title: Brave New World

text: Bernard takes a holiday with Lenina outside the World State to a Savage Reservation in New Mexico, in which the two observe natural-born people, disease, the ageing process, other languages, and religious lifestyles for the first time. The culture of the village folk resembles the contemporary Native American groups of the region, descendants of the Anasazi, including the Puebloan peoples of Hopi and Zuni. Bernard and Lenina witness a violent public ritual and then encounter Linda, a woman originally from the World State who is living on the reservation with her son John, now a young man. She, too, visited the reservation on a holiday many years ago, but became separated from her group and was left behind. She had meanwhile become pregnant by a fellow-holidaymaker (who is revealed to be Bernard's boss, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning). She did not try to return to the World State, because of her shame at her pregnancy. Despite spending his whole life in the reservation, John has never been accepted by the villagers, and his and Linda's lives have been hard and unpleasant. Linda has taught John to read, although from the only book in her possession—a scientific manual—and another book John found: the complete works of Shakespeare. Ostracised by the villagers, John is able to articulate his feelings only in terms of Shakespearean drama, quoting often from "The Tempest", "King Lear", "Othello", "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet". Linda now wants to return to London, and John, too, wants to see this "brave new world". Bernard sees an opportunity to thwart plans to exile him, and gets permission to take Linda and John back. On their return to London, John meets the Director and calls him his "father", a vulgarity which causes a roar of laughter. The humiliated Director resigns in shame before he can follow through with exiling Bernard.


title: Brave New World

text: Bernard, as "custodian" of the "savage" John who is now treated as a celebrity, is fawned on by the highest members of society and revels in attention he once scorned. Bernard's popularity is fleeting, though, and he becomes envious that John only really bonds with the literary-minded Helmholtz. Considered hideous and friendless, Linda spends all her time using soma, while John refuses to attend social events organised by Bernard, appalled by what he perceives to be an empty society. Lenina and John are physically attracted to each other, but John's view of courtship and romance, based on Shakespeare's writings, is utterly incompatible with Lenina's freewheeling attitude to sex. She tries to seduce him, but he attacks her, before suddenly being informed that his mother is on her deathbed. He rushes to Linda's bedside, causing a scandal, as this is not the "correct" attitude to death. Some children who enter the ward for "death-conditioning" come across as disrespectful to John, and he attacks one physically. He then tries to break up a distribution of soma to a lower-caste group, telling them that he is freeing them. Helmholtz and Bernard rush in to stop the ensuing riot, which the police quell by spraying soma vapor into the crowd.


title: Brave New World

text: Bernard, Helmholtz, and John are all brought before Mustapha Mond, the "Resident World Controller for Western Europe", who tells Bernard and Helmholtz that they are to be exiled to islands for antisocial activity. Bernard pleads for a second chance, but Helmholtz welcomes the opportunity to be a true individual, and chooses the Falkland Islands as his destination, believing that their bad weather will inspire his writing. Mond tells Helmholtz that exile is actually a reward. The islands are full of the most interesting people in the world, individuals who did not fit into the social model of the World State. Mond outlines for John the events that led to the present society and his arguments for a caste system and social control. John rejects Mond's arguments, and Mond sums up John's views by claiming that John demands "the right to be unhappy". John asks if he may go to the islands as well, but Mond refuses, saying he wishes to see what happens to John next.


title: Brave New World

text: Jaded with his new life, John moves to an abandoned hilltop lighthouse, near the village of Puttenham, where he intends to adopt a solitary ascetic lifestyle in order to purify himself of civilization, practising self-flagellation. This draws reporters and eventually hundreds of amazed sightseers, hoping to witness his bizarre behaviour.


title: Brave New World

text: For a while it seems that John might be left alone, after the public's attention is drawn to other diversions, but a documentary maker has secretly filmed John's self-flagellation from a distance, and when released the documentary causes an international sensation. Helicopters arrive with more journalists. Crowds of people descend on John's retreat, demanding that he perform his whipping ritual for them. From one helicopter a young woman emerges who is implied to be Lenina. John, at the sight of a woman he both adores and loathes, whips at her in a fury and then turns the whip on himself, exciting the crowd, whose wild behaviour transforms into a soma-fuelled orgy. The next morning John awakes on the ground and is consumed by remorse over his participation in the night's events.


title: Brave New World

text: That evening, a swarm of helicopters appears on the horizon, the story of last night's orgy having been in all the papers. The first onlookers and reporters to arrive find that John is dead, having hanged himself.


title: Brave New World

text: Bernard Marx, a sleep-learning specialist at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Although Bernard is an Alpha-Plus (the upper class of the society), he is a misfit. He is unusually short for an Alpha; an alleged accident with alcohol in Bernard's blood-surrogate before his decanting has left him slightly stunted. Bernard's independence of mind stems more from his inferiority complex and depressive nature than from any depth of philosophical conviction. Unlike his fellow utopians, Bernard is often angry, resentful, and jealous. At times, he is also cowardly and hypocritical. His conditioning is clearly incomplete. He doesn't enjoy communal sports, solidarity services, or promiscuous sex. He doesn't even get much joy out of soma. Bernard is in love with Lenina but he doesn't like her sleeping with other men, even though "everyone belongs to everyone else". Bernard's triumphant return to utopian civilisation with John the Savage from the Reservation precipitates the downfall of the Director, who had been planning to exile him. Bernard's triumph is short-lived; he is ultimately banished to an island for his non-conformist behaviour.


title: Brave New World

text: John, the illicit son of the Director and Linda, born and reared on the Savage Reservation ("Malpais") after Linda was unwittingly left behind by her errant lover. John ("the Savage" or "Mr. Savage", as he is often called) is an outsider both on the Reservation—where the natives still practice marriage, natural birth, family life and religion—and the ostensibly civilised World State, based on principles of stability and happiness. He has read nothing but the complete works of William Shakespeare, which he quotes extensively, and, for the most part, aptly, though his allusion to the "Brave New World" (Miranda's words in "The Tempest") takes on a darker and bitterly ironic resonance as the novel unfolds. John is intensely moral according to a code that he has been taught by Shakespeare and life in Malpais but is also naïve: his views are as imported into his own consciousness as are the hypnopedic messages of World State citizens. The admonishments of the men of Malpais taught him to regard his mother as a whore; but he cannot grasp that these were the same men who continually sought her out despite their supposedly sacred pledges of monogamy. Because he is unwanted in Malpais, he accepts the invitation to travel back to London and is initially astonished by the comforts of the World State. He remains committed to values that exist only in his poetry. He first spurns Lenina for failing to live up to his Shakespearean ideal and then the entire utopian society: he asserts that its technological wonders and consumerism are poor substitutes for individual freedom, human dignity and personal integrity. After his mother's death, he becomes deeply distressed with grief, surprising onlookers in the hospital. He then withdraws himself from society and attempts to purify himself of "sin" (desire), but is unable to do so. He finds himself gathering a lot of trouble for both his body and mind. He soon does not realise what is real or what is fake, what he does and what he does not do. Soon everything he thinks about or feels just becomes blurred and unrecognizable. Finally he hangs himself in despair.


title: Brave New World

text: Helmholtz Watson, a handsome and successful Alpha-Plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering and a friend of Bernard. He feels unfulfilled writing endless propaganda doggerel, and the stifling conformism and philistinism of the World State make him restive. Helmholtz is ultimately exiled to the Falkland Islands—a cold asylum for disaffected Alpha-Plus non-conformists—after reading a heretical poem to his students on the virtues of solitude and helping John destroy some Deltas' rations of soma following Linda's death. Unlike Bernard, he takes his exile in his stride and comes to view it as an opportunity for inspiration in his writing. His first name derives from the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz.


title: Brave New World

text: Lenina Crowne, a young, beautiful fetus technician at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Lenina Crowne is a Beta who enjoys being a Beta. She is a vaccination worker with beliefs and values that are in line with a citizen of the World State. She is part of the 30% of the female population that are not freemartins (sterile women). Lenina is promiscuous and popular but somewhat quirky in her society: she had a four-month relation with Henry Foster, choosing not to have sex with anyone but him for a period of time. She is basically happy and well-conditioned, using soma to suppress unwelcome emotions, as is expected. Lenina has a date with Bernard, to whom she feels ambivalently attracted, and she goes to the Reservation with him. On returning to civilisation, she tries and fails to seduce John the Savage. John loves and desires Lenina but he is repelled by her forwardness and the prospect of pre-marital sex, rejecting her as an "". Lenina visits John at the lighthouse but he attacks her with a whip, unwittingly inciting onlookers to do the same. Her exact fate is left unspecified.


title: Brave New World

text: Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western Europe, "His Fordship" Mustapha Mond presides over one of the ten zones of the World State, the global government set up after the cataclysmic Nine Years' War and great Economic Collapse. Sophisticated and good-natured, Mond is an urbane and hyperintelligent advocate of the World State and its ethos of "Community, Identity, Stability". Among the novel's characters, he is uniquely aware of the precise nature of the society he oversees and what it has given up to accomplish its gains. Mond argues that art, literature, and scientific freedom must be sacrificed to secure the ultimate utilitarian goal of maximising societal happiness. He defends the caste system, behavioural conditioning, and the lack of personal freedom in the World State: these, he says, are a price worth paying for achieving social stability, the highest social virtue because it leads to lasting happiness.


title: Brave New World

text: Fanny Crowne, Lenina Crowne's friend (they have the same last name because only ten thousand last names are in use in a World State comprising two billion people). Fanny voices the conventional values of her caste and society, particularly the importance of promiscuity: she advises Lenina that she should have more than one man in her life because it is unseemly to concentrate on just one. Fanny then warns Lenina away from a new lover whom she considers undeserving, yet she is ultimately supportive of the young woman's attraction to the savage John.


title: Brave New World

text: Henry Foster, one of Lenina's many lovers, he is a perfectly conventional Alpha male, casually discussing Lenina's body with his coworkers. His success with Lenina, and his casual attitude about it, infuriate the jealous Bernard. Henry ultimately proves himself every bit the ideal World State citizen, finding no courage to defend Lenina from John's assaults despite having maintained an uncommonly longstanding sexual relationship with her.


title: Brave New World

text: Benito Hoover, another of Lenina's lovers. She remembers that he is particularly hairy when he takes his clothes off.


title: Brave New World

text: The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (DHC), also known as Thomas "Tomakin" Grahambell, he is the administrator of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, where he is a threatening figure who intends to exile Bernard to Iceland. His plans take an unexpected turn when Bernard returns from the Reservation with Linda (see below) and John, a child they both realise is actually his. This fact, scandalous and obscene in the World State, not because it was extramarital (which all sexual acts are), but because it was procreative, leads the Director to resign his post in shame.


title: Brave New World

text: , John's mother, decanted as a Beta-Minus in the World State, originally worked in the DHC's Fertilizing Room, and subsequently lost during a storm while visiting the New Mexico Savage Reservation with the Director many years before the events of the novel. Despite following her usual precautions, Linda became pregnant with the Director's son during their time together and was therefore unable to return to the World State by the time that she found her way to Malpais. Having been conditioned to the promiscuous social norms of the World State, Linda finds herself at once popular with every man in the pueblo (because she is open to all sexual advances) and also reviled for the same reason, seen as a whore by the wives of the men who visit her and by the men themselves (who come to her nonetheless). Her only comforts there are "mescal" brought by Popé as well as "peyotl". Linda is desperate to return to the World State and to soma, wanting nothing more from her remaining life than comfort until death.


title: Brave New World

text: The Arch-Community-Songster, the secular equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the World State society. He takes personal offense when John refuses to attend Bernard's party.


title: Brave New World

text: The Director of Crematoria and Phosphorus Reclamation, one of the many disappointed, important figures to attend Bernard's party.


title: Brave New World

text: The Warden, an Alpha-Minus, the talkative chief administrator for the New Mexico Savage Reservation. He is blond, short, broad-shouldered, and has a booming voice.


title: Brave New World

text: Darwin Bonaparte, a "big game photographer" (i.e. filmmaker) who films John flogging himself. Darwin Bonaparte became known for two works: "feely of the gorillas' wedding", and "Sperm Whale's Love-life". He had already made a name for himself but still seeks more. He renews his fame by filming the savage, John, in his newest release "The Savage of Surrey". His name alludes to Charles Darwin and Napoleon Bonaparte.


title: Brave New World

text: Dr. Shaw, Bernard Marx's physician who consequently becomes the physician of both Linda and John. He prescribes a lethal dose of soma to Linda, which will stop her respiratory system from functioning in a span of one to two months, at her own behest but not without protest from John. Ultimately, they all agree that it is for the best, since denying her this request would cause more trouble for Society and Linda herself.


title: Brave New World

text: Dr. Gaffney, Provost of Eton, an Upper School for high-caste individuals. He shows Bernard and John around the classrooms, and the Hypnopaedic Control Room (used for behavioural conditioning through sleep learning). John asks if the students read Shakespeare but the Provost says the library contains only reference books because solitary activities, such as reading, are discouraged.


title: Brave New World

text: Miss Keate, Head Mistress of Eton Upper School. Bernard fancies her, and arranges an assignation with her.


title: Brave New World

text: These are non-fictional and factual characters who lived before the events in this book, but are of note in the novel:


title: Brave New World

text: The limited number of names that the World State assigned to its bottle-grown citizens can be traced to political and cultural figures who contributed to the bureaucratic, economic, and technological systems of Huxley's age, and presumably those systems in "Brave New World".


title: Brave New World

text: Upon its publication, Rebecca West praised "Brave New World" as "The most accomplished novel Huxley has yet written", Joseph Needham lauded it as "Mr. Huxley's remarkable book", and Bertrand Russell also praised it, stating, "Mr. Aldous Huxley has shown his usual masterly skill in "Brave New World.""


title: Brave New World

text: However, "Brave New World" also received negative responses from other contemporary critics, although his work was later embraced.


title: Brave New World

text: In an article in the 4 May 1935 issue of the "Illustrated London News", G. K. Chesterton explained that Huxley was revolting against the "Age of Utopias". Much of the discourse on man's future before 1914 was based on the thesis that humanity would solve all economic and social issues. In the decade following the war the discourse shifted to an examination of the causes of the catastrophe. The works of H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw on the promises of socialism and a World State were then viewed as the ideas of naive optimists. Chesterton wrote:


title: Brave New World

text: Similarly, in 1944 economist Ludwig von Mises described "Brave New World" as a satire of utopian predictions of socialism: "Aldous Huxley was even courageous enough to make socialism's dreamed paradise the target of his sardonic irony."


title: Brave New World

text: The World State is built upon the principles of Henry Ford's assembly line: mass production, homogeneity, predictability, and consumption of disposable consumer goods. While the World State lacks any supernatural-based religions, Ford himself is revered as the creator of their society but not as a deity, and characters celebrate Ford Day and swear oaths by his name (e.g., "By Ford!"). In this sense, some fragments of traditional religion are present, such as Christian crosses, which had their tops cut off to be changed to a "T", representing the Ford Model T. In England, there is an Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury, obviously continuing the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in America "The Christian Science Monitor" continues publication as "The Fordian Science Monitor". The World State calendar numbers years in the "AF" era—"Anno Ford"—with the calendar beginning in AD 1908, the year in which Ford's first Model T rolled off his assembly line. The novel's Gregorian calendar year is AD 2540, but it is referred to in the book as AF 632.


title: Brave New World

text: From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep (called "hypnopædia" in the book) to believe their own class is superior, but that the other classes perform needed functions. Any residual unhappiness is resolved by an antidepressant and hallucinogenic drug called soma.


title: Brave New World

text: The biological techniques used to control the populace in "Brave New World" do not include genetic engineering; Huxley wrote the book before the structure of DNA was known. However, Gregor Mendel's work with inheritance patterns in peas had been rediscovered in 1900 and the eugenics movement, based on artificial selection, was well established. Huxley's family included a number of prominent biologists including Thomas Huxley, half-brother and Nobel Laureate Andrew Huxley, and his brother Julian Huxley who was a biologist and involved in the eugenics movement. Nonetheless, Huxley emphasises conditioning over breeding (nurture versus nature); human embryos and fetuses are conditioned through a carefully designed regimen of chemical (such as exposure to hormones and toxins), thermal (exposure to intense heat or cold, as one's future career would dictate), and other environmental stimuli, although there is an element of selective breeding as well.


title: Brave New World

text: In a letter to George Orwell about "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Huxley wrote "Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World." He went on to write "Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience."


title: Brave New World

text: Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the worlds of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Brave New World" in the foreword of his 1985 book "Amusing Ourselves to Death". He writes:


title: Brave New World

text: Journalist Christopher Hitchens, who himself published several articles on Huxley and a book on Orwell, noted the difference between the two texts in the introduction to his 1999 article "Why Americans Are Not Taught History":


title: Brave New World

text: Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Brothers, US, 1958; Chatto & Windus, UK, 1959), written by Huxley almost thirty years after "Brave New World", is a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had moved toward or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. He believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a reasonable guess as to where the world might go in the future. In "Brave New World Revisited", he concluded that the world was becoming like "Brave New World" much faster than he originally thought.


title: Brave New World

text: Huxley analysed the causes of this, such as overpopulation, as well as all the means by which populations can be controlled. He was particularly interested in the effects of drugs and subliminal suggestion. "Brave New World Revisited" is different in tone because of Huxley's evolving thought, as well as his conversion to Hindu Vedanta in the interim between the two books.


title: Brave New World

text: The last chapter of the book aims to propose action which could be taken to prevent a democracy from turning into the totalitarian world described in "Brave New World". In Huxley's last novel, "Island", he again expounds similar ideas to describe a utopian nation, which is generally viewed as a counterpart to "Brave New World".


title: Brave New World

text: According to American Library Association, "Brave New World" has frequently been banned and challenged in the United States due to insensitivity, offensive language, nudity, racism, conflict with a religious viewpoint, and being sexually explicit. It landed on the list of the top ten most challenged books in 2010 (3) and 2011 (7). The book also secured a spot on the association's list of the top one hundred challenged books for 1990-1999 (54), 2000-2009 (36), and 2010-2019 (26).


title: Brave New World

text: The English writer Rose Macaulay published "What Not: A Prophetic Comedy" in 1918. "What Not" depicts a dystopian future where people are ranked by intelligence, the government mandates mind training for all citizens, and procreation is regulated by the state. Macaulay and Huxley shared the same literary circles and he attended her weekly literary salons.


title: Brave New World

text: George Orwell believed that "Brave New World" must have been partly derived from the 1921 novel "We" by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. However, in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote "Brave New World" long before he had heard of "We". According to "We" translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying.


title: Brave New World

text: Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing "Player Piano" (1952), he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of "Brave New World", whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We"".


title: Brave New World

text: In 1982, Polish author Antoni Smuszkiewicz, in his analysis of Polish science-fiction "Zaczarowana gra" ("The Magic Game"), presented accusations of plagiarism against Huxley. Smuszkiewicz showed similarities between "Brave New World" and two science fiction novels written earlier by Polish author Mieczysław Smolarski, namely "Miasto światłości" ("The City of Light", 1924) and "Podróż poślubna pana Hamiltona" ("Mr Hamilton's Honeymoon Trip", 1928). Smuszkiewicz wrote in his open letter to Huxley: "This work of a great author, both in the general depiction of the world as well as countless details, is so similar to two of my novels that in my opinion there is no possibility of accidental analogy."


title: Brave New World

text: Kate Lohnes, writing for "Encyclopædia Britannica", notes similarities between "Brave New World" and other novels of the era could be seen as expressing "common fears surrounding the rapid advancement of technology and of the shared feelings of many tech-skeptics during the early 20th century". Other dystopian novels followed Huxley's work, including Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949).


title: Brave New World

text: In 1999, the Modern Library ranked "Brave New World" fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for "The Observer" included "Brave New World" chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.


title: Brave New World

text: On 5 November 2019, BBC News listed "Brave New World" on its list of the 100 most influential novels. In 2021, "Brave New World" was one of six classic science fiction novels by British authors selected by Royal Mail to feature on a series of UK postage stamps.


title: Brave New World

text: In May 2015, "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television would bring "Brave New World" to Syfy network as a scripted series, adapted by Les Bohem. The adaptation was eventually written by David Wiener with Grant Morrison and Brian Taylor, with the series ordered to air on USA Network in February 2019. The series eventually moved to the Peacock streaming service and premiered on 15 July 2020. In October 2020, the series was canceled after one season.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: December 16, 1980) was an American businessman, best known for founding fast food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (also known as KFC) and later acting as the company's brand ambassador and symbol. His name and image are still symbols of the company.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders held a number of jobs in his early life, such as steam engine stoker, insurance salesman, and filling station operator. He began selling fried chicken from his roadside restaurant in North Corbin, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. During that time, Sanders developed his "secret recipe" and his patented method of cooking chicken in a pressure fryer. Sanders recognized the potential of the restaurant franchising concept, and the first KFC franchise opened in South Salt Lake, Utah, in 1952. When his original restaurant closed, he devoted himself full-time to franchising his fried chicken throughout the country.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: The company's rapid expansion across the United States and overseas became overwhelming for Sanders. In 1964, then 73 years old, he sold the company to a group of investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey for $2 million. However, he retained control of operations in Canada, and he became a salaried brand ambassador for Kentucky Fried Chicken. In his later years, he became highly critical of the food served by KFC restaurants, as he believed they had cut costs and allowed quality to deteriorate.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Harland David Sanders was born on September 9, 1890, in a four-room house located east of Henryville, Indiana. He was the oldest of three children born to Wilbur David and Margaret Ann (née Dunlevy) Sanders. His mother was of Irish and Dutch descent. The family attended the Advent Christian Church. His father was a mild and affectionate man who worked his 80-acre farm, until he broke his leg in a fall. He then worked as a butcher in Henryville for two years. Sanders' mother was a devout Christian and strict parent, continuously warning her children of "the evils of alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and whistling on Sundays."


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders' father died in 1895. His mother got work in a tomato cannery, and the young Harland was left to look after and cook for his siblings. By the age of seven, he was reportedly skilled with bread and vegetables, and improving with meat; the children foraged for food while their mother was away at work for days at a time. In 1899, his mother remarried to Edward Park, and according to the 1900 census, his mother was widowed. When he was 10, Sanders began to work as a farmhand.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In 1902, Sanders' mother remarried to William Broaddus, and the family moved to Greenwood, Indiana. Sanders had a tumultuous relationship with his stepfather. In 1903 (age 12), he dropped out of seventh grade (later stating that "algebra's what drove me off"), and went to live and work on a nearby farm. At age 13, he left home and took a job painting horse carriages in Indianapolis. When he was 14, he moved to southern Indiana to work as a farmhand.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In 1906, with his mother's approval, Sanders left the area to live with his uncle in New Albany, Indiana. His uncle worked for the streetcar company, and secured Sanders a job as a conductor.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders falsified his date of birth and enlisted in the United States Army in October 1906 (age 16), completing his service commitment as a wagoner (see teamster) in Cuba being awarded the Cuban Pacification Medal (Army). He was honorably discharged in February 1907 and moved to Sheffield, Alabama, where his uncle lived. There, he met his brother Clarence, who had also moved there in order to escape their stepfather. The uncle worked for the Southern Railway, and secured Sanders a job there as a blacksmith's helper in the workshops. After two months, Sanders moved to Jasper, Alabama, where he got a job cleaning out the ash pans of trains from the Northern Alabama Railroad (a division of the Southern Railway) when they had finished their runs.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders progressed to become a fireman (steam engine stoker) from the age of 16. He worked the job for nearly three years until he was fired for "insubordination" after he got sick.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders found laboring work with the Norfolk and Western Railway from 1909. While working on the railroad, he met Josephine King of Jasper, Alabama, and they were married shortly afterwards on June 15, 1909, in Jasper. They would go on to have three children, Margaret Josephine Sanders, born March 29, 1910, in Jasper, Alabama and died October 19, 2001, in West Palm Beach, Florida, Harland David Sanders Jr. on April 23, 1912, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, who died on September 15, 1932, in Martinsville, Indiana, from infected tonsils, and Mildred Marie Sanders Ruggles, born October 15, 1919, in Jeffersonville, Indiana and died September 21, 2010, in Lexington, Kentucky. He then found work as a fireman on the Illinois Central Railroad, and he and his family moved to Jackson, Tennessee. By night, Sanders studied law by correspondence through the La Salle Extension University. Sanders lost his job at Illinois after brawling with a colleague. While Sanders moved to work for the Rock Island Railroad, Josephine and the children went to live with her parents.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: After a while, Sanders began to practice law in Little Rock, which he did for three years, earning enough in fees for his family to move with him. His legal career ended after a courtroom brawl with his own client destroyed his reputation. This period represented a low point for Sanders. As his biographer John Ed Pearce wrote, "[Sanders] had encountered repeated failure largely through bullheadedness, a lack of self-control, impatience, and a self-righteous lack of diplomacy."


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Following the incident, Sanders was forced to move back in with his mother in Henryville, and went to work as a laborer on the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1916, the family moved to Jeffersonville, where Sanders got a job selling life insurance for the Prudential Life Insurance Company. Sanders was eventually fired for insubordination. He moved to Louisville and got a sales job with Mutual Benefit Life of New Jersey.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In 1920 (age 30), Sanders established a ferry boat company, which operated a boat on the Ohio River between Jeffersonville and Louisville. He canvassed for funding, becoming a minority shareholder himself, and was appointed secretary of the company. The ferry was an instant success. Around 1922 he took a job as secretary at the Chamber of Commerce in Columbus, Indiana. He admitted that he was not very good at the job, and resigned after less than a year. Sanders cashed in his ferry boat company shares for $22,000 ($ today) and used the money to establish a company manufacturing acetylene lamps. The venture failed after Delco introduced an electric lamp that it sold on credit.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders moved to Winchester, Kentucky, to work as a salesman for the Michelin Tire Company. He lost his job in 1924 when Michelin closed its New Jersey manufacturing plant. In 1924, by chance, he met the general manager of Standard Oil of Kentucky, who asked him to run a service station in Nicholasville. In 1930, the station closed as a result of the Great Depression.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In 1930, the Shell Oil Company offered Sanders a service station in North Corbin, Kentucky, rent free, in return for paying the company a percentage of sales. Sanders began to serve chicken dishes and other meals such as country ham and steaks. Initially he served the customers in his adjacent living quarters before opening a restaurant. It was during this period that Sanders was involved in a shootout with Matt Stewart, a local competitor, over the repainting of a sign directing traffic to his station. Stewart killed a Shell employee who was with Sanders and was convicted of murder, eliminating Sanders' competition. Sanders was commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel in 1935 by Kentucky governor Ruby Laffoon. His local popularity grew, and, in 1939, food critic Duncan Hines visited Sanders's restaurant and included it in "Adventures in Good Eating", his guide to restaurants throughout the US. The entry read:


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In July 1939, Sanders acquired a motel in Asheville, North Carolina. His North Corbin restaurant and motel was destroyed in a fire in November 1939, and Sanders had it rebuilt as a motel with a 140-seat restaurant. By July 1940 (age 50), Sanders had finalized his "Secret Recipe" for frying chicken in a pressure fryer that cooked the chicken faster than pan frying. As the United States entered World War II in December 1941, gas was rationed, and as the tourism dried up, Sanders was forced to close his Asheville motel. He went to work as a supervisor in Seattle until the latter part of 1942. He later ran cafeterias for the government at an ordnance works in Tennessee, followed by a job as assistant cafeteria manager in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: He left his mistress, Claudia Ledington-Price, as manager of the North Corbin restaurant and motel. In 1942, he sold the Asheville business. In 1947, he and Josephine divorced and Sanders married Claudia in 1949, as he had long desired. Sanders was "re-commissioned" as a Kentucky Colonel in 1950 by his friend, Governor Lawrence Wetherby.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In 1952, Sanders franchised his secret recipe "Kentucky Fried Chicken" for the first time, to Pete Harman of South Salt Lake, Utah, the operator of one of that city's largest restaurants. In the first year of selling the product, restaurant sales more than tripled, with 75% of the increase coming from sales of fried chicken. For Harman, the addition of fried chicken was a way of differentiating his restaurant from competitors; in Utah, a product hailing from Kentucky was unique and evoked imagery of Southern hospitality. Don Anderson, a sign painter hired by Harman, coined the name "Kentucky Fried Chicken". After Harman's success, several other restaurant owners franchised the concept and paid Sanders $0.04 per chicken.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders believed that his North Corbin restaurant would remain successful indefinitely, but at age 65 sold it after the new Interstate 75 reduced customer traffic. Left only with his savings and $105 a month from Social Security, Sanders decided to begin to franchise his chicken concept in earnest, and traveled the US looking for suitable restaurants. After closing the North Corbin site, Sanders and Claudia opened a new restaurant and company headquarters in Shelbyville in 1959. Often sleeping in the back of his car, Sanders visited restaurants, offered to cook his chicken, and if workers liked it negotiated franchise rights.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Although such visits required much time, eventually potential franchisees began visiting Sanders instead. He ran the company while Claudia mixed and shipped the spices to restaurants. The franchise approach became highly successful; KFC was one of the first fast food chains to expand internationally, opening outlets in Canada and later in the UK, Australia, Mexico and Jamaica by the mid-1960s. Sanders obtained a patent protecting his method of pressure frying chicken in 1962, and trademarked the phrase "It's Finger Lickin' Good" in 1963.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: The company's rapid expansion to more than 600 locations became overwhelming for the aging Sanders. In 1964, then 73 years old, he sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation for $2 million ($ million today) to a partnership of Kentucky businessmen headed by John Y. Brown Jr., a 29-year-old lawyer and future governor of Kentucky, and Jack C. Massey, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Sanders became a salaried brand ambassador. The initial deal did not include the Canadian operations, which Sanders retained, nor the franchising rights in the UK, Florida, Utah, and Montana, which Sanders had already sold to others.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In 1965, Sanders moved to Mississauga, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, to oversee his Canadian franchises and continued to collect franchise and appearance fees both in Canada and in the US. Sanders bought and lived in a bungalow at 1337 Melton Drive in the Lakeview area of Mississauga from 1965 until his death in 1980. In September 1970 he and his wife were baptized in the Jordan River. He also befriended Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders remained the company's symbol after selling it, traveling a year on the company's behalf and filming many TV commercials and appearances. He retained much influence over executives and franchisees, who respected his culinary expertise and feared what "The New Yorker" described as "the force and variety of his swearing" when a restaurant or the company varied from what executives described as "the "Colonel's" chicken". One change the company made was to the gravy, which Sanders had bragged was so good that "it'll make you throw away the durn chicken and just eat the gravy" but which the company simplified to reduce time and cost. As late as 1979 Sanders made surprise visits to KFC restaurants, and if the food disappointed him, he denounced it to the franchisee as "God-damned slop" or pushed it onto the floor. In 1973, Sanders sued Heublein Inc.—the then parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken—over the alleged misuse of his image in promoting products he had not helped develop. In 1975, Heublein Inc. unsuccessfully sued Sanders for libel after he publicly described their gravy as being "sludge" with a "wall-paper taste".


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders and his wife reopened their Shelbyville restaurant as "Claudia Sanders, The Colonel's Lady" and served KFC-style chicken there as part of a full-service dinner menu, and talked about expanding the restaurant into a chain. He was sued by the company for it. After reaching a settlement with Heublein, he sold the Colonel's Lady restaurant, and it has continued to operate, currently as the Claudia Sanders Dinner House. It serves his "original recipe" fried chicken as part of its non-fast-food dinner menu, and it is the only non-KFC restaurant that serves an authorized version of the fried chicken recipe.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders remained critical of Kentucky Fried Chicken's food. In the late 1970s he told the "Louisville Courier-Journal":


title: Colonel Sanders

text: After being recommissioned as a Kentucky colonel in 1950 by Governor Lawrence Wetherby, Sanders began to dress the part, growing a goatee and wearing a black frock coat (later switching to a white suit), a string tie, and referring to himself as "Colonel". His associates went along with the title change, "jokingly at first and then in earnest", according to biographer Josh Ozersky.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: He never wore anything else in public during the last 20 years of his life, using a heavy wool suit in the winter and a light cotton suit in the summer. He bleached his mustache and goatee to match his white hair.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: John Y. Brown Jr. remembered Sanders as "a brilliant man with a gourmet flair for food, a visionary and a great motivator, with the style of a showman and the discipline of a Vince Lombardi."


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Sanders was diagnosed with acute leukemia in June 1980. He died at Louisville Jewish Hospital of pneumonia six months later, on December 16, at the age of 90. Sanders had remained active until the month before his death, appearing in his white suit to crowds. His body lay in state in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort after a funeral service at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Chapel, which was attended by more than 500 people. His body would also be displayed in an open casket during a memorial service that was held at KFC's headquarters in Louisville; 1,000 to 1,200 people would attend this service. Sanders was buried in his characteristic white suit and black western string tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: By the time of Sanders' death, there were an estimated 6,000 KFC outlets in 48 countries worldwide, with $2 billion in sales annually.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: A fictionalized Colonel Sanders has repeatedly appeared as a mascot in KFC's advertising and branding. Sanders has been voiced by impressionists in radio ads, and from 1998 to 2001 an animated version of him voiced by Randy Quaid appeared in television commercials.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In May 2015, KFC brought the Colonel Sanders character back in new television advertisements, played by comedian Darrell Hammond. Some commentators felt the new portrayal was distasteful and disrespectful of the actual man's legacy.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In August 2015, KFC launched a new campaign, this time with comedian Norm Macdonald portraying Sanders; the first ad of the campaign makes direct reference to the Hammond campaign, with a brief piece of footage of Hammond followed by Macdonald's Colonel declaring his predecessor an impostor.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In February 2016, yet another portrayal was introduced with Jim Gaffigan as the Colonel, shown bolting awake in bed and telling his wife about his recurring nightmare of Macdonald's Colonel "pretending to be me".


title: Colonel Sanders

text: By July 2016, George Hamilton was playing Colonel Sanders, parlaying his famous tan into an advertisement for KFC's "extra crispy" chicken.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: During the airing of the 2016 SummerSlam, a commercial aired of WWE wrestler Dolph Ziggler dressed up as Colonel Sanders beating up a man in a chicken suit (played by fellow wrestler The Miz) in a wrestling ring.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In September 2016, comedian Rob Riggle played Sanders in an ad introducing a football team named "The Kentucky Buckets".


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In January 2017, to advertise their "Georgia Gold Honey Mustard BBQ" Chicken offerings, actor Billy Zane took over the role as the "Solid Gold Colonel".


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In April 2017, actor Rob Lowe was announced as the newest actor in the role of Colonel Sanders. Lowe said that as a child, he actually got to meet Harland Sanders.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: WWE would return to using Colonel Sanders during 2017, showing ads of Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle playing him, as well as announcing that Colonel Sanders would be available as a playable character in "WWE 2K18" (accessible through the "create-a-wrestler" feature) as part of a product placement deal with KFC.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Ray Liotta then portrayed Sanders. Singer Reba McEntire was named as the newest Sanders in January 2018.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: , actor Jason Alexander and professional strongman and actor Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson both portray Colonel Sanders.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In early 2019, Peter Weller portrayed a RoboCop version of Colonel Sanders. Later that year, Sean Astin played a Rudy Ruettiger version of the Colonel to commemorate the beginning of the NFL season. In 2019, a free video game was commissioned by the restaurant chain KFC and released for free called I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A parody of conventional dating sims, the primary objective of the player is to develop a romantic relationship with a fictionalized version of KFC's founder Colonel Sanders, portrayed as an attractive classmate at a cooking school.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In December 2020, a fictionalized Colonel Sanders was portrayed by Mario Lopez in the 2020 short film "A Recipe for Seduction".


title: Colonel Sanders

text: The Japanese Nippon Professional Baseball league has developed an urban legend of the "Curse of the Colonel". A statue of Colonel Sanders was thrown into a river and lost during a 1985 fan celebration, and (according to the legend) the "curse" has caused Japan's Hanshin Tigers to perform poorly since the incident. It was said that unless the statue was fully recovered, the Tigers would never win the Japan Series again. They did make it in 2003, 2005, and 2014 however. They lost in all three appearances, including a four-game sweep by the Chiba Lotte Marines in 2005, who hit 10 home runs in the first three games.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Characters based on Colonel Sanders have appeared in popular fiction. The Colonel appears as a character within the DC Comics multiverse in three promotional issues, with titles parodying other DC Comics titles - "The Colonel of Two Worlds" (a parody of "Flash of Two Worlds"), "The Colonel Corps: The Crisis of Infinite Colonels" (a parody of "Crisis on Infinite Earths"), and "Across The Universe", teaming up with characters such as Green Lantern and Flash, and alternate versions of himself (such as a female version, a "Teen Titans Go!" version, and a chicken version) to battle villains such as the "Anti-Colonel" of Earth-3, "Colonel Grodd" (a Colonel version of Gorilla Grodd) and Larfleeze. The writer of the comics, Tony Bedard, said "It's been an honor, a privilege, and just plain fun working on the last two KFC comics. I'm super-excited the story is a trilogy now, with the Colonel planet-hopping across the DC Universe. As a former "Green Lantern" writer, it's great to revisit Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps." In a 2018 episode of the soap opera "General Hospital", Sanders is shown to know Malbolge, which he uses to disarm a bomb intended to compel him to reveal his secret recipe.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In the novel "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami, Colonel Sanders appears when an "abstract concept" takes on the appearance of "a famous capitalist icon".


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In 2017, KFC released a 96-page romance novella, "Tender Wings of Desire", in time for Mother's Day. Set in Victorian England, it centers on Lady Madeline Parker, who "must choose between a life of order and a man of passion", and featuring Sanders as the love interest, and ostensibly the writer. It was made available as a free download via Amazon.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: One of Colonel Sanders' white suits with its black clip-on bow-tie was sold at auction for $21,510 by Heritage Auctions on June 22, 2013. The suit had been given to Cincinnati resident Mike Morris by Sanders, who was close to Morris's family. The Morris family house was purchased by Col. Sanders, and Sanders lived with the family for six months. The suit was purchased by Kentucky Fried Chicken of Japan president Maseo "Charlie" Watanabe. Watanabe put on the famous suit after placing the winning bid at the auction event in Dallas, Texas.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In 2011, a manuscript of a book on cooking that Sanders apparently wrote in the mid-1960s was found in KFC archives. It includes some cooking recipes from Sanders as well as anecdotes and life lessons. KFC said it was planning to try some of the recipes and to publish the 200-page manuscript online.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: In 2010, the Oscar-winning animated short "LOGORAMA" prominently featured a rotoscoped depiction of Colonel Sanders during the early fast-food restaurant scenes.


title: Colonel Sanders

text: Before his death, Sanders used his stock holdings to create the Colonel Harland Sanders Charitable Organization, a registered Canadian charity. The wing of Mississauga Hospital for women's and children's care is named The Colonel Harland Sanders Family Care Centre in honor of his substantial donation. Sanders' foundation has also made sizeable donations to other Canadian children's hospitals including the McMaster Children's Hospital, IWK Health Centre, and Stollery Children's Hospital. The Toronto-based foundation disbursed $500,000 to other Canadian charities in 2016, according to its tax return filed with the Canada Revenue Agency.


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service in the United Kingdom. At the time, the only other channels were the licence-funded BBC One and BBC Two, and a single commercial broadcasting network ITV. The network's headquarters are based in London and Leeds, with creative hubs in Glasgow and Bristol.


title: Channel 4

text: It is publicly owned and advertising-funded; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. Until 2010, Channel 4 did not broadcast in Wales, but many of its programmes were re-broadcast there by the Welsh fourth channel S4C. In 2010, Channel 4 extended service into Wales and became a UK-wide television channel.


title: Channel 4

text: Before Channel 4 and S4C, Britain had three terrestrial television services: BBC1, BBC2, and ITV. The Broadcasting Act 1980 began the process of adding a fourth; Channel 4 was formally created, along with its Welsh counterpart, by an act of Parliament in 1982. After some months of test broadcasts, it began scheduled transmissions on 2 November 1982 from Scala House, the former site of the Scala Theatre.


title: Channel 4

text: The notion of a second commercial broadcaster in the United Kingdom had been around since the inception of ITV in 1954 and its subsequent launch in 1955; the idea of an "ITV2" was long expected and pushed for. Indeed, television sets sold throughout the 1970s and early 1980s often had a spare tuning button labelled "ITV 2" or "IBA 2". Throughout ITV's history and until Channel 4 finally became a reality, a perennial dialogue existed between the GPO, the government, the ITV companies and other interested parties, concerning the form such an expansion of commercial broadcasting would take. Most likely, politics had the biggest impact in leading to a delay of almost three decades before the second commercial channel became a reality.


title: Channel 4

text: One clear benefit of the "late arrival" of the channel was that its frequency allocations at each transmitter had already been arranged in the early 1960s, when the launch of an ITV2 was anticipated. This led to very good coverage across most of the country and few problems of interference with other UK-based transmissions; a stark contrast to the problems associated with Channel 5's launch almost 15 years later. "ITV2" is not to be confused with ITV's digital television channel launched in 1998.


title: Channel 4

text: At the time the fourth service was being considered, a movement in Wales lobbied for the creation of dedicated service that would air Welsh language programmes, then only catered for at "off peak" times on BBC Wales and HTV. The campaign was taken so seriously by Gwynfor Evans, former president of Plaid Cymru, that he threatened the government with a hunger strike were it not to honour the plans.


title: Channel 4

text: The result was that Channel 4 as seen by the rest of the United Kingdom would be replaced in Wales by Sianel Pedwar Cymru (S4C) ("Channel Four Wales"). Operated by a specially created authority, S4C would air programmes in Welsh made by HTV, the BBC and independent companies. Initially limited frequency space meant that Channel 4 could not be broadcast alongside S4C, though some Channel 4 programmes would be aired at less popular times on the Welsh variant; this practice continued until the closure of S4C's analogue transmissions in 2010, at which time S4C became a fully Welsh channel.


title: Channel 4

text: With this conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital terrestrial broadcasting on 31 March 2010, Channel 4 became a UK-wide television channel for the first time.


title: Channel 4

text: Since then, carriage on digital cable, satellite and digital terrestrial has introduced Channel 4 to Welsh homes where it is now universally available.


title: Channel 4

text: The first voice heard on Channel 4's opening day of 2 November 1982 was that of continuity announcer Paul Coia who said: "Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be able to say to you, welcome to Channel Four." Following the announcement, the channel headed into a montage of clips from its programmes set to the station's signature tune, "Fourscore", written by David Dundas, which would form the basis of the station's jingles for its first decade. The first programme to air on the channel was the teatime game show "Countdown", produced by Yorkshire Television, at 16:45. The first person to be seen on Channel 4 was Richard Whiteley, with Ted Moult being the second. The first woman on the channel, contrary to popular belief, was not Whiteley's "Countdown" co-host Carol Vorderman, but a lexicographer only ever identified as Mary. Whiteley opened the show with the words: "As the countdown to a brand new channel ends, a brand new countdown begins." On its first day, Channel 4 also broadcast soap opera "Brookside", which often ran storylines thought to be controversial; this ran until 2003.


title: Channel 4

text: At its launch, Channel 4 committed itself to providing an alternative to the existing channels, an agenda in part set out by its remit which required the provision of programming to minority groups. In step with its remit, the channel became well received both by minority groups and the arts and cultural worlds during this period under founding chief executive Jeremy Isaacs, where the channel gained a reputation for programmes on the contemporary arts. Channel 4 co-commissioned Robert Ashley's television opera "Perfect Lives", which it premiered over several episodes in 1984. The channel often did not receive mass audiences for much of this period, however, as might be expected for a station focusing on minority interest. During this time Channel 4 also began the funding of independent films, such as the Merchant Ivory docudrama "The Courtesans of Bombay".


title: Channel 4

text: In 1992, Channel 4 faced its first libel case by Jani Allan, a South African journalist, who objected to her representation in Nick Broomfield's documentary "The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife".


title: Channel 4

text: In September 1993, the channel broadcast the direct-to-TV documentary film "Beyond Citizen Kane", in which it displayed the dominant position of the Rede Globo television network, and discussed its influence, power and political connections in Brazil.


title: Channel 4

text: After control of the station passed from the Channel Four Television Company to the Channel Four Television Corporation in 1993, a shift in broadcasting style took place. Instead of aiming for minority tastes, it began to focus on the edges of the mainstream, and the centre of the mass market itself. It began to show many US programmes in peak viewing time, far more than it had previously done. It gave such shows as "Friends" and "ER" their UK premières.


title: Channel 4

text: In the early 2000s, Channel 4 began broadcasting reality formats such as "Big Brother" and obtained the rights to broadcast mass appeal sporting events like cricket and horse racing. This new direction increased ratings and revenues.


title: Channel 4

text: In addition, the corporation launched a number of new television channels through its new 4Ventures offshoot, including Film4, At the Races, E4 and More4.


title: Channel 4

text: Partially in reaction to its new "populist" direction, the Communications Act 2003 directed the channel to demonstrate innovation, experimentation and creativity, appeal to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society, and to include programmes of an educational nature which exhibit a distinctive character.


title: Channel 4

text: On 31 December 2004, Channel 4 launched a new look and new idents in which the logo is disguised as different objects and the "4" can be seen in an angle.


title: Channel 4

text: Under the leadership of Freeview founder Andy Duncan, 2005 saw a change of direction for Channel 4's digital channels. Channel 4 made E4 free-to-air on digital terrestrial television, and launched a new free-to-air digital channel called More4. By October, Channel 4 had joined the Freeview consortium. By July 2006, Film4 had likewise become free-to-air and restarted broadcasting on digital terrestrial.


title: Channel 4

text: Venturing into radio broadcasting, 2005 saw Channel 4 purchase 51 per cent of shares in the now defunct Oneword radio station, with UBC Media holding on to the remaining shares. New programmes such as the weekly, half-hour "The Morning Report" news programme were among some of the new content Channel 4 provided for the station, with the name 4Radio being used. As of early 2009, however, Channel 4's future involvement in radio remained uncertain.


title: Channel 4

text: On 2 November 2007, the station celebrated its 25th birthday. It showed the first episode of "Countdown", an anniversary "Countdown" special, as well as a special edition of "The Big Fat Quiz" and using the original multicoloured 1982–1996 blocks logo on presentation and idents using the Fourscore jingle throughout the day.


title: Channel 4

text: In November 2009, Channel 4 launched a week of 3D television, broadcasting selected programmes each night using stereoscopic ColorCode 3D technology. The accompanying 3D glasses were distributed through Sainsbury's supermarkets.


title: Channel 4

text: On 29 September 2015, Channel 4 revamped its presentation for a fifth time; the new branding downplayed the "4" logo from most on-air usage, in favour of using the shapes from the logo in various forms. Four new idents were filmed by Jonathan Glazer, which featured the shapes in various real-world scenes depicting the "discovery" and "origins" of the shapes. The full logo was still occasionally used, but primarily for off-air marketing. Channel 4 also commissioned two new corporate typefaces, "Chadwick", and "Horseferry" (a variation of Chadwick with the aforementioned shapes incorporated into its letter forms), for use across promotional material and on-air.


title: Channel 4

text: On 31 October 2017, Channel 4 introduced a new series of idents continuing the theme, this time depicting the logo shapes as having formed an anthropomorphic "giant" character.


title: Channel 4

text: Before the digital switch-over, Channel 4 raised concerns over how it might finance its public service obligations afterward. In April 2006, it was announced that Channel 4's digital switch-over costs would be paid for by licence fee revenues.


title: Channel 4

text: On 28 March 2007, Channel 4 announced plans to launch a music channel "4Music" as a joint venture with British media company EMAP, which would include carriage on the Freeview platform. On 15 August 2008, 4Music was launched across the UK. Channel 4 announced interest in launching a high-definition version of Film4 on Freeview, to coincide with the launch of Channel 4 HD. However, the fourth HD slot was given to Channel 5 instead. Channel 4 has since acquired a 50 per cent stake in EMAP's TV business for a reported £28 million.


title: Channel 4

text: In June 2017, it was announced that Alex Mahon would be the next chief executive, and would take over from David Abraham, who left in November 2017.


title: Channel 4

text: On 25 September 2021, Channel 4 and several of its sub-channels went off air after an incident at Red Bee Media's playout centre in west London. Channel 4, More4, Film4, E4, 4Music, The Box, Box Hits, Kiss, Magic and Kerrang! were impacted (4seven was not impacted), with the incident still affecting a number of the channels on 30 September 2021. The London Fire Brigade confirmed that a gas fire prevention system at the site had been activated, but firefighters found no sign of fire. Activation of the fire suppression system caused catastrophic damage to some systems, such as Channel 4's subtitles, signing and audio description system. An emergency back-up subtitling system also failed, leaving Channel 4 unable to provide access services to viewers. This situation was criticised by the National Deaf Children's Society, who complained to the broadcasting watchdog. A new subtitling, signing and audio description system had to be built from scratch. The service eventually began to return at the end of October. In June 2022 after a six month long investigation, Ofcom found that Channel 4 had breached its broadcast licence conditions on two grounds: Missing its subtitles quota on Freesat for 2021 and failure to effectively communicate with affected audiences.


title: Channel 4

text: On 23 December 2021, Jon Snow presented "Channel 4 News" for the last time, after 32 years as a main presenter on the programme, making Snow one of the UK's longest-serving presenters on a national news programme.


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4's parent company, Channel Four Television Corporation, was considered for privatisation by the governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. In 2014, the Cameron-Clegg coalition government drew up proposals to privatise the corporation but the sale was blocked by the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable. In 2016, the future of the channel was again being looked into by the government, with analysts suggesting several options for its future. In June 2021, the government of Boris Johnson was considering selling the channel.


title: Channel 4

text: In April 2022, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport acknowledged that ministerial discussions were taking place regarding the sale of Channel Four Television Corporation. The channel's chief executive, Alex Mahon, expressed disappointment at this, saying that its vision for the future was "rooted in continued public ownership".


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 was established with, and continues to hold, a remit of public service obligations which it must fulfil. The remit changes periodically, as dictated by various broadcasting and communications acts, and is regulated by the various authorities Channel 4 has been answerable to; originally the IBA, then the ITC and now Ofcom.


title: Channel 4

text: The remit also involves an obligation to provide programming for schools, and a substantial amount of programming produced outside of Greater London.


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 was carried from its beginning on analogue terrestrial, which was then the standard means of television broadcast in the United Kingdom. It continued to be broadcast through these means until the changeover to digital terrestrial television in the United Kingdom was complete. Since 1998, it has been universally available on digital terrestrial, and the Sky platform (initially encrypted, though encryption was dropped on 14 April 2008 and is now free of charge and available on the Freesat platform) as well as having been available from various times in various areas, on analogue and digital cable networks.


title: Channel 4

text: Due to its special status as a public service broadcaster with a specific remit, it is afforded free carriage on the terrestrial platforms, in contrast with other broadcasters such as ITV.


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 is available outside the United Kingdom; it is widely available in the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. The channel is registered to broadcast within the European Union/EEA through the Luxembourg Broadcasting Regulator (ALIA).


title: Channel 4

text: Since 2019, it has been offered by British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) to members of the British Armed Forces and their families around the world, BFBS Extra having previously carried a selection of Channel 4 programmes.


title: Channel 4

text: The Channel 4 website allows people in the United Kingdom to watch Channel 4 live on the Internet. In the past some programmes (mostly international imports) were not shown. Channel 4 is also provided by Virgin Mobile's DAB mobile TV service, which has the same restrictions as the Internet live stream had. Channel 4 is also carried by the Internet TV service TVCatchup and was previously carried by Zattoo until the operator removed the channel from its platform.


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 also makes some of its programming available "on demand" via cable and the Internet through All 4.


title: Channel 4

text: During its first decade, Channel 4 was funded by subscriptions collected by the IBA from the ITV regional companies, in return for which each company had the right to sell advertisements on the fourth channel in its own region and keep the proceeds. This meant that ITV and Channel 4 were not in competition with each other, and often promoted each other's programmes.


title: Channel 4

text: A change in funding came about under the Broadcasting Act 1990 when the new corporation was afforded the ability to fund itself. Originally this arrangement left a "safety net" guaranteed minimum income should the revenue fall too low, funded by large insurance payments made to the ITV companies. Such a subsidy was never required, however, and these premiums were phased out by the government in 1998. After the link with ITV was cut, the cross-promotion which had existed between ITV and Channel 4 also ended.


title: Channel 4

text: In 2007, owing to severe funding difficulties, the channel sought government help and was granted a payment of £14 million over a six-year period. The money was to have come from the television licence fee, and would have been the first time that money from the licence fee had been given to any broadcaster other than the BBC. However, the plan was scrapped by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, ahead of "broader decisions about the future framework of public service broadcasting". The broadcasting regulator Ofcom released its review in January 2009 in which it suggested that Channel 4 would preferably be funded by "partnerships, joint ventures or mergers".


title: Channel 4

text: , it breaks even in much the same way as most privately run commercial stations through the sale of on-air advertising, programme sponsorship, and the sale of any programme content and merchandising rights it owns, such as overseas broadcasting rights and domestic video sales. For example, its total revenues were £925 million with 91 per cent derived from sale of advertising. It also has the ability to subsidise the main network through any profits made on the corporation's other endeavours, which have in the past included subscription fees from stations such as E4 and Film4 (now no longer subscription services) and its "video-on-demand" sales. In practice, however, these other activities are loss-making, and are subsidised by the main network. According to Channel 4's last published accounts, for 2005, the extent of this cross-subsidy was some £30 million.


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 is a "publisher-broadcaster", meaning that it commissions or "buys" all of its programming from companies independent of itself. It was the first UK broadcaster to do so on a significant scale; such commissioning is a stipulation which is included in its licence to broadcast. In consequence, numerous independent production companies emerged, though external commissioning on the BBC and in ITV (where a quota of 25 per cent minimum of total output has been imposed since the Broadcasting Act 1990 came into force) has become regular practice, as well as on the numerous stations that launched later. Although it was the first British broadcaster to commission all of its programmes from third parties, Channel 4 was the last terrestrial broadcaster to outsource its transmission and playout operations (to Red Bee Media), after 25 years in-house.


title: Channel 4

text: The requirement to obtain all content externally is stipulated in its licence. Additionally, Channel 4 also began a trend of owning the copyright and distribution rights of the programmes it aired, in a manner that is similar to the major Hollywood studios' ownership of television programmes that they did not directly produce. Thus, although Channel 4 does not produce programmes, many are seen as belonging to it.


title: Channel 4

text: It was established with a specific intention of providing programming to groups of minority interests, not catered for by its competitors, which at the time were only the BBC and ITV.


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 also pioneered the concept of 'stranded programming', where seasons of programmes following a common theme would be aired and promoted together. Some would be very specific, and run for a fixed period of time; the "4 Mation" season, for example, showed innovative animation. Other, less specific strands, were (and still are) run regularly, such as "T4", a strand of programming aimed at teenagers, on weekend mornings (and weekdays during school/college holidays); "Friday Night Comedy", a slot where the channel would pioneer its style of comedy commissions, "4Music" (now a separate channel) and "4Later", an eclectic collection of offbeat programmes transmitted in the early hours of the morning.


title: Channel 4

text: For a period in the mid-1980s, some art-house films (dubbed by Channel 4's critics as being pornographic) would be screened with a "red triangle" graphic in the upper right of the screen.


title: Channel 4

text: The following is a list of the 10 most watched shows on Channel 4 since launch, based on Live +28 data supplied by BARB, and archival data published by Channel 4.


title: Channel 4

text: During the station's early days, the screenings of innovative short one-off comedy films produced by a rotating line-up of alternative comedians went under the title of "The Comic Strip Presents". "The Tube" and "Saturday Live/Friday Night Live" also launched the careers of a number of comedians and writers. Channel 4 broadcast a number of popular American imports, including "Roseanne", "Friends", "Sex and the City", "South Park" and "Will & Grace". Other significant US acquisitions include "The Simpsons", for which the station was reported to have paid £700,000 per episode for the terrestrial television rights.


title: Channel 4

text: In April 2010, Channel 4 became the first UK broadcaster to adapt the American comedy institution of roasting to British television, with "A Comedy Roast".


title: Channel 4

text: In 2010, Channel 4 organised "Channel 4's Comedy Gala", a comedy benefit show in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. With over 25 comedians appearing, it billed it as "the biggest live stand up show in United Kingdom history". Filmed live on 30 March in front of 14,000 at The O2 Arena in London, it was broadcast on 5 April. This has continued to 2016.


title: Channel 4

text: In 2021, Channel 4 decided to revive The British Comedy Awards as part of their Stand Up To Cancer programming. The ceremony, billed as The National Comedy Awards was due to be held in the Spring of 2021 but was delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic until 15 December 2021 and then cancelled a week before it was due to be held, due to concerns over the Omicron variant.


title: Channel 4

text: The ceremony was finally held on 2 March 2022 and broadcast on Channel 4 three days later. The National Comedy Awards was not the only live comedy event that was part of the channel's Christmas schedule that was effected by these concerns as "Joe Lycett: Mummy's Big Christmas Do!" was also postponed, with the 22 December show due to air as a pilot for a new series called "Mummy's House Party" in Spring 2022. Lycett's Birmingham-based extravaganza finally made it to air on 3 July 2022 as "Joe Lycett's Big Pride Party", with 0.29 million viewers tuning in (compared to 0.69 million for "The Cruise" on Channel 5).


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 has a strong reputation for history programmes and documentaries. Its news service, "Channel 4 News", is supplied by ITN whilst its long-standing investigative documentary series, "Dispatches", gains attention from other media outlets. Its live broadcast of the first public autopsy in the UK for 170 years, carried out by Gunther von Hagens in 2002 and the 2003 one-off stunt "Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live" proved controversial.


title: Channel 4

text: A season of television programmes about masturbation, called "Wank Week", was to be broadcast in the United Kingdom by Channel 4 in March 2007. The series came under public attack from senior television figures, and was pulled amid claims of declining editorial standards and concern for the channel's public service broadcasting credentials.


title: Channel 4

text: FourDocs was an online documentary site provided by Channel 4. It allowed viewers to upload their own documentaries to the site for others to view. It focused on documentaries of between 3 and 5 minutes. The website also included an archive of classic documentaries, interviews with documentary filmmakers and short educational guides to documentary-making. It won a Peabody Award in 2006. The site also included a strand for documentaries of under 59 seconds, called "Microdocs".


title: Channel 4

text: Since 1957 ITV had produced schools programming, which became an obligation. In 1987, five years after the station was launched, the IBA afforded ITV free carriage of these programmes during Channel 4's then-unused weekday morning hours. This arrangement allowed the ITV companies to fulfil their obligation to provide schools programming, whilst allowing ITV itself to broadcast regular programmes complete with advertisements. During the times in which schools programmes were aired Central Television provided most of the continuity with play-out originating from Birmingham.


title: Channel 4

text: After the restructuring of the station in 1993, ITV's obligations to provide such programming on Channel 4's airtime passed to Channel 4 itself, and the new service became Channel 4 Schools, with the new corporation administering the service and commissioning its programmes, some still from ITV, others from independent producers.


title: Channel 4

text: In March 2008, the 4Learning interactive new media commission Slabovia.tv was launched. The Slabplayer online media player showing TV shows for teenagers was launched on 26 May 2008.


title: Channel 4

text: The schools programming has always had elements which differ from its normal presentational package. In 1993, the Channel 4 Schools idents featured famous people in one category, with light shining on them in front of an industrial-looking setting supplemented by instrumental calming music. This changed in 1996 with the circles look to numerous children touching the screen, forming circles of information then picked up by other children. The last child would produce the Channel 4 logo in the form of three vertical circles, with another in the middle and to the left containing the Channel 4 logo.


title: Channel 4

text: A present feature of presentation was a countdown sequence featuring, in 1993 a slide with the programme name, and afterwards an extended sequence matching the channel branding. In 1996, this was an extended ident with timer in top left corner, and in 1999 following the adoption of the squares look, featured a square with timer slowly make its way across the right of the screen with people learning and having fun while doing so passing across the screen. It finished with the Channel 4 logo box on the right of the screen and the name 'Channel 4 Schools' being shown. This was adapted in 2000 when the service's name was changed to '4Learning'.


title: Channel 4

text: In 2001, this was altered to various scenes from classrooms around the world and different parts of school life. The countdown now flips over from the top, right, bottom and left with each second, and ends with four coloured squares, three of which are aligned vertically to the left of the Channel 4 logo, which is contained inside the fourth box. The tag 'Learning' is located directly beneath the logo. The final countdown sequence lasted between 2004 and 2005 and featured a background video of current controversial issues, overlaid with upcoming programming information. The video features people in the style of graffiti enacting the overuse of CCTV cameras, fox hunting, computer viruses and pirate videos, relationships, pollution of the seas and violent lifestyles. Following 2005, no branded section has been used for schools programmes.


title: Channel 4

text: From the outset, Channel 4 did not conform to the expectations of conventional religious broadcasting in the UK. John Ranelagh, first Commissioning Editor for Religion, made his priority 'broadening the spectrum of religious programming' and more 'intellectual' concerns. He also ignored the religious programme advisory structure that had been put in place by the BBC, and subsequently adopted by ITV. Ranelagh's first major commission caused a furore, a three-part documentary series called "". The programmes, transmitted during the Easter period of 1984, seemed to advocate the idea that the Gospels were unreliable, Jesus may have indulged in witchcraft, and that he may not have even existed. The series triggered a public outcry, and marked a significant moment in the deterioration in the relationship between the UK's broadcasting and religious institutions.


title: Channel 4

text: Numerous genres of film-making – such as comedy, drama, documentary, adventure/action, romance and horror/thriller – are represented in the channel's schedule. From the launch of Channel 4 until 1998, film presentations on C4 would often be broadcast under the "Film on Four" banner.


title: Channel 4

text: In March 2005, Channel 4 screened the uncut Lars von Trier film "The Idiots", which includes unsimulated sexual intercourse, making it the first UK terrestrial channel to do so. The channel had previously screened other films with similar material but censored and with warnings.


title: Channel 4

text: Since 1 November 1998, Channel 4 has had a digital subsidiary channel dedicated to the screening of films. This channel launched as a paid subscription channel under the name "FilmFour", and was relaunched in July 2006 as a free-to-air channel under the current name of "Film4". The Film4 channel carries a wide range of film productions, including acquired and Film4-produced projects. Channel 4's general entertainment channels E4 and More4 also screen feature films at certain points in the schedule as part of their content mix.


title: Channel 4

text: On 8 March 2007, Channel 4 screened a documentary, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" stating that global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times". The programme's accuracy were disputed on multiple points, and commentators criticised it for being one-sided, observing that the mainstream position on global warming is supported by the scientific academies of the major industrialised nations. There were 246 complaints to Ofcom as of 25 April 2007, including allegations that the programme falsified data. The programme was criticised by scientists and scientific organisations, and various scientists who participated in the documentary claimed their views had been distorted.


title: Channel 4

text: "Against Nature": An earlier controversial Channel 4 programme made by Martin Durkin which was also critical of the environmental movement and was charged by the UK's Independent Television Commission for misrepresenting and distorting the views of interviewees by selective editing.


title: Channel 4

text: "The Greenhouse Conspiracy": An earlier Channel 4 documentary broadcast on 12 August 1990, as part of the "Equinox" series, in which similar claims were made. Three of the people interviewed (Lindzen, Michaels and Spencer) were also interviewed in "The Great Global Warming Swindle".


title: Channel 4

text: In the "Alternative Christmas address" of 2008, a Channel 4 tradition since 1993 with a different presenter each year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a thinly veiled attack on the United States by claiming that Christ would have been against "bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers".


title: Channel 4

text: The broadcast was rebuked by human rights activists, politicians and religious figures, including Peter Tatchell, Louise Ellman, Ron Prosor and Rabbi Aaron Goldstein. A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "President Ahmadinejad has, during his time in office, made a series of appalling anti-Semitic statements. The British media are rightly free to make their own editorial choices, but this invitation will cause offence and bemusement not just at home but among friendly countries abroad".


title: Channel 4

text: However, Channel 4 was defended by Stonewall director Ben Summerskill who stated: "In spite of his ridiculous and often offensive views, it is an important way of reminding him that there are some countries where free speech is not repressed...If it serves that purpose, then Channel 4 will have done a significant public service". Dorothy Byrne, Channel 4's head of news and current affairs, said in response to the station's critics: "As the leader of one of the most powerful states in the Middle East, President Ahmadinejad's views are enormously influential... As we approach a critical time in international relations, we are offering our viewers an insight into an alternative world view...Channel 4 has devoted more airtime to examining Iran than any other broadcaster and this message continues a long tradition of offering a different perspective on the world around us".


title: Channel 4

text: 4Talent is an editorial branch of Channel 4's commissioning wing, which co-ordinates Channel 4's various talent development schemes for film, television, radio, new media and other platforms and provides a showcasing platform for new talent.


title: Channel 4

text: There are bases in London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Belfast, serving editorial hubs known respectively as 4Talent National, 4Talent Central England, 4Talent Scotland and 4Talent Northern Ireland. These four sites include features, profiles and interviews in text, audio and video formats, divided into five zones: TV, Film, Radio, New Media and Extras, which covers other arts such as theatre, music and design. 4Talent also collates networking, showcasing and professional development opportunities, and runs workshops, masterclasses, seminars and showcasing events across the UK.


title: Channel 4

text: "4Talent Magazine" is the creative industries magazine from 4Talent, which launched in 2005 as "TEN4" magazine under the editorship of Dan Jones. "4Talent Magazine" is currently edited by Nick Carson. Other staff include deputy editor Catherine Bray and production editor Helen Byrne. The magazine covers rising and established figures of interest in the creative industries, a remit including film, radio, TV, comedy, music, new media and design.


title: Channel 4

text: Subjects are usually UK-based, with contributing editors based in Northern Ireland, Scotland, London and Birmingham, but the publication has been known to source international content from Australia, America, continental Europe and the Middle East. The magazine is frequently organised around a theme for the issue, for instance giving half of November 2007's pages over to profiling winners of the annual 4Talent Awards.


title: Channel 4

text: An unusual feature of the magazine's credits is the equal prominence given to the names of writers, photographers, designers and illustrators, contradicting standard industry practice of more prominent writer bylines. It is also recognisable for its 'wraparound' covers, which use the front and back as a continuous canvas – often produced by guest artists.


title: Channel 4

text: Although "4Talent Magazine" is technically a newsstand title, a significant proportion of its readers are subscribers. It started life as a quarterly 100-page title, but has since doubled in size and is now published bi-annually.


title: Channel 4

text: Since the 2010s, Channel 4 has become the public service broadcaster most likely to amend their schedule at short notice, if programmes are not gaining sufficient viewers in their intended slots. Programmes which have been heavily promoted by the channel before launch and then have lost their slot a week later include "Sixteen: Class of 2021". This was a fly-on-the-wall school documentary which lost its prime 9pm slot after one episode on 31 August 2021, even with a 4 star review in "The Guardian". Channel 4 moved the next episode to a late night (post-primetime) slot on a different day and continued to broadcast the remainder of the four-part series in this timeslot.


title: Channel 4

text: Also in 2021, the channel launched "Epic Wales: Valleys, Mountains and Coast", a version of their More4 documentaries "The Pennines: Backbone of Britain", "The Yorkshire Dales and The Lakes" and "Devon and Cornwall". set in Wales. "Epic Wales: Valleys, Mountains and Coast". was initially broadcast in a prime Friday night slot at 8pm, in the hour before their comedy shows, but was dumped by the channel before the series was completed and replaced by repeats. In February 2022, the channel scheduled a new version of the show under the title "Wonderous Wales" with a Saturday night slot at 8pm but after one episode, they decided to take this series out of their schedule, moving up a repeat of "Matt Baker: Our Farm in the Dales" to 8pm and putting an episode of "Escape to the Chateau" in Baker's slot at 7pm. Other programmes moved out of primetime in 2022, include "Mega Mansion Hunters", Channel 4's answer to "Selling Sunset", which saw its third and final episode moved past midnight with repeats put in the schedule before it, and "Richard Hammond's Crazy Contraptions", a primetime Friday night competitive engineering show which saw its grand final moved to 11pm on a Sunday night. Instead of Hammond's competition, Channel 4 decided to schedule the fifth series of "Devon and Cornwall" in its place at 8pm on Friday nights, with this documentary being put up against Channel 5's "World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys" in the same timeslot.


title: Channel 4

text: A new series of "Unreported World" was due to start on 18 February 2022 with a report by Seyi Rhodes in South Sudan, but was dropped due to an extended storm report on "Channel 4 News". When the programme was rescheduled for following Fridays, it was dropped again as "Channel 4 News" was extended due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. "Winter Paralympics: Today in Beijing" is due to take the "Unreported World" slot from 11 March 2022 though this sports programme may also be moved around the schedule to continue the extended news programmes reporting on the conflict. The invasion of Ukraine has also prompted Channel 4 to acquire and schedule the comedy series "Servant of the People" as a last minute replacement. The programme stars the current President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy as an ordinary man who gets elected to run the country, and will be shown on 6 March 2022 along with the documentary "Zelenskyy: The Man Who Took on Putin".


title: Channel 4

text: In addition to these shows, O.T. Fagbenle's sitcom "Maxxx" was pulled from their youth TV channel E4, after one episode from the series had been broadcast on 2 April 2020, with Channel 4 deciding to keep the series off-air until Black History Month, with the series now going out on the main channel from October 2020.


title: Channel 4

text: In May 2022, the reality dating show "Let's Make a Love Scene" was scrapped after one episode with the second programme in the series, hosted by Ellie Taylor, pulled from the May 20 schedule and replaced with an episode of "8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown". The first edition was negatively received, with Anita Singh, the Arts and Entertainments Editor for "The Telegraph" writing that the show was "the most ill-conceived programme idea since Prince Edward dreamt up "It's a Royal Knockout"".


title: Channel 4

text: Since its launch in 1982, Channel 4 has used the same logo which consists of a stylised numeral "4" made up of nine differently-shaped blocks.


title: Channel 4

text: The original version was designed by Martin Lambie-Nairn and his partner Colin Robinson and was the first UK channel ident made using advanced computer generation (the first electronically generated ident was on BBC2 in 1979, but this was two-dimensional). It was designed in conjunction with Bo Gehring Aviation of Los Angeles and originally depicted the "4" in red, yellow, green, blue and purple. The music accompanying the ident was called "Fourscore" and was composed by David Dundas; it was later released as a single alongside a B-side, "Fourscore Two", although neither reached the UK charts. In November 1992, "Fourscore" was replaced by new music.


title: Channel 4

text: In 1996, Channel 4 commissioned Tomato Films to revamp the "4", which resulted in the "Circles" idents showing four white circles forming up transparently over various scenes, with the "4" logo depicted in white in one of the circles.


title: Channel 4

text: In 1999, Spin redesigned the logo to feature in a single square which sat on the right-hand side of the screen, whilst various stripes would move along from left to right, often lighting the squared "4" up. Like previous "Circles" idents from 1996 (which was made by Tomato Films), the stripes would be interspersed with various scenes potentially related to the upcoming programme.


title: Channel 4

text: The logo was made three-dimensional again in 2004 when it was depicted in filmed scenes that show the blocks forming the "4" logo for less than a second before the action moves away again.


title: Channel 4

text: In 2015, the logo was disassembled completely to allow the blocks to appear as parts of a nature scene, sometimes featuring a strange dancing creature and sometimes being excavated for scientific study, one being studied under a microscope and showing a tardigrade. The second wave of these idents, launched in 2017, depict a giant creature made of the "4" blocks (made to look almost like a person) interacting with everyday life, sometimes shouting the "Fourscore" theme as a foghorn.


title: Channel 4

text: The original 1982 logo was reintroduced for one day only on 22 January 2021, to promote Channel 4's new five-part drama, "It's a Sin" which focused on the 1980s AIDS crisis. It was additionally used once on 28 December 2020 as a commemoration for Lambie-Nairn, who had died three days earlier.


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 has, since its inception, broadcast identical programmes and continuity throughout the United Kingdom (excluding Wales where it did not operate on analogue transmitters). At launch this made it unique, as both the BBC and ITV had long-established traditions of providing regional variations in their programming in different areas of the country. Since the launch of subsequent British television channels, Channel 4 has become typical in its lack of regional programming variations.


title: Channel 4

text: Part of Channel 4's remit covers the commissioning of programmes from outside London. Channel 4 has a dedicated director of nations and regions, Stuart Cosgrove, who is based in a regional office in Glasgow. As his job title suggests, it is his responsibility to foster relations with independent producers based in areas of the United Kingdom (including Wales) outside London.


title: Channel 4

text: Channel 4 is available in Ireland, with adverts specifically tailored towards the Irish market. The channel is registered with the broadcasting regulators in Luxembourg for terms of conduct and business within the EU/EEA while observing guidelines outlined by Ireland's BAI code. Irish advertising sales are managed by Media Link in Dublin. Where Channel 4 does not hold broadcasting rights within the Republic of Ireland such programming is unavailable. For example, the series "Glee" was not available on Channel 4 on Sky in Ireland due to it broadcasting on Virgin Media One within Ireland. Currently, programming available on All 4 is available within the Republic of Ireland without restrictions. Elsewhere in Europe the UK version of the channel is available.


title: Channel 4

text: With ITV plc pushing for much looser requirements on the amount of regional news and other programming it is obliged to broadcast in its ITV regions, the idea of Channel 4 taking on a regional news commitment has been considered, with the corporation in talks with Ofcom and ITV over the matter. Channel 4 believe that a scaling-back of such operations on ITV's part would be detrimental to Channel 4's national news operation, which shares much of its resources with ITV through their shared news contractor ITN. At the same time, Channel 4 also believe that such an additional public service commitment would bode well in on-going negotiations with Ofcom in securing additional funding for its other public service commitments.


title: Channel 4

text: In mid-2006 Channel 4 ran a six-month closed trial of HDTV, as part of the wider Freeview HD experiment via the Crystal Palace transmitter to London and parts of the home counties, including the use of "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" as part of the experiment, as US broadcasters such as ABC already have an HDTV back catalogue.


title: Channel 4

text: On 10 December 2007, Channel 4 launched a high-definition television simulcast of Channel 4 on Sky's digital satellite platform, after Sky agreed to contribute toward the channel's satellite distribution costs. It was the first full-time high-definition channel from a terrestrial UK broadcaster.


title: Channel 4

text: On 31 July 2009, Virgin Media added Channel 4 HD on channel 146 (later on channel 142, now on channel 141) as part of the M pack. On 25 March 2010 Channel 4 HD appeared on Freeview channel 52 with a placeholding caption, ahead of a commercial launch on 30 March 2010, coinciding with the commercial launch of Freeview HD. On 19 April 2011, Channel 4 HD was added to Freesat on channel 126. As a consequence, the channel moved from being free-to-view to free-to-air on satellite during March 2011. With the closure of S4C Clirlun in Wales on 1 December 2012, on Freeview, Channel 4 HD launched in Wales on 2 December 2012.


title: Channel 4

text: The channel carries the same schedule as Channel 4, broadcasting programmes in HD when available, acting as a simulcast. Therefore, SD programming is broadcast upscaled to HD. The first true HD programme to be shown was the 1996 Adam Sandler film "Happy Gilmore". From launch until 2016 the presence of the 4HD logo on screen denoted true HD content.


title: Channel 4

text: On 1 July 2014, Channel 4 +1 HD, an HD simulcast of Channel 4 +1, launched on Freeview channel 110. It closed on 22 June 2020 to help make room on COM7 following the closure of COM8 on Freeview. On 22 June 2020 Channel4+1 HD and 4Seven HD were removed from Freeview.


title: Channel 4

text: On 20 February 2018, Channel 4 announced that Channel 4 HD and All 4 would no longer be supplied on Freesat from 22 February 2018. Channel 4 HD returned to the platform on 8 December 2021, along with the music channel portfolio of The Box Plus Network.