country by Netflix, examples include Atelier, , Samurai Gourmet and Alice in Borderland.


title: Television in the United States

text: European television series also started to be shown in the country, mainly after the rise of streaming services, with Netflix being the main exhibitor of such programs in the United States. Examples include the Norwegian series Occupied, Ragnarok and Nobel; the Icelander series The Valhalla murders; the Danish series Rita and The Rain; Italian series ; the German series Babylon Berlin, Dark and Unorthodox; the French series Call My Agent!, Osmosis, La Mante, A Very Secret Service; the Spanish series Money Heist, Cable Girls and Elite. The South Korean thriller series "Squid Game" became an unexpected hit in the United States in 2021 through its appearance on Netflix. France has also contributed a number of computer-animated series to American television in the 21st century, among them "Rabbids Invasion", "The Garfield Show" and "Grizzy and the Lemmings".


title: Television in the United States

text: American Spanish-language networks also import much of their programming; for example, Univision imports much of its programming, especially telenovelas that are broadcast on the network, from Mexican broadcaster Televisa, and MundoMax distributes programming from Colombian broadcaster and network owner RCN Television. In addition to being shown on free-to-air television, Latin American TV series are also shown through streaming services. Examples include the Argentine series El Marginal, the Mexican series La Casa de las Flores and the Brazilian series 3%.


title: Television in the United States

text: Television production companies either commission teleplays for television pilots or buy spec scripts. Some of these scripts are turned into pilots for proposed television programs. The production company markets those they consider commercially viable to television networks – or television distributors for first-run syndication (for example, CBS Media Ventures distributes "Dr. Phil" in first-run syndication, because that show is syndicated – it is not carried on a particular network). A few things that a television network takes under consideration in deciding to order a show is if the show itself is compatible with the network's target audience, the cost of production, and if the show is well liked among network executives, and in many cases, test audiences.


title: Television in the United States

text: Networks sometimes preemptively purchase pilots to prevent other networks from controlling them – and the purchase of a pilot is no guarantee that the network will order additional episodes. In other cases, the network may be forced to commission the pilot to avoid shouldering monetary penalties if it is not produced. The producers hire a director and other crew members (in some cases, using staff employed with an existing series) to work on the pilot; in some cases, if the pilot's concept was pitched by producers that would not write for the proposed show before a script is drafted, writers may also be assigned to pen the script and would be given credit as the series' creator(s). Pilots that do get "picked up" get either a full or partial-season order (starting with an initial order of between seven and 13 episodes, which may be extended if the program's viewership is strong during the early run of episodes); the show goes into production, usually establishing itself with permanent sets. Writers, additional directors and some full-time crew members are hired, and work begins – usually during the late spring and summer before the fall season-series premieres (shows can also serve as a midseason replacement, meaning they are ordered specifically to fill holes in a network schedule created by the failure and cancellation of shows that premiered in the fall; "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "The Office" are examples of successful midseason replacements). Unscripted series have a different stage of development, as the program is generally pitched only as a concept, often without a pilot being ordered or already produced.


title: Television in the United States

text: The standard broadcast television season in the United States consists of 22 episodes (which are typically broadcast over a period of nine months from September to May, depending on the date on which the program begins its season), although prior to the 1970s, a single season of a weekly television program consisted of as many as 40 episodes, with few breaks in the show's airing schedule. Sitcoms may have 24 or more; animated programs may have more (or fewer) episodes (some are broken up into two 11-minute shorts, often with separate self-contained storylines, that are folded into a single half-hour episode); cable networks with original programming seem to have settled on about 10 to 13 episodes per season, much in line with British television programming, though there are exceptions (particularly with cable networks specializing in children's programming, which use the network television model of total per-season episode counts, but spread out the episodes over a single calendar year).


title: Television in the United States

text: American soap operas air in the afternoon, five days a week, without any significant break in taping and airing schedules throughout the year. This means that these serials air approximately 260 episodes a year, making their cast and crew members the busiest in show business. These shows are rarely, if ever, repeated (unless the network chooses not to air a new episode on certain major holidays), making it difficult for viewers to "catch up" when they miss an episode, though the television networks' adoption of online streaming during the late 2000s has made it easier for viewers to watch recent episodes of a particular soap. Cable channel SoapNet provided weekly repeats for some broadcasts until it shut down in December 2013, after which TVGN (now Pop, and originally a television listings service formerly known under several names including the Prevue Channel) began airing same-day repeats of some network soaps.


title: Television in the United States

text: Networks use profits from commercials that run during the show to pay the production company, which in turn pays the cast and crew, and keeps a share of the profits for itself (networks sometimes act as both production companies and distributors, though due to the vertical integration of networks and major media companies since the 1990s, production arms operated by the broadcast networks have largely been absorbed into the existing production arms of their corporate parents). As advertising rates are based on the size of the audience, measuring the number of people watching a network is very important. This measurement is known as a show or network's ratings. Sweeps months (which occur in November, February, May, and to a lesser extent July) are important landmarks in the television season – ratings earned during these periods determine advertising rates until the next sweeps period, therefore shows often have their most exciting plot developments happen during sweeps.


title: Television in the United States

text: Shows that are successful with audiences and advertisers receive authorization from the network to continue production, until the plotline ends (only for scripted shows) or if the contract expires. Those that are not successful are often quickly told to discontinue production by the network, known as "cancellation". There are instances of initially low-rated shows surviving cancellation and later becoming highly popular, but these are rare. For the most part, shows that are not immediately or even moderately successful are cancelled by the end of November sweeps, if not shortly thereafter or earlier. Usually if a show is canceled, there is little chance of it ever coming back again especially on the same network it was canceled from; the only show in the U.S. to ever come back from cancellation on the same network is "Family Guy" (which was cancelled by Fox in 2002 and was revived by the network in 2005 due to the increased popularity of the series through reruns on cable and DVD releases). However, canceled shows like "Scrubs", "Southland", "Medium" and "Wonder Woman" have been picked up by other networks, which is becoming an increasingly common practice; similarly, in the 2010s, some programs cancelled by traditional television networks like "Arrested Development", "Community" and "The Mindy Project" have been picked up or revived by internet television streaming services. It is also somewhat common for series to continue production for the purpose of completing a DVD set, even if these episodes will never air on television (these episodes would, in years past, be "burned off" by airing them in less-prominent time slots).


title: Television in the United States

text: Once a television series reaches a threshold of approximately 88 to 100 episodes, it becomes a candidate to enter reruns in off-network syndication. Reruns are a lucrative business for television producers, who can sell the rights to a "used" series without the expenses of producing it (though they may have to pay royalties to the affected parties, depending on union contracts). The sale of previously aired programs to other outlets, including the Internet, television stations outside the United States and traditional off-network syndication, constitutes up to half of an individual show's revenue stream as of 2017, with the other half coming from first-run advertising.


title: Television in the United States

text: Sitcoms are traditionally the most widely syndicated reruns and are usually aired in a five-day-a-week strip (standardly with two episode "runs", separate sets of episodes of a particular program that are usually from different seasons, packaged for stations to air back-to-back or in different time slots), and in most cases, with additional weekend runs consisting of two (or in some cases, four) additional episodes. Marginally performing shows tend to last less than three to five years in broadcast syndication, sometimes moving to cable channels (although rerun packages of some series are sold simultaneously into both broadcast syndication and cable, and sometimes to more than one cable network) or into limited-run barter syndication (such as through The Program Exchange) after the end of their syndication runs, while more widely successful series can have a life in syndication that can run for decades ("I Love Lucy", the first series designed to be rerun, remains popular in syndication more than 60 years after its 1951 debut).


title: Television in the United States

text: Cable and digital broadcast networks have provided outlets for programming that either has outlived its syndication viability, lacks the number of episodes necessary for syndication, or for various reasons was not a candidate for syndication in the first place. Popular dramas, for instance, have permanent homes on several basic cable channels, often running in marathons (multiple episodes airing back-to-back for several hours), and there are also cable channels devoted to game shows (Game Show Network and Buzzr), soap operas (the now-defunct SoapNet), Saturday morning cartoons (Boomerang) and even sports broadcasts (ESPN Classic). Digital broadcast networks specializing in classic television programming that have become popular since the early 2010s have also served as short-term or long-term homes for many older series that have not been syndicated in decades or have ever been aired in reruns. Most reality shows perform poorly in reruns and are rarely seen as a result, other than reruns of series still in production, on the same network on which they air (almost always cable outlets), where they air as filler programming.


title: Television in the United States

text: Broadcast television is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC awards and oversees the renewal of licenses to local stations, which stipulate stations' commitments to educational and public-interest programming. During the early years of commercial television, the FCC permitted a single company to own a maximum of five television stations nationwide (later raised to seven stations in 1984 and then to twelve in 1992), although until the 1960s, very few companies outside of the major broadcast networks owned multiple stations. Since a change to its media ownership regulations in 1999 that counted television station ownership maximums by a national market percentage rather than by the number of stations that could be allowed in their portfolio, FCC rules mandate that the total number of television stations owned by any company can only reach a maximum of 39% of all markets in the U.S. Until 2016, a "discount" allowed a broadcaster to cover up to 78% of the U.S. with UHF signals; this loophole was closed in 2016, although existing companies above the 39% threshold will be covered under a grandfather clause and, although they will not be allowed to acquire any more stations, they will also not be forced to sell their existing portfolios.


title: Television in the United States

text: Most commercial stations are now owned-and-operated or controlled through outsourcing agreements by group owners (either independent companies or network-owned subsidiary groups), with a relatively limited number of companies that remain which own stations in five or fewer markets; a series of station purchases that have occurred since 2011 (when the Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired the Four Points Media Group) has concentrated the number of station owners even further, as a result of increasing competition between over-the-air broadcasters and subscription television outlets as well as to increase leverage in negotiations with cable and satellite providers for retransmission consent (which since the early 2000s, has increasingly become a primary form of revenue for broadcast networks, which have required their affiliates to share a portion of the revenue received by pay television providers as an additional source of operational revenue).


title: Television in the United States

text: Outsourcing agreements (known by multiple terms, mainly local marketing agreements [LMA], shared services agreements [SSA] or joint sales agreements [JSA], albeit with little differentiation in their structure) have allowed some broadcasting companies to operate stations that they could otherwise not legally own outright due to in-market ownership regulations; these arrangements first began in 1991, when the Sinclair Broadcast Group entered into such an arrangement to run WPTT (now WPNT) in Pittsburgh, after it sold the station to its manager Edwin Edwards to acquire Fox affiliate WPGH-TV. However, as companies like Sinclair and the Nexstar Media Group have used outsourcing as loopholes around ownership regulations at the expense of independent (and particularly, minority) ownership, the FCC has made attempts to restrict broadcasters from using them, passing a rule in April 2014 that disallowed all JSAs in which one company sells 15% of advertising for another station and required all existing ones to be unwound within five years (the National Association of Broadcasters backed a provision passed as part of a November 2015 Congressional budget bill that extended to the time limit to unwind existing JSAs to ten years).


title: Television in the United States

text: The FCC also previously barred companies from owning more than one television station within a single market, unless it operated as a satellite station (a full-power station that relays programming from its parent station to areas within the market that are not adequately covered if at all by the main signal) or a low-power station (either one that maintains its own programming or operates as a translator); however, it eventually allowed operators of public television stations to sign-on or acquire a second station that did not repeat the parent's signal (some of which were originally licensed as commercial outlets). In August 1999, the FCC legalized the common ownership of two commercial stations, known as duopolies, if one of them is not among the market's four highest-rated, and if there are at least eight companies that each own full-power stations within the market. While the parent companies of NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox are not prohibited from owning a second broadcast network (and all of them, except for ABC, are co-owned with one), an FCC law known as the "dual-network rule" does disallow a single company from owning two or more of the major networks; this came into play in 2019, when ABC's parent company bought most of Fox's assets but was required to leave Fox as a separately owned network.


title: Television in the United States

text: The FCC also prohibits the airing of "indecent" material over-the-air between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 pm. Broadcast stations can legally air almost anything they want late at night – and cable networks at all hours. However, nudity and graphic profanity are rare on American television. Though the FCC gives them leeway to air programs containing "indecent" material within its designated watershed period, broadcasters are hesitant to do this, concerned that airing such material would alienate advertisers and encourage the federal government to strengthen regulation of television content. Premium cable networks are exceptions, and often air very racy programming at night, though premium channels often air program content with strong to graphic profanity, violence and nudity in some cases during the daytime hours. Such content is common on pay television services, as they are not subjected to FCC regulations and pressure from advertisers, and often require a subscription to view them. Some networks (such as Playboy TV) are devoted exclusively to "adult" content, specifically pornographic material, and therefore viewers may find scenes of simulated or graphic sexual intercourse and nudity on such channels.


title: Television in the United States

text: Cable television is largely, but not entirely, unregulated. Cable providers must include local over-the-air stations in their offerings on each system (stations can opt to gain carriage by seeking a must-carry option) and give them low channel numbers, unless the stations decide to demand compensation of any sort (through retransmission consent). The systems cannot carry broadcast network affiliates from other parts of the country (this regulation has largely been openly ignored in recent years during carriage disputes), however cable systems can carry stations from nearby markets if there are no local stations affiliated with one of the major networks (though this is becoming far less common with the shift, particularly since 2006, towards over-the-air stations carrying one network affiliation on their main channel and an affiliation with another network on a digital subchannel, thus allowing these network-affiliated digital subchannels to be carried at least via digital cable).


title: Television in the United States

text: Cable systems can also air satellite-relayed broadcast stations originating from other areas of the United States, known as superstations (of which there are currently only five around the country), which for the most part are often aired in rural areas and may omit network programming from that station's network affiliation; all superstations, are currently affiliated with a broadcast television network: WPIX in New York City, KWGN-TV in Denver and KTLA in Los Angeles are all affiliated with The CW, and WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey and WSBK-TV in Boston are affiliated with MyNetworkTV. A few of these superstations once had national distribution, carrying a separate feed that aired different programming than that of the local area feed and even some that also aired on the local feed that is SyndEx-proof (in other words, syndicated programming to which the superstation has obtained full signal rights to air nationally); the two most prominent of these nationally distributed stations were TBS and WGN-TV. TBS, whose former parent Atlanta station WTCG (now WPCH-TV) became the first "basic cable" network to be uplinked to satellite in December 1976, had converted its national feed into a conventional cable channel in October 2007; WGN-TV in Chicago was uplinked in October 1978; its national feed, WGN America, also converted into a traditional cable channel in December 2014, when it dropped all remaining WGN-TV programming. WWOR-TV also once operated a national feed, which ceased operations in January 1997, before the station regained national superstation status as a satellite-exclusive service – through its New York City feed – a few months later.


title: Television in the United States

text: The FCC has virtually no jurisdiction over the content of programming exclusively broadcast on cable. As a result, anyone is free to create any number of channels or any sort of programming whatsoever without consulting the FCC. The only restrictions are on the ability to secure carriage on cable or satellite (or, failing that, by streaming on Internet television) and securing the rights to programming. Because of this lack of restriction, channel drift (the shift of a channel's programming format away from that which it originally maintained) is much more common in the United States than in other countries.


title: Television in the United States

text: Because the United States had relatively weak copyright terms until 1976, a large body of older television series have lapsed into the public domain and are thus free to redistribute in any form.


title: Television in the United States

text: Television debuted in the United States on May 10, 1928, with the launch of the original WGY Television, a joint venture of General Electric's owned-and-operated WGY in Schenectady, New York and Norton Laboratories' WMAK in Lockport, New York. (Norton dropped out of the venture shortly thereafter and eventually folded in 1932 amid disputes with the FCC over its AM allocation. Western New York would not get a full-time television station until WBEN-TV launched in 1948.) These early television programs operated using low-bandwidth (and low-fidelity) mechanical television processes. Full-time broadcasts began in the early 1930s, particularly in New York City; these were almost exclusively studio-based shows, among them the murder mystery "The Television Ghost", piano lessons and primitive variety shows. These shows and broadcasts ended in 1933, in part because of technological and economic limits caused by the Great Depression.


title: Television in the United States

text: On April 30, 1939, RCA through its NBC division, introduced the first, regularly scheduled, 441-line electronic television service in the United States over New York City's W2XBS (today's WNBC) from a transmitter atop The Empire State Building as well as placing RCA television receivers on sale in the New York City vicinity. Television receivers were also sold by General Electric, DuMont Laboratories and other manufacturers during his period. NBC rival CBS established their own electronic television station in New York at the time, W2XAB (today's WCBS-TV) as well as the DuMont Laboratories establishing their station W2XWV (today's WNYW). Although television sets were available for sale during this period (1939–1941) and three channels were operating in New York City, sales were slow, primarily due to a lack of compelling programming, limited broadcast schedules and the high price of the sets. In 1941, The National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) standardized on a 525-line system, and authorized the official start of advertising-based, commercial television. This would provide the basis for television across the country through the end of the century. On July 1, 1941, W2XBS became commercial WNBT (now WNBC) and broadcast the first paid advertisement for the Bulova Watch Company. On the same day, the CBS station became commercial WCBW (now WCBS-TV).


title: Television in the United States

text: Television development halted with the onset of World War II, but a few pioneer stations remained on the air throughout the war, primarily WNBT, WCBW and WABD (the former W2XWV, which became commercially licensed in 1944, owned by the DuMont Television Network, now WNYW) in New York City, WRGB in Schenectady, New York (owned by General Electric), WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia (owned by Philco), W9XBK (now WBBM-TV) in Chicago, as well as W6XAO (now KCBS-TV) and W6XYZ (now KTLA) in Los Angeles. When that conflict ended, these stations expanded their broadcast schedules and many other organizations applied for television station licenses.


title: Television in the United States

text: After a flood of television license applications, the FCC froze the application process for new applicants in 1948, due to concerns over station interference. There were barely more than 100 stations operating at the end of the freeze as of 1952, concentrated in many (but not all) major cities. After four years of deliberation, the FCC ended the license freeze. It reorganized the UHF band for television, then began handing out broadcasting licenses on both the UHF and VHF bands, with the highest concentration of license grants and station sign-ons occurring between 1953 and 1956. Many successful VHF stations launched. By comparison, UHF television reception at this time required either purchasing a more expensive television with a UHF tuner in it – as UHF tuners were not mandated by law in sets – or buying a conversion kit that added the band to VHF televisions. Both of these prevented consumer adoption of UHF in the mid-1950s, and most UHF channels which went to air during this time period did not survive.


title: Television in the United States

text: A brief dispute over the system to use for color broadcasts occurred at this time, but was soon settled. Half of all U.S. households had television sets by 1955, though color was a premium feature for many years (most households able to purchase television sets could only afford black-and-white models, and few programs were broadcast in color until the mid-1960s).


title: Television in the United States

text: Many of the earliest television programs were modified versions of well-established radio shows. Barn dances and opries were regular staples of early television, as were the first variety shows. Reruns of film shorts (such as "Looney Tunes", "Our Gang" and "The Three Stooges") were also staples of early television and to a certain extent remain popular today, well after those film shorts mostly stopped being produced in the 1960s. The 1950s saw the first flowering of the genres that would distinguish television from movies and radio: talk shows like "The Jack Paar Show" and sitcoms like "I Love Lucy". Although sitcoms were a radio fixture since the late 1930s (many 1940s radio sitcoms jumped directly to television), television allowed far greater use of physical comedy, an advantage that early television sitcoms used to its full potential.


title: Television in the United States

text: Other popular genres in early television were westerns, police procedurals, suspense thrillers and soap operas, all of which were adapted from the radio medium. Anthology and wheel series thrived in the so-called "Golden Age of Television," but eventually faded in popularity by the 1970s. The big band remote, for the most part, did not survive (a victim of the concurrent start of the rock era), with two exceptions: "The Lawrence Welk Show", a big band-driven musical variety show, ran from 1951 until Welk's retirement in 1982 and in reruns from then onward (which eventually moved from commercial to public television syndication), and Guy Lombardo's annual New Year's Eve big-band remotes ran until 1979, two years after Lombardo's death. Game shows were also a major part of the early part of television, aided by massive prizes unheard of in the radio era; however, the pressure to keep the programs entertaining led to the quiz show scandals, in which it was revealed many of the popular high-stakes games were rigged or outright scripted. The Saturday morning cartoons, animated productions made specifically for television (and, accordingly, with much tighter budgets and more limited animation), also debuted in the late 1950s.


title: Television in the United States

text: Broadcast television stations in the United States were primarily transmitted on the VHF band (channels 2–13) through the mid-1960s. It was not until the All-Channel Receiver Act of 1964 that UHF broadcasting became a feasible medium.


title: Television in the United States

text: The quality of American television underwent a marked decline in the late 1950s and early 1960s as anthology series disappeared from the network schedules in favor of an oversaturation of westerns, rural and fantasy sitcoms, cheaply animated cartoons and often-violent action-adventure series. Newton Minow famously lambasted the networks for creating a "vast wasteland" of bad television in his 1961 speech "Television and the Public Interest." Though Minow's attempts to exhort the networks into producing better programming failed to make a major impact, his advocacy for UHF (to expand viewer choices) and non-commercial educational television had a much longer legacy.


title: Television in the United States

text: Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, concurrent with the development of color television, the evolution of television led to an event colloquially known as the rural purge; genres such as the panel game show, western, variety show, barn dance and rural-oriented sitcom all met their demise in favor of newer, more modern series targeted at wealthier suburban and urban viewers. Around the same time, videotape became a more affordable alternative to film for recording programs.


title: Television in the United States

text: Stations across the country also produced their own local programs. Usually carried live, they ranged from simple advertisements to game shows and children's shows that often featured clowns and other offbeat characters. Local programs could often be popular and profitable, but concerns about product promotion led them to almost completely disappear by the mid-1970s. The last remaining locally originated shows on American television are local newscasts, public affairs shows and some brokered programming (such as talk-lifestyle shows) paid for by advertisers.


title: Television in the United States

text: Subscription television networks emerged in the late 1970s, first as over-the-air encrypted enterprises such as OnTV and SelecTV. Subscription television largely migrated to cable television through the early 1980s, as providers began to offer dedicated channels alongside local and out-of-market broadcast stations and cable service gradually expanded to more metropolitan areas. Analog television receive-only had a brief uptick in popularity during the mid-1980s, but never achieved competitive parity with cable providers of the time. Direct-broadcast satellite television experienced its breakout in the mid-1990s, with the emergence of digital (DSS) transmission; it has been growing in significance since then – spurring the emergence of multinational conglomerates such as Fox. As the number of outlets for potential new television channels increased, this also introduced the threat of audience fracturing, in that it would become more difficult to attain a critical mass of viewers in this highly competitive market.


title: Television in the United States

text: Infomercials were legalized in 1984, approximately the same time that cable television became widespread. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, stations began airing infomercials – as well as news and entertainment programs – throughout the night instead of signing off; infomercials also began to overtake other less-watched dayparts (such as weekends and during the daytime), which forced series that would otherwise be syndicated onto cable networks or off the air entirely. Cable networks have also begun selling infomercial space, usually in multiple-hour blocks in the early morning hours, while some dedicated channels devoted to infomercials have also launched since the early 1990s. Infomercials have earned a reputation as a medium for advertising scams and products of dubious quality, although by the same token, they have proven to be a successful method of selling products.


title: Television in the United States

text: As ratings declined on daytime over-the-air network broadcast television, game shows and soap operas that were the staples of the 1980s began to disappear, with both genres almost completely gone by 2020. They were gradually replaced by much cheaper and more lowbrow tabloid talk shows, locally produced news, and even infomercials. Binding arbitration court shows became popular in these timeslots beginning in the late 1990s.


title: Television in the United States

text: In the late 1990s, the U.S. began to deploy digital television, transitioning it into being the standard transmission method for over-the-air broadcasts. The major broadcast networks began transitioning to recording their programs in high definition (HD); prime time programs were the first to convert to the format, with daytime shows eventually being converted to HD beginning in the mid-2000s; the upgrade to full high-definition network schedules, at least among the conventional English language broadcast networks, was fully completed by September 2014 when the last standard-definition programs upgraded to HD. A law passed by Congress in 2006 required over-the-air stations to cease analog broadcasts in 2009, with the end of analog television arriving on June 12 of that year (originally set for February 17, before Congress delayed it due to concerns about national household penetration of digital television by viewers reliant on antennas for receive programming in advance the transition). Low-power television stations originally had until September 2015 to terminate analog broadcasts, a deadline that was later postponed and eventually took effect in July 2021. The 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction further compressed the UHF band, eliminating channels 38 through 51, and was completed in 2020. Most of the remaining stations on analog in 2021 were stations that exploited a loophole to carry a radio station on the audio feed of analog channel 6, which was audible on 87.7 MHz, a frequency that can be tuned in on most FM radios; a limited number of stations that were using that loophole were granted special temporary authority to continue broadcasting their analog audio feeds while shifting their video feeds to the new and upcoming digital television standard, ATSC 3.0, which is being phased in across the United States in the early 2020s with no hard transition date yet set.


title: Television in the United States

text: The late 1990s also saw the invention of digital video recorders. While the ability to record a television program for home viewing was possible with the earlier VCRs, that medium was a bulky mechanical tape medium that was far less convenient than the all-digital technology that DVRs use (DVD recorders also began to be sold around this time, though this is also less convenient than the DVR technology since DVD discs are somewhat more fragile than videotapes, although both mediums allow to some extent for longer-term viewing than most DVRs). DVR technology allowed wide-scale time shifting of programming, which had a negative impact on programming in time slots outside of prime time by allowing viewers to watch their favorite programs on demand. It also put pressure on advertisers, since DVRs make it relatively easy to skip over commercials (satellite provider Dish Network's Hopper technology, which eliminates commercials entirely, was even the subject of lawsuits by the major networks during the early and mid-2010s due to fears over diluted advertising revenue).


title: Television in the United States

text: During the 2000s, the major development in U.S. television programming was the growth of reality television, which proved to be an inexpensive and entertaining alternative to scripted prime time programming. The process of nonlinear video editing and digital recording allowed for much easier and less expensive editing of mass amounts of video, making reality television more viable than it had been in previous decades. All four major broadcast networks carry at least one long-running reality franchise in their lineup at any given time of the year.


title: Captain

text: Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, etc. In militaries, the captain is typically at the level of an officer commanding a company or battalion of infantry, a ship, or a battery of artillery, or another distinct unit. The term also may be used as an informal or honorary title for persons in similar commanding roles.


title: Captain

text: The term "captain" derives from (, , or 'the topmost'), which was used as title for a senior Byzantine military rank and office. The word was Latinized as capetanus/catepan, and its meaning seems to have merged with that of the late Latin "capitaneus" (which derives from the classical Latin word "caput", meaning head). This hybridized term gave rise to the English language term captain and its equivalents in other languages (, , , , , , , , , kapitány, Kapudan Pasha, Kobtan, etc.).


title: Calavera

text: A calavera (Spanish – for "skull") is a representation of a human skull. The term is most often applied to edible or decorative skulls made (usually by hand) from either sugar (called Alfeñiques) or clay, used in the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead () and the Roman Catholic holiday All Souls' Day. "Calavera" can also refer to any artistic representations of skulls, such as the lithographs of José Guadalupe Posada. The most widely known "calaveras" are created with cane sugar and are decorated with items such as colored foil, icing, beads, and feathers. They range in multiple colors.


title: Calavera

text: Traditional methods for producing "calaveras" have been in use since the 1630s. The skulls are created either for children or as offerings to be placed on altars known as "ofrendas" ("offerings") for "Día de Muertos", which has roots in the Aztec, Mayan, and Toltec cultural celebration of the "Day of the Dead".


title: Calavera

text: The tradition of sugar skulls is for families to decorate their loved ones' "ofrendas" with both large and small handmade sugar skulls. Children who have died, represented by small sugar skulls, are celebrated on 1 November. The larger sugar skulls represent the adults, whose celebration takes place on 2 November. It is believed that the departed return home to enjoy the offering on the altar.


title: Calavera

text: In pre-Columbian times, the images of skulls and skeletons were shown often in art forms to represent rebirth into the next stage of life. During the 20th century, political caricaturist José Guadalupe Posada became famous for making calaveras as vain skeletons dressed in the clothing of the wealthy. The most famous one was Catrina, wearing a feathery hat, fancy shoes and a long dress. Catrina is considered to be the personification of the Day of the Dead. These skeletons are created from many materials such as wood, sugar paste varieties, types of nuts, chocolate, etc. When used as offerings, the name of the deceased is written across the forehead of the skull on colored foil.


title: Calavera

text: Traditional production methods have been in use since roughly the 15th century. The process involves using molds to cast the "calaveras". Production can be a lengthy process: a craftsman will usually spend roughly four to six months producing the skulls for a season. Traditionally made sugar skulls are considered folk art and are not meant to be consumed.


title: Calavera

text: The production process is more focused on the aesthetic appeal of the skull than on the taste or food safety of the product. Furthermore, many "calaveras" feature inedible decorations, such as beads, feathers, and foil. Some skulls were formerly decorated with sombreros, although these designs have mostly disappeared since the 1970s.


title: Calavera

text: The "calaveras" are traditionally sold at outdoor market stalls beginning two weeks before the Day of the Dead.


title: Calavera

text: Other "calaveras" are produced to be edible. Most are cast as one piece from cane sugar, which can either be left unflavored or else flavored with vanilla. Some "calaveras" are also made from chocolate. The "calaveras" are typically colored with vegetable dyes. As with the more decorative "calaveras", these will sometimes have names written on the foreheads, as well. "Calaveras" may be eaten, or kept for a few days and then thrown away.


title: Calavera

text: Clay toy variations of "calaveras" also resemble the shape of human skulls. These toys are often painted a metallic silver color, but they may also be found in colors such as white, black, and red. Beaded eyes of many colors may also be added for decoration.


title: Calavera

text: Poetry written for the Day of the Dead are known as literary calaveras, and are intended to humorously criticize the living while reminding them of their mortality. Literary "calaveras" appeared during the second half of the 19th century, when drawings critical of important politicians began to be published in the press. Living personalities were depicted as skeletons exhibiting recognizable traits, making them easily identifiable. Additionally, drawings of dead personalities often contained text elements providing details of the deaths of various individuals.


title: Calavera

text: Sometimes known as "sugar skull" make-up, or Catrina make-up, facepainting a skull with ornate elements is a popular element of Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.


title: Ballon d'Or Féminin

text: The Ballon d'Or Féminin (), also known as the Women's Ballon d'Or, is an association football award presented by "France Football" that honours the player deemed to have performed the best over the previous season. It was first awarded in 2018, with Ada Hegerberg of Norway becoming the inaugural recipient of the award. In 2022, Barcelona captain Alexia Putellas became the first and only player to win the award twice and in consecutive years.


title: Sclera

text: The sclera, also known as the white of the eye or, in older literature, as the tunica albuginea oculi, is the opaque, fibrous, protective, outer layer of the human eye containing mainly collagen and some crucial elastic fiber. In humans, and some other vertebrates, the whole sclera is white, contrasting with the coloured iris, but in most mammals, the visible part of the sclera matches the colour of the iris, so the white part does not normally show while other vertebrates have distinct colors for both of them. In the development of the embryo, the sclera is derived from the neural crest. In children, it is thinner and shows some of the underlying pigment, appearing slightly blue. In the elderly, fatty deposits on the sclera can make it appear slightly yellow. People with dark skin can have naturally darkened sclerae, the result of melanin pigmentation.


title: Sclera

text: The human eye is relatively rare for having a pale sclera (relative to the iris). This makes it easier for one individual to identify where another individual is looking, and the cooperative eye hypothesis suggests this has evolved as a method of nonverbal communication.


title: Sclera

text: The sclera forms the posterior five-sixths of the connective tissue coat of the globe. It is continuous with the dura mater and the cornea, and maintains the shape of the globe, offering resistance to internal and external forces, and provides an attachment for the extraocular muscle insertions. The sclera is perforated by many nerves and vessels passing through the posterior scleral foramen, the hole that is formed by the optic nerve. At the optic disc the outer two-thirds of the sclera continues with the dura mater (outer coat of the brain) via the dural sheath of the optic nerve. The inner third joins with some choroidal tissue to form a plate (lamina cribrosa) across the optic nerve with perforations through which the optic fibers (fasciculi) pass. The thickness of the sclera varies from 1 mm at the posterior pole to 0.3 mm just behind the rectus muscle insertions. The sclera's blood vessels are mainly on the surface. Along with the vessels of the conjunctiva (which is a thin layer covering the sclera), those in the episclera render the inflamed eye bright red.


title: Sclera

text: In many vertebrates, the sclera is reinforced with plates of cartilage or bone, together forming a circular structure called the sclerotic ring. In primitive fish, this ring consists of four plates, but the number is lower in many living ray-finned fishes, and much higher in lobe-finned fishes, various reptiles, and birds. The ring has disappeared in many groups, including living amphibians, some reptiles and fish, and all mammals.


title: Sclera

text: The collagen of the sclera is continuous with the cornea. From outer to innermost, the four layers of the sclera are:


title: Sclera

text: The sclera is opaque due to the irregularity of the Type I collagen fibers, as opposed to the near-uniform thickness and parallel arrangement of the corneal collagen. Moreover, the cornea bears more mucopolysaccharide (a carbohydrate that has among its repeating units a nitrogenous sugar, hexosamine) to embed the fibrils.


title: Sclera

text: The cornea, unlike the sclera, has five layers. The middle, thickest layer is also called the stroma. The sclera, like the cornea, contains a basal endothelium, above which there is the lamina fusca, containing a high count of pigment cells.


title: Sclera

text: Sometimes, very small gray-blue spots can appear on the sclera, a harmless condition called scleral melanocytosis.


title: Sclera

text: Human eyes are somewhat distinctive in the animal kingdom in that the sclera is very plainly visible whenever the eye is open. This is not just due to the white color of the human sclera, which many other species share, but also to the fact that the human iris is relatively small and comprises a significantly smaller portion of the exposed eye surface compared to other animals. It is theorized that this adaptation evolved because of our social nature as the eye became a useful communication tool in addition to a sensory organ. It is believed that the conspicuous sclera of the human eye makes it easier for one individual to identify where another individual is looking, increasing the efficacy of this particular form of nonverbal communication, called cooperative eye hypothesis. Animal researchers have also found that, in the course of their domestication, dogs have also developed the ability to pick up visual cues from the eyes of humans. Dogs do not seem to use this form of communication with one another and only look for visual information from the eyes of humans.


title: Sclera

text: The bony area that makes up the human eye socket provides exceptional protection to the sclera. However, if the sclera is ruptured by a blunt force or is penetrated by a sharp object, the recovery of full former vision is usually rare. If pressure is applied slowly, the eye is actually very elastic. However, most ruptures involve objects moving at some velocity. The cushion of orbital fat protects the sclera from head-on blunt forces, but damage from oblique forces striking the eye from the side is not prevented by this cushion. Hemorrhaging and a dramatic drop in intraocular pressure are common, along with a reduction in visual perception to only broad hand movements and the presence or absence of light. However, a low-velocity injury which does not puncture and penetrate the sclera requires only superficial treatment and the removal of the object. Sufficiently small objects which become embedded and which are subsequently left untreated may eventually become surrounded by a benign cyst, causing no other damage or discomfort.


title: Sclera

text: The sclera is rarely damaged by brief exposure to heat: the eyelids provide exceptional protection, and the fact that the sclera is covered in layers of moist tissue means that these tissues are able to cause much of the offending heat to become dissipated as steam before the sclera itself is damaged. Even relatively low-temperature molten metals when splashed against an open eye have been shown to cause very little damage to the sclera, even while creating detailed casts of the surrounding eyelashes. Prolonged exposure, however—on the order of 30 seconds—at temperatures above will begin to cause scarring, and above will cause extreme changes in the sclera and surrounding tissue. Such long exposures even in industrial settings are virtually nonexistent.


title: Sclera

text: The sclera is highly resistant to injury from brief exposure to toxic chemicals. The reflexive production of tears at the onset of chemical exposure tends to quickly wash away such irritants, preventing further harm. Acids with a pH below 2.5 are the source of greatest acidic burn risk, with sulfuric acid, the kind present in car batteries and therefore commonly available, being among the most dangerous in this regard. However, acid burns, even severe ones, seldom result in loss of the eye.


title: Sclera

text: Alkali burns, on the other hand, such as those resulting from exposure to ammonium hydroxide or ammonium chloride or other chemicals with a pH above 11.5, will cause cellular tissue in the sclera to saponify and should be considered medical emergencies requiring immediate treatment.


title: Sclera

text: Redness of the sclera is typically caused by eye irritation causing blood vessels to expand, such as in conjunctivitis ("pink eye"). Episcleritis is a generally benign condition of the episclera causing eye redness. Scleritis is a serious inflammatory disease of the sclera causing redness of the sclera often progressing to purple.


title: Sclera

text: In cases of osteogenesis imperfecta, the sclera may appear to have a blue tint, more pronounced than the slight blue tint seen in children. The blue tint is caused by the showing of the underlying uveal tract (choroid and retinal pigment epithelium).


title: Conagra Brands

text: Conagra Brands, Inc. (formerly ConAgra Foods) is an American consumer packaged goods holding company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Conagra makes and sells products under various brand names that are available in supermarkets, restaurants, and food service establishments. Based on its 2021 revenue, the company ranked 331st on the 2022 Fortune 500.


title: Conagra Brands

text: ConAgra was founded in 1919 by Frank Little and Alva Kinney, who brought together four grain mills as Nebraska Consolidated Mills (NCM) at Grand Island, Nebraska. The headquarters were moved to Omaha in 1922. The company ran at a profit until 1936, when Kinney retired. In 1940, the company began producing flour at its own mill, and in 1942 ventured into the livestock feed business. That year, NCM president R. S. Dickinson opened the company's first out-of-state facility in Alabama with a flour mill and animal feed plant.


title: Conagra Brands

text: After researching new uses for its flour, NCM funded the establishment of the Duncan Hines brand of cake mixes in 1951 as a way to market more flour. This venture was very successful, leading the company to its current place as the third largest flour miller in the U.S. However, this did not lead NCM to consider other food ventures, and instead it sold its Duncan Hines assets to Procter & Gamble in 1956. As American households purchased more and more prepared and instant foods in the 1950s and 1960s, NCM chose not to expand into the businesses that used its flour, instead turning in the opposite direction and focusing more on raw foods like poultry and expanding its livestock feed business.


title: Conagra Brands

text: In 1971, Nebraska Consolidated Mills changed its name to "ConAgra Foods", with "ConAgra" being a portmanteau of "consolidated" and "agriculture." The 1970s brought the company to the brink of ruin, as the company lost money attempting to expand into the fertilizer, catfish, and pet product industries, and as commodity speculation wiped out ConAgra's margins on raw foods. In 1974, C. Michael "Mike" Harper, an experienced food industry executive, took over the firm and brought it back from the brink of bankruptcy. Nonetheless, ConAgra's business model left it vulnerable to volatile commodity prices.


title: Conagra Brands

text: In response, the company set off on a two-decade-long buying spree, purchasing over one hundred prepared food brands, starting with its 1980 purchase of Banquet Foods. It moved heavily into the frozen food business and the packaged meat industry, and then picked up a selection of other brands from firms like RJR Nabisco and Beatrice Foods (including Hunt-Wesson and Swift-Eckrich) among others, as the leveraged buyouts of the 1980s resulted in the divestiture or breakup of many major American consumer product firms. In 1993 alone it purchased $500 million in smaller firms, and in 1998 it purchased another $480 million in brands from Nabisco.


title: Conagra Brands

text: In 2002, ConAgra Foods sold its fresh meat operations under the name Swift & Company to Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, Inc. and Booth Creek Management.


title: Conagra Brands

text: In 2006, ConAgra Foods sold its Chicago-area-based refrigerated meats business (Butterball, Eckrich, Armour) to Smithfield Foods. ConAgra maintained a presence in Chicago by moving its Hunt-Wesson business there from California.


title: Conagra Brands

text: In 2007, ConAgra acquired Watts Brothers Farms, a vegetable processing and agricultural operation, including an organic dairy.


title: Conagra Brands

text: On November 27, 2012, ConAgra officials announced the company was purchasing Ralcorp, pending Ralcorp shareholder approval, for approximately $4.95 billion. Stockholders of Ralcorp Holdings, Inc. would receive $90 per share. The deal completed in January 2013 and made ConAgra the largest private-label packaged food business in the United States.


title: Conagra Brands

text: On October 1, 2015, ConAgra announced that it would cut about 1,500 jobs and relocate its headquarters to Chicago as part of a restructuring plan. The move of headquarters from Omaha to Chicago was completed in late June 2016 with the opening of their new HQ at the Merchandise Mart building. It is the first time since 1922 that ConAgra has not been headquartered in Omaha and the first time in the company's history, dating back to its 1919 founding, that the headquarters will not be in the state of Nebraska.


title: Conagra Brands

text: On July 14, 2014, ConAgra announced that it had acquired TaiMei Potato Industry Limited, a potato processor in Shangdu, Inner Mongolia. This acquisition expands ConAgra Foods' Lamb Weston operations in a market that has growing demand for frozen potato products.


title: Conagra Brands

text: On November 18, 2015, ConAgra announced it was spinning off its Lamb Weston division into a separate company that would be based in Kennewick, Washington. They also announced that ConAgra Foods would be renamed as Conagra Brands in 2016. Thomas Werner and Timothy McLevish were named executive and executive chairman. The Lamb Weston () spinoff was completed on November 9, 2016, with the new company headquartered in the suburbs of Boise, Idaho, with major manufacturing facilities in Oregon and Washington. At the same time, ConAgra Foods changed their name to Conagra Brands (now with a lowercase A), complete with a new logo.


title: Conagra Brands

text: On September 22, 2017, Conagra announced that it was acquiring Angie's Artisan Treats, maker of Angie's Boomchickapop popcorn. The acquisition was completed on October 23, 2017.


title: Conagra Brands

text: On June 27, 2018, Conagra Brands announced the acquisition of Pinnacle Foods for $8.1 billion. The acquisition closed on October 26, 2018.


title: Conagra Brands

text: On December 8, 2020, Conagra announced that it was selling the Peter Pan brand to Post Holdings. The transaction was completed on January 25, 2021.


title: Conagra Brands

text: The board of directors are: Mogens C. Bay, Stephen G. Butler, Steven F. Goldstone, Joie A. Gregor, Rajive Johri, W. G. Jurgensen, Richard H. Lenny, Ruth Ann Marshall, Gary M. Rodkin, Andrew J. Schindler, and Kenneth E. Stinson.