title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: On 23 June 1980, Rajiv's younger brother Sanjay Gandhi died unexpectedly in an aeroplane crash. At that time, Rajiv Gandhi was in London as part of his foreign tour. Hearing the news, he returned to Delhi and cremated Sanjay's body. As per Agarwal, in the week following Sanjay's death, Shankaracharya Swami Shri Swaroopanand, a saint from Badrinath, visited the family's house to offer his condolences. He advised Rajiv not to fly aeroplanes and instead "dedicate himself to the service of the nation". 70 members of the Congress party signed a proposal and went to Indira, urging Rajiv to enter politics. Indira told them it was Rajiv's decision whether to enter politics. When he was questioned about it, he replied, "If my mother gets help from it, then I will enter politics". Rajiv entered politics on 16 February 1981, when he addressed a national farmers' rally in Delhi. During this time, he was still an employee of Air India.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: On 4 May 1981, Indira Gandhi presided over a meeting of the All India Congress Committee. Vasantdada Patil proposed Rajiv as a candidate for the Amethi constituency, which was accepted by all members at the meeting. A week later, the party officially announced his candidacy for the constituency. He then paid the party membership fees of the party and flew to Sultanpur to file his nomination papers and completed other formalities. He won the seat, defeating Lok Dal candidate Sharad Yadav by a margin of 237,000 votes. He took his oath on 17 August as Member of Parliament.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Rajiv Gandhi's first political tour was to England, where he attended the wedding ceremony of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on 29 July 1981. In December the same year, he was put in charge of the Indian Youth Congress. He first showed his organisational ability by "working round the clock" on the 1982 Asian Games. He was one of 33 members of the Indian parliament who were part of the Games' organising committee; sports historian Boria Majumdar writes that being "son of the prime minister he had a moral and unofficial authority" over the others. The report submitted by the Asian Games committee mentions Gandhi's "drive, zeal and initiative" for the "outstanding success" of the games.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: On 31 October 1984, the prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi's mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, which led to violent riots against Sikhs. At a Boat Club rally 19 days after the assassination, Gandhi said, "Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken. But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little". According to Verinder Grover, the statement made by Gandhi was a "virtual justification" of the riots. Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar wrote, "Did it constitute an incitement to mass murder?" He also criticised Gandhi for his reluctance to bring the army from Meerut to handle the mob.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Rajiv Gandhi was in West Bengal on 31 October 1984 when his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, to avenge the military attack on the Golden Temple during Operation Blue Star. Sardar Buta Singh and President Zail Singh pressed Rajiv to succeed his mother as prime minister within hours of her murder. Commenting on the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi said, "When a giant tree falls, the earth below shakes"; a statement for which he was widely criticised. Many Congress politicians were accused of orchestrating the violence.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Soon after assuming office, Gandhi asked President Singh to dissolve Parliament and hold fresh elections, as the Lok Sabha had completed its five-year term. Gandhi officially became the president of the Congress party, which won a landslide victory with the largest majority in history of the Indian Parliament, giving Gandhi absolute control of government. He benefited from his youth and a general perception of being free of a background in corrupt politics. Gandhi took his oath on 31 December 1984; at 40, he was the youngest prime minister of India. Historian Meena Agarwal writes that even after taking the Prime Ministerial oath, he was a relatively unknown figure, "novice in politics" as he assumed the post after being an MP for three years.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: After his swearing-in as prime minister, Gandhi appointed his fourteen-member cabinet. He said he would monitor their performance and would "fire ministers who do not come to the mark". From the Third Indira Gandhi ministry, he removed two powerful figures; Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Railway Minister A. B. A. Ghani Khan Choudhury. Mohsina Kidwai became the Minister of Railways; she was the only female figure in the cabinet. Former Home Minister PV Narasimha Rao was put in charge of defence. V. P. Singh, who was initially appointed as the Finance Minister, was given the Defence Ministry in 1987. During his tenure as prime minister, Gandhi frequently shuffled his cabinet ministers, drawing criticism from the magazine "India Today", which called it a "wheel of confusion". The West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu said, "The Cabinet change reflects the instability of the Congress (I) Government at the Centre".


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Gandhi's first action as prime minister was passing the anti-defection law in January 1985. According to this law, an elected Member of Parliament or legislative assembly could not join an opposition party until the next election. Historian Manish Telikicherla Chary calls it a measure of curbing corruption and bribery of ministers by switching parties so they could gain majority. Many such defections occurred during the 1980s as elected leaders of the Congress party joined opposition parties.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Rajiv Gandhi had announced 'Sandesh Yatra' at the plenary session of AICC in Mumbai in 1985. The All India Congress Seva Dal ran it across the country. Pradesh Congress Committees (PCCs) and party leaders made four simultaneous trips from Mumbai, Kashmir, Kanyakumari and the Northeast. The yatra, which lasted for more than three months, concluded at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In 1985, the Supreme Court of India ruled in favour of Muslim divorcee Shah Bano, declaring that her husband should give her alimony. Some Indian Muslims treated it as an encroachment upon Muslim Personal Law and protested against it. Gandhi agreed to their demands. In 1986, the Parliament of India passed The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986, which nullified the Supreme Court's judgment in the Shah Bano case. The Act diluted the Supreme Court judgment and allowed maintenance payments to divorced women only during the period of Iddah, or until 90 days after the divorce, according to the provisions of Islamic law. This was in contrast to Section 125 of the Code. Indian magazine "Business and Economics" called it a minority appeasement by Gandhi. Lawyer and former Law Minister of India, Ram Jethmalani, called the Act "retrogressive obscurantism for short-term minority populism". Gandhi's colleague Arif Mohammad Khan, who was then a Member of Parliament, resigned in protest.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In his election manifesto for the 1984 general election, he did not mention any economic reforms, but after assuming office he tried to liberalise the country's economy. He sought to liberalize India's trade policies but faced stiff opposition to the proposed reforms. He did so by providing incentives to make private production profitable. Subsidies were given to corporate companies to increase industrial production, especially of durable goods. It was hoped this would increase economic growth and improve the quality of investment. Rural and tribal people protested because they saw them as "pro-rich" and "pro-city" reforms.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Gandhi increased government support for science, technology and associated industries, and reduced import quotas, taxes and tariffs on technology-based industries, especially computers, airlines, defence and telecommunications. In 1986, he announced a National Policy on Education to modernise and expand higher education programs across India. In 1986, he founded the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya System, which is a Central government-based education institution that provides rural populations with free residential education from grades six to twelve. His efforts created MTNL in 1986, and his public call offices—better known as PCOs—helped develop the telephone network in rural areas. He introduced measures to significantly reduce the "Licence Raj" after 1990, allowing businesses and individuals to purchase capital, consumer goods and import without bureaucratic restrictions.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: According to Rejaul Karim Laskar, a scholar of Indian foreign policy and an ideologue of Congress party, Rajiv Gandhi's vision for a new world order was premised on India's place in its front rank. According to Laskar, the "whole gamut" of Rajiv Gandhi's foreign policy was "geared towards" making India "strong, independent, self-reliant and in the front rank of the nations of the world." According to Laskar, Rajiv Gandhi's diplomacy was "properly calibrated" so as to be "conciliatory and accommodating when required" and "assertive when the occasion demanded."


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In 1986, by request of the president of Seychelles France-Albert René, Gandhi sent India's navy to Seychelles to oppose an attempted coup against René. The intervention of India averted the coup. This mission was codenamed as Operation Flowers are Blooming. In 1987, India re-occupied the Quaid Post in the disputed Siachen region of the Indo-Pakistani border after winning what was termed Operation Rajiv. In the 1988 Maldives coup d'état, the Maldives president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom asked for help from Gandhi. He dispatched 1500 soldiers and the coup was suppressed.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: On Thursday, 9 June 1988, at the fifteenth special session of the United Nations General Assembly, held at Headquarters, New York, Gandhi made vocal his views on a world free of nuclear weapons, to be realised through an, 'Action Plan for Ushering in a Nuclear-Weapon Free and Non-Violent World Order.'


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Alas, nuclear weapons are not the only weapons of mass destruction. New knowledge is being generated in the life sciences. Military applications of these developments could rapidly undermine the existing convention against the military use of biological weapons. The ambit of our concern must extend to all means of mass annihilation.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: This was based on his prior historic speech before the Japanese National Diet on 29 November 1985, in which he said:


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Let us remove the mental partitions which obstruct the ennobling vision of the human family linked together in peace and prosperity. The Buddha's message of compassion is the very condition of human survival in our age.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: The foiled bid of India recently to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group, echoed his policy of non-proliferation to be linked to universal disarmament, which the World Nuclear Association refuses to recognise; non-proliferation being seen by India as essentially a weapon of the arms control regime, of the big nuclear powers as United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, and China.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In February 1987, the Pakistani president Zia-ul-Haq visited Delhi, where he met Gandhi to discuss "routine military exercises of the Indian army" on the borders of Rajasthan and Punjab. Gandhi reciprocated, in December 1988, by visiting Islamabad and meeting the new prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, to reaffirm the 1972 Shimla agreement.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: The Sri Lankan Civil War broke out with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was demanding an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka. Gandhi discussed the matter with the Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa at the SAARC meeting in 1986. In that year, the Sri Lankan army blockaded the Tamil majority district of Jaffna; Gandhi ordered relief supplies to be dropped into the area by parachute because the Sri Lankan navy did not allow the Indian Navy to enter.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Gandhi signed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord in July 1987. The accord "envisaged a devolution of power to the Tamil-majority areas", dissolved the LTTE, and designated Tamil as an official language of Sri Lanka. Gandhi said:


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: The Government of India believe that, despite some problems and delays, many of which were foreseen but unavoidable in the resolution of an issue of this magnitude and complexity, this Agreement represents the only way of safeguarding legitimate Tamil interests and ensuring a durable peace in Sri Lanka. Some have chosen to criticise the Agreement. None has shown a better way of meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, restoring peace in that country and of meeting our own security concern in the region. We have accepted a role which is difficult, but which is in our national interests to discharge. We shall not shrink our obligations and commitments. This is a national endeavour.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: On 30 July 1987, a day after Gandhi went to Sri Lanka and signed the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, an honour guard named Vijitha Rohana hit him on his shoulder with his rifle; Gandhi's quick reflexes saved him from injury. The guard was then dragged off by his security personnel. The guard said his intention was to kill Gandhi because of "the damage he had caused" to Sri Lanka. Wijemuni was imprisoned for two-and-a-half years for the assault. Gandhi later said about the incident:


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: When I was inspecting the guard of honour and as I walked past one person, I saw through the corner of my eye some movement. I ducked down a little bit in a reflex action. By my ducking, he missed my head and the brunt of the blow came on my shoulder below the left ear.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Soon after assuming office, Gandhi released the leaders of the Akali Dal who had been imprisoned since 1984's Operation Blue Star during Indira Gandhi's prime ministership. He lifted the ban on All India Sikh Students Federation and filed an inquiry into the 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots. He also held a closed-door meeting with senior Akali Dal leaders to find a solution to the Punjab problem. Despite Akali opposition, in January 1985, Gandhi signed the Rajiv-Longowal Accord with Akali leader HS Longowal. Punjab's state assembly election was scheduled in September 1985, but Longowal died and was replaced by Surjit Singh Barnala, who formed the government. After two years, in 1987, Barnala resigned his office because of a breakdown of law and order, leading to the implementation of President's rule in the state.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In May 1988, Gandhi launched the Operation Black Thunder to clear the Golden Temple in Amritsar of arms and gunmen. Two groups called National Security Guard and Special Action Group were created; they surrounded the temple in a 10-day siege during which the extremists' weapons were confiscated. Congress leader Anand Sharma said, "Operation Black Thunder effectively demonstrated the will of Rajiv Gandhi's government to take firm action to bring peace to Punjab".


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Gandhi's prime-ministership marked an increase of insurgency in northeast India. Mizo National Front demanded independence for Mizoram. In 1987, Gandhi addressed this problem; Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh were given the status of states that were earlier union territories. Gandhi also ended the Assam Movement, which was launched by Assamese people to protest against the alleged illegal migration of Bangladeshi Muslims and immigration of other Bengalis to their state, which had reduced the Assamese to a minority there. He signed the Assam Accord on 15 August 1985. According to the accord, foreigners who came to the state between 1951 and 1961 were given full citizenship but those who arrived there between 1961 and 1971 did not get right to vote for the next ten years.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Gandhi employed former Rockwell International executive Sam Pitroda as his adviser on public information infrastructure and innovation. During Gandhi's time in office, public sector telecom companies MTNL and VSNL was developed. According to Pitroda, Gandhi's ability to resist pressure from multi-national companies to abandon his plan to spread telecommunication services has been an important factor in India's development. According to news website Oneindia, "About 20 years ago telephones were considered to be a thing for the use of the rich, but credit goes to Rajiv Gandhi for taking them to the rural masses". Pitroda also said their plan to expand India's telephone network succeeded because of Gandhi's political support. According to Pitroda, by 2007 they were "adding six million phones every month". Gandhi's government also allowed the import of fully assembled motherboards, which led to the price of computers being reduced. According to some commentators, the seed for the information technology (IT) revolution was also planted during Rajiv Gandhi's time.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Rajiv Gandhi's finance minister, V. P. Singh, uncovered compromising details about government and political corruption, to the consternation of Congress leaders. Transferred to the Defence Ministry, Singh uncovered what became known as the Bofors scandal, which involved millions of US dollars and concerned alleged payoffs by the Swedish arms company Bofors through Italian businessman and Gandhi family associate Ottavio Quattrocchi, in return for Indian contracts. Upon discovering the scandal, Singh was dismissed from office and later resigned his Congress membership. Gandhi was later personally implicated in the scandal when the investigation was continued by Narasimhan Ram and Chitra Subramaniam of "The Hindu" newspaper, damaging his image as an honest politician. In 2004, he was posthumously cleared of this allegation.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In an interview in July 2005, V. P. Singh explained that his fall out with Rajiv Gandhi was not due to the Bofors deal, but rather due to the HDW deal. Courtesy a contract signed with the Germany company HDW in 1981, the Indian government had agreed to purchase two ready submarines built in Germany by HDW and two submarines in CKD form to be assembled in Mazagaon docks. V. P. Singh had received a telegram from the Indian ambassador in Germany, stating that an Indian agents had received commissions in the HDW submarine deal. He told Rajiv Gandhi about this and instituted an enquiry. This led to differences and V. P. Singh resigned from the cabinet.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In his book, "Unknown Facets of Rajiv Gandhi, Jyoti Basu and Indrajit Gupta", released in November 2013, former CBI director Dr. A P Mukherjee wrote that Gandhi wanted commission paid by defence suppliers to be used exclusively for meeting running expenses of the Congress party. Mukherjee said Gandhi explained his position in a meeting between the two at the prime minister's residence on 19 June 1989. In May 2015, Indian president Pranab Mukherjee said the scandal was a "media trial" as "no Indian court has as yet established it as a scandal".


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Opposition parties Lok Dal, Indian National Congress (Socialist) and Jan Morcha united under Singh to form the Janata Dal. Singh led the National Front coalition to victory in 1989 elections and he was sworn in as prime minister. Though the coalition won 143 seats compared to Congress's 197, it gained majority in the lower house of the parliament through outside support from the Bharatiya Janta Party under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani and the left parties such as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India. Eminent lawyer and politician, former Law Minister of India Ram Jethmalani said that as prime minister, Gandhi was "lacklustre and mediocre".


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In 1990, Rajiv Gandhi undertook Bharat Yatra through different modes - padyatra, the second class carriage of an ordinary passenger train. He chose Champaran as the starting point for his 'Bharat Yatra'. Rajiv Gandhi started the Sadbhavna Yatra from Charminar in Hyderabad on 19 October 1990.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In November 1991, "Schweizer Illustrierte" magazine published an article on black money held in secret accounts by Imelda Marcos and 14 other rulers of Third World countries. Citing McKinsey as a source, the article stated that Rajiv Gandhi held 2.5 billion Swiss francs in secret Indian accounts in Switzerland. Several leaders of opposition parties in India raised the issue, citing the "Schweizer Illustrierte" article. In December 1991, Amal Datta raised the issue in the Indian Parliament; the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Shivraj Patil, expunged Rajiv Gandhi's name from the proceedings. In December 2011, Subramanian Swamy wrote to the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, citing the article and asking him to take action on black money accounts of the Nehru-Gandhi family. On 29 December 2011, Ram Jethmalani made an indirect reference to the issue in the Rajya Sabha, calling it a shame that one of India's former prime ministers was named by a Swiss magazine. This was met by an uproar and a demand for withdrawal of the remark by the ruling Congress party members.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In 1992, the Indian newspapers "Times of India" and "The Hindu" published reports alleging that Rajiv Gandhi had received funds from the KGB. The Russian government confirmed this disclosure and defended the payments as necessary for Soviet ideological interest. In their 1994 book "The State Within a State", journalists Yevgenia Albats and Catherine Fitzpatrick quoted a letter signed by Viktor Chebrikov, head of the KGB, in the 1980s. The letter says the KGB maintained contact with Gandhi, who expressed his gratitude to the KGB for benefits accruing to his family from commercial dealings of a controlled firm. A considerable portion of funds obtained from this channel were used to support his party. Albats later said that in December 1985, Chebrikov had asked for authorisation from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to make payments to family members of Rajiv Gandhi, including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. The payments were authorised by a resolution and endorsed by the USSR Council of Ministers, and had been paid since 1971. In December 2001, Subramanian Swamy filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court; the court ordered CBI to ascertain the truth of the allegations in May 2002. After two years, the CBI told the Court Russia would not entertain such queries without a registered FIR.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: Rajiv Gandhi's last public meeting was on 21 May 1991, at Sriperumbudur, a village approximately from Madras (present-day Chennai), where he was assassinated while campaigning for the Sriperumbudur Lok Sabha Congress candidate. At 10:10 pm, a woman later identified as Thenmozhi Rajaratnam – a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – approached Gandhi in public and greeted him. She then bent down to touch his feet and detonated a belt laden with of RDX explosives tucked under her dress. The explosion killed Gandhi, Rajaratnam, and at least 14 other people. The assassination was captured by a 21-year-old local photographer, whose camera and film were found at the site. The cameraman, named Haribabu, died in the blast but the camera remained intact. Gandhi's mutilated body was airlifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi for post-mortem, reconstruction and embalming.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: A state funeral was held for Gandhi on 24 May 1991; it was telecast live and was attended by dignitaries from over 60 countries. He was cremated at Veer Bhumi, on the banks of the river Yamuna near the shrines of his mother Indira Gandhi, brother Sanjay Gandhi, and grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: The Supreme Court judgement, by Justice K. T. Thomas, confirmed that Gandhi was killed because of personal animosity by the LTTE chief Prabhakaran arising from his sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka and the alleged IPKF atrocities against Sri Lankan Tamils. The Gandhi administration had already antagonised other Tamil militant organisations like PLOTE for reversing the 1988 military coup in Maldives. The judgement further cites the death of Thileepan in a hunger strike and the suicide by 12 LTTE cadres in a vessel in Oct 1987.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In the Jain Commission report, various people and agencies are named as suspects in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. Among them, the cleric Chandraswami was suspected of involvement, including financing the assassination. Nalini Sriharan, the only surviving member of the five-member squad behind the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, is serving life imprisonment. Arrested on 14 June 1991, she and 25 others were sentenced to death by a special court on 28 January 1998. The court confirmed the death sentences of four of the convicts, including Nalini, on 11 May 1999. Nalini was a close friend of an LTTE operative known as Sriharan alias Murugan, another convict in the case who has been sentenced to death. Nalini later gave birth to a girl, Harithra, in prison. Nalini's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in April 2000. Rajiv's widow, Sonia Gandhi, intervened and asked for clemency for Nalini on the grounds of the latter being a mother. Later, it was reported that Gandhi's daughter, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, had met Nalini at Vellore Central Prison in March 2008. Nalini regrets the killing of Gandhi and said the real conspirators have not been caught yet.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: In August 2011, the president of India rejected the clemency pleas of Murugan and two others on death row—Suthendraraja, alias Santhan, and Perarivalan, alias Arivu. The execution of the three convicts was scheduled for 9 September 2011. However, the Madras High Court intervened and stayed their executions for eight weeks based on their petitions. In 2010, Nalini had petitioned the Madras High Court seeking release because she had served more than 20 years in prison. She argued that even life convicts were released after 14 years. The state government rejected her request. Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan have said they are political prisoners rather than ordinary criminals. On 18 February 2014, the Supreme Court of India commuted the death sentences of Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan to life imprisonment, holding that the 11-year-long delay in deciding their mercy petition had a dehumanising effect on them. On 19 February 2014 Tamil Nadu government decided to release all seven convicts in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case, including A. G. Perarivalan and Nalini. The Government of India challenged this decision before the Supreme Court, which referred the case to a Constitution Bench.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: The report of the Jain Commission created controversy when it accused the Tamil Nadu chief minister Karunanidhi of a role in the assassination, leading to Congress withdrawing its support for the I. K. Gujral government and fresh elections in 1998. LTTE spokesman Anton Balasingham told the Indian television channel NDTV the killing was a "great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy which we deeply regret". A memorial called Veer Bhumi was constructed at the place of Gandhi's cremation in Delhi. In 1992, the Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award was instituted by the Indian National Congress Party.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: A Right to Information (RTI) request filed in August 2009 found that more than 450 government projects and schemes are named after the Gandhi-Nehru family. In May 2012, "Zee News" reported there were 16 government schemes named after Gandhi, including "Rajiv Awas Yojana" and Rajiv Gandhi Udyami Mitra Yojana. In March 2015, Haryana sports minister Anil Vij said that at that time there were 232 rural stadia in India, with 226 of them being named after him. He said the government was "planning to rename" all the stadia in Haryana state named after him. Vij drew criticism from Congress leader Kuldeep Sharma, who said it was an "insult to their national leaders".


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: A number of films have been made in India focusing on Rajiv Gandhi's life especially on his assassination. "India's Rajiv" is a 1991 Indian documentary television series by Simi Garewal, released closely after Gandhi's assassination it covers his life up to that event. Indian films specifically focusing on the assassination plot include "The Terrorist" (1997) by Santosh Sivan, "Cyanide" (2006) by A. M. R. Ramesh, "Kuttrapathirikai" (2007) by R. K. Selvamani with Anupam Kher in the role of Gandhi, "Mission 90 Days" (2007) by Major Ravi, and "Madras Cafe" (2013) by Shoojit Sircar starring Sanjay Gurbaxani as the former prime minister.


title: Rajiv Gandhi

text: "Pradhanmantri" (), a 2013 Indian documentary television series which aired on ABP News and covers the various policies and political tenures of Indian PMs, includes the tenureship of Rajiv Gandhi in the episodes "Rajiv Gandhi becomes PM and Shah Bano case", "Ayodhya dispute", "Rajiv Gandhi and Bofors scandal", and "Rise of LTTE and Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi" with Mohit Chauhan portraying the role of Gandhi.


title: Eva Longoria

text: Eva Jacqueline Longoria Bastón ( Longoria; March 15, 1975) is an American actress, producer, and director. After a number of guest roles on several television series, she was recognized for her portrayal of Isabella Braña on the CBS daytime soap opera "The Young and the Restless", on which she starred from 2001 to 2003. She is most known for her role as Gabrielle Solis on the ABC television series "Desperate Housewives", which ran from 2004 to 2012, and for which she received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. She has also appeared in "The Sentinel" (2006), "Over Her Dead Body" (2008), "For Greater Glory" (2012), "Frontera" (2014), "Lowriders" (2016), and "Overboard" (2018). From 2015 to 2016, she starred as Ana Sofia Calderón on the short-lived NBC sitcom "Telenovela", and was an executive producer for the Lifetime television series "Devious Maids". She has also been an executive producer of social issue documentaries, including "Food Chains" and "The Harvest".


title: Eva Longoria

text: Longoria has appeared in several advertising campaigns. She holds modeling contracts with L'Oréal and New York & Co, among others.


title: Eva Longoria

text: Longoria was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on March 15, 1975, the youngest of the four daughters of her Mexican-American (Tejano) parents Ella Eva (Mireles) and Enrique Longoria Jr. One of her sisters had special needs. Longoria told "Redbook" in 2016: She was raised Roman Catholic. She did not speak Spanish growing up, and did not learn the language until 2009. While in high school, she worked at a Wendy's restaurant part-time for three years to help earn money for her . Longoria previously told the press how her years in fast food as a teen shaped her work ethic, saying "I couldn't wait to get to work and make my own money." Longoria earned her Bachelor of Science degree in kinesiology at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. At that time (1998), she also won the title of Miss Corpus Christi USA. After completing college, she entered a talent contest that led her to Los Angeles; and shortly thereafter, was spotted and signed by a theatrical agent. While auditioning for roles, she worked as a headhunter for four years.


title: Eva Longoria

text: After three years at California State University, Northridge, she received her master's degree in Chicano Studies in May 2013. Her thesis was "Success STEMS From Diversity: The Value of Latinas in STEM Careers".


title: Eva Longoria

text: Longoria landed her first television role in 1999 after meeting executive producer Gary Ghiaey at a political reception in Los Angeles. She guest-starred in an episode of "Beverly Hills, 90210". Another guest appearance on "General Hospital" the same year brought her big break on the CBS Daytime soap opera "The Young and the Restless", where she portrayed Isabella Braña from 2001 to 2003.


title: Eva Longoria

text: After leaving that show, she appeared in the Dick Wolf revival of "Dragnet". She then starred in "Señorita Justice", a poorly received direct-to-video film; and a television film, "The Dead Will Tell".


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2003, Longoria was cast as Gabrielle Solis in the ABC comedy-drama "Desperate Housewives." She later commented, "I think it's funny when people say I'm an overnight sensation, because I've been working at it for 10 years."


title: Eva Longoria

text: Shortly after her debut on "Desperate Housewives", she starred in a direct-to-video film, "Carlita's Secret", for which she was also co-producer.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2006, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy, along with her co-stars in "Desperate Housewives." That year, she received the ALMA Award, and was named entertainer of the year. She also starred opposite Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland in the thriller "The Sentinel" (2006)—her first major role in a theatrical feature film—and played Sylvia in "Harsh Times", starring Freddy Rodríguez and Christian Bale.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In the 2000s, Longoria appeared in several high-profile advertising campaigns and numerous men's magazines, reaching No. 14 in the FHM "Sexiest Women 2008" poll. She was also featured on the cover of various international women's magazines, including "Vogue", "Marie Claire" and "Harper's Bazaar". "People en Español" listed her among its "Most Beautiful People" for 2003. She continues to be included in lists of Hollywood's Most Beautiful. She was listed as No. 1 in "Maxim"'s Hottest Female Stars of 2005 and 2006, the first woman to top the list in two consecutive years. She was ranked No. 9 in the magazine's Hot 100 of 2007 list. In honor of Maxim's 100th issue in 2006, she was featured on a vinyl mesh replica of its January 2005 cover located in a Clark County, Nevada desert. More recently, she was ranked No. 14 of "People"'s Most Beautiful 2011. "People" named her one of 2012 Most Beautiful at Every Age.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In January 2007, Longoria was chosen to be the first face of Bebe Sport. She appeared in the Spring/Summer 2007 campaign, photographed by Greg Kadel. She also holds contracts with L'Oréal, and New York & Co. She also contracts with Magnum Ice-Cream and Heineken. She was a part of Microsoft's "I'm A PC" ad campaign. She and Tony Parker have appeared together in campaigns for London Fog. She became a spokesperson for L'Oréal Paris in 2005 and was still being featured in L'Oréal TV commercials and print ads . In the summer of 2010, she was a judge on "The Next Food Network Star;" and in October, she hosted the MTV Europe Music Awards 2010 in Madrid, Spain.


title: Eva Longoria

text: Based on her earnings from June 1, 2009, to June 1, 2010, Longoria was ranked No. 4 on "Forbes" "Prime Time's 10 Top-Earning Women" with an estimated $12 million. She topped the "Forbes" magazine's list of the highest-paid TV actresses for 2011.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2013, Longoria professed that she was a "cat lady", and appeared as a spokesperson for Sheba Cat Food.


title: Eva Longoria

text: From 2013, she served as one of the executive producers of "Devious Maids" and directed the season two premiere, "An Ideal Husband". In 2016, she also starred in the fourth season, in the episode "Once More Unto the Bleach". She is also an executive producer of the documentaries "The Harvest" and "Food Chains," for which she won a James Beard Foundation Award.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2015, NBC announced plans for a sitcom called "Telenovela" in which Longoria starred as a popular telenovela actress. It was filmed with a single camera. It ran for only one season.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2018, Longoria attended the premiere for her new film, "Dog Days" with co-stars Vanessa Hudgens (Tara) and Nina Dobrev (Elizabeth) on August 5, 2018.


title: Eva Longoria

text: As of 2021, Longoria has been working with Kenya Barris on a possible new television series "Brown-ish" about a Latino family.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In March 2008, Longoria opened the restaurant Beso (which means "kiss" in Spanish) in Hollywood, along with partner and celebrity chef Todd English. The restaurant is located on Hollywood Boulevard and is accompanied by Kiss, a Victorian-themed nightclub on the floor above. The Hollywood Beso was scheduled to be the focus of a pilot episode for a tentative reality series called "Beso: Waiting on Fame", to air on VH1 in late 2010.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2009, Longoria and various investor-partners opened a Beso restaurant, with a nightclub called Eve above it, in the Crystals retail and entertainment district of CityCenter in Las Vegas.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2011, the corporation Beso LLC, owner of the Vegas restaurant-and-nightclub venture, with listed assets of about $2.5 million and Longoria as a 32 percent shareholder, filed for Chapter 11 protection, entering bankruptcy proceedings, in order to restructure nearly $5.7 million in debt and other liabilities. On July 28, 2011, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Nevada ordered Longoria to appear in Las Vegas on August 20 in order to be examined about the bankrupt restaurant's finances.


title: Eva Longoria

text: Her first book, "Eva's Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends", was published in April 2011. In terms of food-related promotions, in 2012 and 2013, Longoria paired with Iron Chef Michael Symon for a promotion for PepsiCo's Lay's potato chips contest called "Do Us A Flavor". The promotion encourages consumers to submit new flavor ideas and fans to vote for their favorite on Facebook. The person who creates the winning flavor is awarded $1 million or one percent of chip flavor's net sales.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2015, Longoria announced that she had teamed up with sportswear manufacturer Sunrise Brands to create a women's apparel collection, set to launch Fall 2016.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In August 2016, Longoria's production company, UnbeliEVAble Entertainment, signed a two-year first-look deal with Universal Pictures. In September 2020, her company renewed a three-year first-look deal with 20th Television.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2006, Longoria founded Eva's Heroes, a charity which helps young adults with developmental disabilities. The organization is located in San Antonio, Texas and was inspired by her sister who has intellectual disabilities.


title: Eva Longoria

text: She is the national spokesperson for PADRES Contra El Cancer. She signed shoes for the Spirit of Women Red Shoe Celebrity Auction. Longoria also supports the Clothes Off Our Back Foundation, OmniPeace, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the National Stroke Association, Project HOME and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Longoria is an executive producer of Shine Global Inc.'s documentary "The Harvest" which is focused on the 500,000 child migrant farm workers in the U.S. and promote awareness and support to enact the Children's Act for Responsible Employment (CARE Act).


title: Eva Longoria

text: Her other charity, the Eva Longoria Foundation aims to close the education gap plaguing Latinas and confront Latino poverty. She has stated that, "The Eva Longoria Foundation supports programs which help Latinas excel in school and attend college. Additionally, we work to provide Latina entrepreneurs with career training, mentorship, capital and opportunity." The foundation offers nine-week "parent engagement" courses to help Latino parents and has a mentorship program for Latinas and other extracurricular activities as well as loans to help Latina-owned businesses. It is co-funded by philanthropist Howard Buffett son of investor Warren Buffett.


title: Eva Longoria

text: Longoria was named Philanthropist of the Year in 2009 by "The Hollywood Reporter" for 'her commitment to Latino causes and giving back to the community. She appeared on "Fort Boyard" in 2009, helping attract more than €20,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2009, Longoria enrolled in a Master's program in Chicano Studies and political science at Cal State University, Northridge. According to Longoria, "because of my involvement with the NCLR and my charity work, I really wanted a better, more authentic understanding of what my community has gone through so I can help create change." She graduated with a master's degree in Chicano Studies in May 2013.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In September 2009, Longoria was appointed to a bi-partisan commission called to determine to establish a National Museum of the American Latino. In October 2012, Longoria spoke at the McAfee Focus 2012 event, where the "theme of safety—beyond computers—emerged. Safety involving financial security, emotional security, and the other results from Longoria's philanthropic efforts."


title: Eva Longoria

text: In March 2017, Longoria was listed by UK-based company Richtopia at number 42 in the list of 200 Most Influential Philanthropists and Social Entrepreneurs Worldwide.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In July 2019, Longoria supported the Special Olympics Texas Summer Games hosted by Toyota Field and Morgan's Wonderland in San Antonio, Texas. The following year, she also assisted the San Antonio Food Bank with their COVID relief efforts.


title: Eva Longoria

text: Longoria has a keen interest in immigration. She accompanied a border patrol in Arizona and has immersed herself in the issues to understand the Mexican and the U.S. points of view. She has described Arizona's SB 1070 immigration law as unconstitutional.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2012, Longoria was one of seven Californians named to the post of co-chair of Barack Obama's reelection campaign. On September 6, she spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention where she endorsed President Obama's reelection. In May 2014, she initiated the Latino Victory Project to raise funds for candidates and efforts to get out the vote. An executive producer of the documentaries "The Harvest" and "Food Chains", she is a supporter of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 2014, Longoria endorsed Marianne Williamson for California's 33rd congressional district. In 2018, Longoria endorsed Beto O'Rourke for Senate against incumbent Senator Ted Cruz, as well as Collin Allred for Texas's 32nd congressional district against then-incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions.


title: Eva Longoria

text: Longoria spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 26, 2016. In August 2020, she hosted the first night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, which was held remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In preparation of Georgia's runoff elections, on January 2, 2021, Longoria participated in a VoteRiders textbanking event with America Ferrera to help educate Latina voters regarding the state's voter ID laws.


title: Eva Longoria

text: Longoria met Tony Parker, then the point guard for the San Antonio Spurs, in November 2004. On November 30, 2006, the couple became engaged. They married in a civil service on July 6, 2007, at a Paris city hall. They had a Catholic wedding ceremony at the Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois Church in Paris on July 7, 2007. On November 17, 2010, Longoria filed for divorce from Parker in Los Angeles, citing "irreconcilable differences". In the divorce petition, Longoria requested that her family name be restored. She also sought spousal support from Parker. The couple had a prenuptial agreement that was signed in June 2007, a month before their wedding, and amended two years later in June 2009.


title: Eva Longoria

text: Longoria told her friend Mario Lopez she had discovered hundreds of text messages from another woman on her husband's phone. "Extra" identified the other woman as Erin Barry, the then-wife of Brent Barry, Parker's former teammate, and revealed that the Barrys also were in the process of divorcing. In light of the divorce, Longoria canceled her scheduled appearance at the 2010 American Music Awards. On November 19, 2010, Parker filed for divorce from Longoria in Bexar County, Texas, on the grounds of "discord or conflict of personalities", thus establishing a legal battle over where the divorce case would be heard. Unlike Longoria's divorce petition, Parker's did not mention a prenuptial agreement and claimed that the parties would "enter into an agreement for the division of their estate". The divorce was finalized in Texas on January 28, 2011, the same day Longoria's lawyer filed papers to dismiss her Los Angeles petition. Longoria would later comment, "I didn't realize it at the time with Tony, but I had become my own version of a desperate housewife."


title: Eva Longoria

text: On December 13, 2015, Longoria reported her engagement to Mexican businessman José Antonio "Pepe" Bastón Patiño, then the president of Televisa, the largest media company in Latin America. Bastón and Longoria met on a blind date arranged by a mutual friend in Mexico City; at the time, Bastón did not know who Longoria was and originally declined the invitation to meet her because of his busy schedule. The couple were married in Mexico on May 21, 2016.


title: Eva Longoria

text: On December 19, 2017, it was reported that Longoria was pregnant with her first child. She gave birth to a son in 2018.


title: Eva Longoria

text: According to research done in 2010 by Harvard professor and "Faces of America" host Henry Louis Gates Jr., Longoria's oldest identifiable Spanish immigrant ancestor is her ninth great-grandfather, Lorenzo Suárez de Longoria (b. Oviedo, 1592), who was a colonist of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (modern-day Mexico) in 1603. His family was based in a small village called Llongoria, Belmonte de Miranda, Asturias, Spain. Longoria is the Castillanized form of this Asturian-language surname.


title: Eva Longoria

text: In 1767, her seventh great-grandfather received almost of land along the Rio Grande in a land grant from King Charles III of Spain. The family retained this land for more than a century. After the US-Mexican border was moved southwards in the aftermath of the Mexican–American War, the land ended up on the American side of the border. Her family had to deal with the influx of United States settlers following the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War.


title: Eva Longoria

text: According to DNA testing, Longoria's overall genetic ancestry is 70% European, 27% Indigenous American, and 3% African. After a computer compared the DNA results of Gates's dozen guests, tests showed that she is anciently related by human haplogroup to cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who is of Chinese heritage. As women have two X chromosomes and no Y chromosome, Longoria did not inherit her father's Y-DNA, but she did inherit her mother's mitochondrial DNA (genetic information passed from mother to child). Longoria's mtDNA belongs to the Haplogroup A2, making her a direct descendant of a Native American woman, a Maya from the territory of Mexico long before it was Mexico. Her ancestors include many other Maya on both sides of her family.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: Pisces () (; "Ikhthyes") is the twelfth and final astrological sign in the zodiac. It is a negative, mutable sign. It spans 330° to 360° of celestial longitude. Under the tropical zodiac, the sun transits this area between February 19 and March 20. In classical interpretations, the symbol of the fish is derived from the ichthyocentaurs, who aided Aphrodite when she was born from the sea.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: According to some tropical astrologers, the current astrological age is the Age of Pisces, while others maintain that currently it is the Age of Aquarius.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: While the astrological sign Pisces per definition runs from ecliptic longitude 330° to 0°, this position is now mostly covered by the constellation of Aquarius due to the precession from when the constellation and the sign coincided. Today, the First Point of Aries, or the vernal equinox, is in the Pisces constellation. There are no prominent stars in the constellation, with the brightest stars being of only fourth magnitude. One star in the constellation, Alpha Piscium, is also known as Alrescha, which comes from the Arabic الرشآء "al-rišā’", meaning "the well rope," or "the cord." The constellation, however, is different from the astronomical location in where the sign occupies space. The constellations in earlier times were primarily used as markers to help determine what influence was in the sky. Nevertheless, the sign of Pisces remain in the 30 degree span of 330°-0°.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: Ptolemy described Alpha Piscium as the point where the cords joining the two fish are knotted together. The astrological symbol shows the two fishes captured by a string, typically by the mouth or the tails. The fish are usually portrayed swimming in opposite directions; this represents the duality within the Piscean nature. They are ruled by the planet Neptune. Although they appear as a pair, the name of the sign in all languages originally referred to only one fish with the exception of Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, Dutch, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Italian. Pisces are the mutable water sign of the zodiac.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: Divine associations with Pisces include Poseidon/Neptune, Aphrodite, Eros, Typhon, Vishnu and the Sumerian goddess Inanna.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: "Pisces" is the Latin word for "Fishes." It is one of the earliest zodiac signs on record, with the two fish appearing as far back as 2300 BC on an Egyptian coffin lid.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: According to one Greek myth, Pisces represents the fish, sometimes represented by a shark, into which Aphrodite (also considered Venus) and her son Eros (also considered Cupid) transformed in order to escape the monster Typhon. Typhon, the "father of all monsters," had been sent by Gaia to attack the gods, which led Pan to warn the others before himself changing into a goat-fish and jumping into the Euphrates. A similar myth, one in which the fish "Pisces" carry Aphrodite and her son out of danger, is resounded in Manilius' five volume poetic work "Astronomica": "Venus ow'd her safety to their Shape." Another myth is that an egg fell into the Euphrates river. It was then rolled to the shore by fish. Doves sat on the egg until it hatched, out from which came Aphrodite. As a sign of gratitude towards the fish, Aphrodite put the fish into the night sky. Because of these myths, the Pisces constellation was also known as "Venus et Cupido," "Venus Syria cum Cupidine," "Venus cum Adone," "Dione" and "Veneris Mater," the latter being the formal Latin term for mother.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: The Greek myth on the origin of the sign of Pisces has been cited by English astrologer Richard James Morrison as an example of the fables that arose from the original astrological doctrine, and that the "original intent of [it] was afterwards corrupted both by poets and priests."


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: Purim, a Jewish holiday, falls at the full moon preceding the Passover, which was set by the full moon in Aries, which follows Pisces. The story of the birth of Christ is said to be a result of the spring equinox entering into the Pisces, as the Savior of the World appeared as the Fisher of Men. This parallels the entering into the Age of Pisces.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: An astrological age is a time period in astrology that parallels major changes in the development of Earth's inhabitants, particularly relating to culture, society and politics, and there are twelve astrological ages corresponding to the twelve zodiacal signs. Astrological ages occur because of a phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes, and one complete period of this precession is called a Great Year or Platonic Year of about 25,920 years.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: The age of Pisces began AD 1 and will end AD 2150. With the story of the birth of Christ coinciding with this date, many Christian symbols for Christ use the astrological symbol for Pisces, the fishes. The figure Christ himself bears many of the temperaments and personality traits of a Pisces, and is thus considered an archetype of the Piscean. Moreover, the twelve apostles were called the "fishers of men," early Christians called themselves "little fishes," and a code word for Jesus was the Greek word for fish, "Ikhthus." With this, the start of the age, or the "Great Month of Pisces," is regarded as the beginning of the Christian religion. Saint Peter is recognized as the apostle of the Piscean sign.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: Venus exalted in Pisces is representative of divine love in the first canto of Dante's "Purgatorio". Pisces is the subject of Luca Della Robbia's 15th century "Plate with the Month of February". They are also the subject of one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetic works:


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: In the January 1970 edition of the "Avengers" (No. 72), the supervillain group Zodiac introduced the member "Pisces" whose abilities allowed him to live underwater, which included fins, scales and gills.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: In the 1979 sports fantasy film "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh", the fictitious basketball team the "Pittsburgh Pythons" turn to astrology after a continuous losing streak, and fill the roster with players born under the astrological sign of Pisces. They are reborn as the "Pittsburgh Pisces" and enter into a championship.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: Nirvana's song "Heart-Shaped Box" from their 1993 album "In Utero" begins with lead singer Kurt Cobain singing "She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak..."


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: In 1994 The Smashing Pumpkins released Pisces Iscariot, an album of B-sides. The album has gone platinum in the United States and contained a cover of the Fleetwood Mac song Landslide, which reached #30 on the billboard charts.


title: Pisces (astrology)

text: The Ukrainian metal band Jinjer released a song named ""Pisces"" on their 2016 album ""King Of Everything"".


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, California, on Riverside Drive, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Roy E. Disney Animation Building. The network's secondary offices, and headquarters of its news division, are in New York City, at its broadcast center at 77 West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Since 2007, when ABC Radio (also known as Cumulus Media Networks) was sold to Citadel Broadcasting, ABC has reduced its broadcasting operations almost exclusively to television. It is the fifth-oldest major broadcasting network in the world and the youngest of the American Big Three television networks. The network is sometimes referred to as the Alphabet Network, as its initialism also represents the first three letters of the English alphabet, in order.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC launched as a radio network in 1943, as the successor to the NBC Blue Network, which had been purchased by Edward J. Noble. It extended its operations to television in 1948, following in the footsteps of established broadcast networks CBS and NBC, as well as the lesser-known DuMont. In the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres (UPT), a chain of movie theaters that formerly operated as a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Leonard Goldenson, who had been the head of UPT, made the new television network profitable by helping develop and greenlighting many successful series. In the 1980s, after purchasing an 80 percent interest in cable sports channel ESPN, the network's corporate parent, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., merged with Capital Cities Communications, owner of several print publications, and television and radio stations. Most of Capital Cities/ABC's assets were purchased by Disney in 1995.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC has eight owned-and-operated and more than 230 affiliated television stations throughout the United States and its territories. Some ABC-affiliated stations can also be seen in Canada via pay-television providers, and certain other affiliates can also be received over-the-air in areas near the Canada–United States border, although most of its prime time programming is subject to simultaneous substitution regulations for pay television providers imposed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to protect rights held by domestically based networks. ABC News provides news and features content for select radio stations owned by Cumulus Media, as these stations are former ABC Radio properties.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In 1927, NBC-operated radio network was called the NBC Blue Network. It would later on become an independent radio (and, eventually, television) network known as the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1943. ABC later joined United Paramount Theatres forming American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres (later American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.).


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: After its venture into radio and television throughout the 1960s and 1970s and the purchase of ESPN Inc. in 1982, the company would later be acquired/merged with Capital Cities, forming Capital Cities/ABC in 1985. The company ultimately sold to The Walt Disney Company in 1995.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The ABC television network provides 89 hours of regularly scheduled weekly network programming. [] In addition, it offers 22 hours of prime-time programming to affiliated stations from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday (Eastern and Pacific Time) and 7:00–11:00 p.m. on Sundays.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Daytime programming is also provided from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific weekdays (subtract 1 hour for all other time zones) (with a one-hour break at 12:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific for stations to air newscasts, locally produced programming or syndicated programs) featuring the talk-lifestyle shows "The View" and "", and the soap opera "General Hospital". In addition, ABC News programming includes "Good Morning America" from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. weekdays and Saturdays (along with one-hour Sunday editions); nightly editions of "ABC World News Tonight" (whose weekend editions are occasionally subject to abbreviation or preemption due to sports telecasts overrunning into the program's timeslot), the Sunday political talk show "This Week", early morning news programs "World News Now" and "America This Morning" and the late-night newsmagazine "Nightline". Late nights feature the weeknight talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The network's three-hour Weekend morning children's programming timeslot is programmed by syndication distributor Litton Entertainment, which produces "Litton's Weekend Adventure" under an arrangement in which the programming block is syndicated exclusively to ABC owned-and-operated and affiliated stations, rather than being leased out directly by the network to Litton.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC's daytime schedule currently features the talk show "The View", news show "GMA3", and the soap opera "General Hospital". Originally premiering in 1963, "General Hospital" is ABC's longest-running entertainment program.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In addition to the long-running "All My Children" (1970–2011) and "One Life to Live" (1968–2012), notable past soap operas seen on the daytime lineup include "Ryan's Hope", "Dark Shadows", "Loving", "The City" and "Port Charles". ABC also aired the last nine years of the Procter & Gamble-produced soap "The Edge of Night", following its cancellation by CBS in 1975. ABC Daytime has also aired a number of game shows, including "The Dating Game", "The Newlywed Game", "Let's Make a Deal", "Password", "Split Second", "The $10,000/$20,000 Pyramid", "Family Feud", "The Better Sex", "Trivia Trap", "All-Star Blitz" and "Hot Streak".


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Sports programming is provided on occasion, primarily on weekend afternoons. Since 2006, the ABC Sports division has been defunct, with all sports telecasts on ABC being produced in association with sister cable network ESPN under the branding ESPN on ABC. While ABC has, in the past, aired notable sporting events such as the National Football League (NFL)'s "Monday Night Football", and various college football bowl games, general industry trends and changes in rights have prompted reductions in sports on broadcast television, with Disney preferring to schedule the majority of its sports rights on the networks of ESPN. This changed in 2020 with occasional simulcasts of ESPN "Monday Night Football" broadcasts on ABC.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC is the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Basketball Association (NBA), with its package (under the "NBA on ESPN" branding) traditionally beginning with its Christmas Day games, followed by a series of Saturday night and Sunday afternoon games through the remainder of the season, weekend playoff games, and all games of the NBA Finals. ABC is the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Hockey League (NHL), with its package (under the "NHL on ESPN" branding) beginning with the NHL Thanksgiving Showdown. In this deal, ABC will broadcast up to 10 regular season games (mostly afternoon), the NHL All-Star Game and 4 Stanley Cup Finals. During college football season, ABC typically carries an afternoon doubleheader on Saturdays, along with the primetime "Saturday Night Football". ABC also airs coverage of selected bowl games. Beginning in the 2015 NFL season, ESPN agreed to begin simulcasting a wild card playoff game on ABC.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The Saturday afternoon lineup outside of football season typically features airings of ESPN Films documentaries and other studio programs under the banner "ESPN Sports Saturday", while Sunday afternoons usually feature either brokered programming, or encore and burn-off airings of ABC programs.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In 2015, ESPN's annual ESPY Awards presentation moved to ABC from ESPN. Bolstered by Caitlyn Jenner accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage Award during the ceremony, the 2015 ESPY Awards' viewership was roughly tripled over the 2014 ceremony on ESPN.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: After the NFL signed a new contract with The Walt Disney Company, ABC will air Super Bowl LXI in 2027. The network has not aired a Super Bowl since Super Bowl XL in 2006.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC currently holds the broadcast rights to the Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, American Music Awards, and the Country Music Association Awards. ABC has also aired the Miss America competition from 1954 to 1956, 1997 to 2005, and 2011 to 2018.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: From 2001 to Feb. 2020, ABC held the television rights to most of the "Peanuts" television specials, having acquired the broadcast rights from CBS, which originated the specials in 1965 with the debut of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (other "Peanuts" specials broadcast annually by ABC, in addition to "A Charlie Brown Christmas", include "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving"). Since 2020, all of the "Peanuts" TV specials were acquired by Apple TV+ while some of the specials were later moved to PBS under a sub-licensing agreement with Apple. ABC also broadcasts the annual "Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade" special on Christmas morning.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Since 1974, ABC has generally aired "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" – a New Year's Eve special featuring music performances and coverage of festivities in New York's Times Square. ABC is also among the broadcasters of the Tournament of Roses Parade (although as mentioned, the Rose Bowl Game now airs exclusively on ESPN as a College Football Playoff "New Year's Six" bowl).


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC owns nearly all of its in-house television and theatrical productions made from the 1970s onward, with the exception of certain co-productions (for example, "The Commish" is now owned by the estate of its producer, Stephen Cannell). Worldwide video rights are currently owned by various companies; for example, Kino Lorber owns the North American home video rights to the ABC feature film library (along with some lesser known live action films from Disney's library, mostly from Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures and 20th Century Studios).


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: When the FCC imposed its Financial Interest and Syndication Rules in 1970, ABC proactively created two companies: Worldvision Enterprises as a syndication distributor, and ABC Circle Films as a production company. However, between the publication and implementation of these regulations, the separation of the network's catalog was made in 1973. The broadcast rights to pre-1973 productions were transferred to Worldvision, which became independent in the same year. The company has been sold several times since Paramount Television acquired it in 1999, and has most recently been absorbed into CBS Media Ventures (formerly CBS Television Distribution), a unit of Paramount Global, which own the competitor CBS. Nonetheless, Worldvision sold portions of its catalog, including the Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera libraries, to Turner Broadcasting System (now a part of Warner Bros. parent company Warner Bros. Discovery) in 1991. With Disney's 1996 purchase of ABC, ABC Circle Films was absorbed into Touchstone Television, a Disney subsidiary which in turn was renamed ABC Studios in 2007.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Also part of the library are most films in the David O. Selznick library, productions from their previous motion picture divisions ABC Pictures International, Selmur Productions, and Palomar Pictures International (before its takeover by Bristol-Myers-Squibb) released by Cinerama Productions (films produced by the company themselves are now under the control of Pacific Theatres), their later theatrical division ABC Motion Pictures, and the in-house productions it continues to produce (such as "America's Funniest Home Videos", "General Hospital", ABC News productions, and series from Disney Television Studios (ABC Signature and 20th Television). Disney–ABC Domestic Television (formerly known as Buena Vista Television and 20th Television) handles domestic television distribution, while Disney–ABC International Television (formerly known as Buena Vista International Television) handles international television distribution.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Since its inception, ABC has had over 300 television stations that have carried programming from the network at various times throughout its history, including its first two owned-and-operated and affiliated stations, founding O&O WABC-TV and inaugural affiliate WPVI-TV. , ABC has eight owned-and-operated stations, and current and pending affiliation agreements with 236 additional television stations encompassing 50 states, the District of Columbia, four U.S. possessions, Bermuda and Saba. This makes ABC the largest U.S. broadcast television network by total number of affiliates. The network has an estimated national reach of 97.72% of all households in the United States (or 305,347,338 Americans with at least one television set).


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Currently, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Delaware are the only U.S. states where ABC does not have a locally licensed affiliate (New Jersey is served by New York City O&O WABC-TV in the north half of the state and Philadelphia O&O WPVI-TV in the south; Rhode Island is served by New Bedford, Massachusetts-licensed WLNE, though outside of the transmitter, all other operations for the station are based in Providence; and Delaware is served by WPVI in the northern two thirds and Salisbury, Maryland, affiliate WMDT in the southern third of the state). ABC maintains affiliations with low-power stations (broadcasting either in analog or digital) in a few markets, such as Birmingham, Alabama (WBMA-LD), Lima, Ohio (WPNM-LD) and South Bend, Indiana (WBND-LD). In some markets, including the former two mentioned, these stations also maintain digital simulcasts on a subchannel of a co-owned/co-managed full-power television station.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The network has the unusual distinction of having separately owned-and-operated affiliates which serve the same market in Tampa, Florida (WFTS-TV and WWSB), Boston, Massachusetts (WCVB-TV and WMUR-TV), Lincoln, Nebraska (KLKN and KHGI-TV), and Grand Rapids, Michigan (WZZM and WOTV), with an analogous situation arising in Kansas City, Missouri (KMBC-TV and KQTV). KQTV is licensed to St. Joseph, which Nielsen designates as a separate market from Kansas City, despite a mere distance between the two cities and the Kansas City-based stations (including KMBC) providing better city-grade to Grade B coverage to the area compared to the signals of the primary ABC affiliates in the other aforementioned dual-affiliate markets. (KQTV was St. Joseph's lone major network affiliate until 2011, when locally based News-Press & Gazette Company began establishing low-power affiliates of ABC's four English-language competitors and Telemundo on three low-power stations to end St. Joseph's dependence on Kansas City.) WWSB, KHGI and WOTV, meanwhile, serve areas that do not receive an adequate signal from their market's primary ABC affiliate. (Of note, ABC initially affiliated with WWSB to cover southern portions of the Tampa–St. Petersburg market—including WWSB's city of license, Sarasota—as the transmitters of WTSP, the market's former primary ABC affiliate from 1965 to 1994, and Miami affiliate WPLG had been short-spaced to avoid interference between their respective analog-VHF channel 10 signals; WWSB remained an ABC affiliate after its Tampa affiliation moved from WTSP to WFTS in December 1994, even though WFTS's signal reaches Sarasota and some surrounding areas.) WCVB-TV is licensed to Boston while WMUR-TV is licensed to Manchester, New Hampshire (which is officially part of the Boston market). WCVB is easily receivable in Manchester with a good antenna as well as having its own news department that covers New Hampshire; it is the only station licensed to the state that does such. Both WCVB and WMUR are owned by Hearst Television.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The Sinclair Broadcast Group is the largest operator of ABC stations by numerical total, owning or providing services to 28 full, primary ABC affiliates and two subchannel-only affiliates. Sinclair owns the largest ABC subchannel affiliate by market size, WABM-DT2/WDBB-DT2 in the Birmingham market, which serve as repeaters of WBMA-LD (which itself is also simulcast on a subchannel of former WBMA satellite WGWW, owned by Sinclair partner company Howard Stirk Holdings). The E. W. Scripps Company is the largest operator of ABC stations in terms of overall market reach, owning 15 ABC-affiliated stations (including affiliates in larger markets such as Cleveland, Phoenix, Detroit and Denver), and through its ownership of Phoenix affiliate KNXV, Las Vegas affiliate KTNV-TV and Tucson affiliate KGUN-TV, it is the only provider of ABC programming for the majority of Arizona (outside the Yuma-El Centro market) and Southern Nevada. Scripps also owns and operates several ABC stations in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, including in Denver, San Diego, Bakersfield, California, and Boise, Idaho, and when combined with the ABC-owned stations in Los Angeles, Fresno, and San Francisco, the affiliations from the News-Press & Gazette Company in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, Yuma-El Centro, and Colorado Springs-Pueblo, and Sinclair's affiliations in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, these four entities control the access of ABC network programming in most of the Western United States, particularly in terms of audience reach.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: All of ABC's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates have had their own facilities and studios, but transverse entities have been created to produce national programming. As a result, television series were produced by ABC Circle Films beginning in 1962 and by Touchstone Television beginning in 1985, before Touchstone was reorganized as ABC Studios in February 2007 and later renamed to its current name ABC Signature in August 2020. Since the 1950s, ABC has had two main production facilities: the ABC Television Center (now The Prospect Studios) on Prospect Avenue in Hollywood, California, shared with the operations of KABC-TV until 1999; and the ABC Television Center, East, a set of studios located throughout New York City.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In addition to the headquarters building on Riverside Drive, other ABC facilities in Burbank include a building at 3800 West Alameda, known as 'Burbank Center', which is primarily associated with Walt Disney Television and functions as the headquarters and broadcast center for Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FX, National Geographic, and Radio Disney. Additionally, Disney Television Animation has a facility on Empire Avenue near the Hollywood Burbank Airport. In nearby Glendale, Disney/ABC also maintains the Grand Central Creative Campus, which houses other company subsidiaries, including the studios of KABC-TV and the Los Angeles bureau of ABC News.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC owns several facilities in New York grouped mainly on West 66th Street, with the main set of facilities on the corner of Columbus Avenue. In total, ABC's facilities occupy a combined of the of the blocks they encompass. This main set of buildings includes:


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC also owns the Times Square Studios at 1500 Broadway, on land owned by a development fund for the 42nd Street Project. Opened in 1999, "Good Morning America" is broadcast from this facility. ABC News has premises on West 66th Street, in a six-story building occupying a plot at 121–135 West End Avenue. The block of West 66th street between Central Park West and Columbus Ave. which houses the ABC News building was renamed Peter Jennings Way in 2006 in honor of the then-recently deceased news anchor.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: On July 9, 2018, the Walt Disney Company announced that it was selling its two West 66th Street campuses (except for the National Guard Amory) to Silverstein Properties and purchasing one square block of property in lower Manhattan to build a new New York-based broadcast center.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC maintains several video-on-demand (VOD) services for delayed viewing of the network's programming, including a traditional VOD service called ABC on Demand, which is carried on most traditional cable and IPTV providers. The Walt Disney Company is also a part-owner of Hulu, and has offered full-length episodes of most of ABC's programming through this streaming service since July 6, 2009.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In May 2013, ABC launched "WatchABC", a revamp of its traditional multi-platform streaming services encompassing the network's existing streaming portal at ABC.com and a mobile app for smartphones and tablet computers. This service provides full-length episodes of ABC programs and live streams of local affiliates in select markets (this was the first such offering by a U.S. broadcast network). However, live streams are only available to authenticated subscribers of participating pay television providers. WABC-TV New York and WPVI-TV Philadelphia were the first stations to offer streams of their programming on the service, with the six remaining ABC O&Os offering streams by the start of the 2013–14 season. Hearst Television also reached a deal to offer streams of its ABC affiliates on the service, though these stations are only available for live-streaming for DirecTV subscribers.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In November 2015, it was reported that ABC had been developing a slate of original digital series for the WatchABC service, internally codenamed ABC3. In July 2016, ABC re-launched its streaming platforms, dropping the WatchABC brand, adding a streaming library of 38 classic ABC series, and introducing 7 original short-form series under the blanket branding ABCd.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The most recent episodes of the network's shows are usually made available on the ABC app, Hulu and ABC on Demand the day after their original broadcast. In addition, ABC on Demand disallows fast forwarding of accessed content. Restrictions implemented on January 7, 2014, restrict streaming of the most recent episode of any ABC program on Hulu and the ABC app until eight days after their initial broadcast, in order to encourage live or same-week viewing (via DVR and cable on demand), with day-after-air streaming on either service limited to subscribers of participating pay television providers using an authenticated internet account.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC's master feed is transmitted in 720p high-definition, the native resolution format for The Walt Disney Company's American television properties. However, most of Hearst Television's ABC-affiliated stations and some of Tegna's ABC affiliates transmit the network's programming in 1080i, while 11 other affiliates owned by various companies carry the network feed in 480i standard definition either due to technical considerations for affiliates of other major networks that carry ABC programming on a digital subchannel or because a primary feed ABC affiliate has not yet upgraded their transmission equipment to allow content to be presented in HD. Although ABC has not fully transitioned to 1080p or ultra HD, some stations such as ABC affiliate station KNXV-TV in Phoenix, Arizona, transmit the network's programming at 1080p via an ATSC 3.0 multiplex stations, such as KASW with KNXV-TV.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC began its conversion to high definition with the launch of its simulcast feed, ABC HD, on September 16, 2001, at the start of the 2001–02 season, with its scripted prime-time series becoming the first shows to upgrade to the format, the simulcast feed was launched first on ABC's owned television stations that same date with many major affiliates following after that. Both new and returning scripted series were broadcast in high definition. In 2011, "" was the last program on the network's schedule that was broadcast in standard definition. All of the network's new programming has been presented in HD since January 2012. The affiliate-syndicated Saturday morning educational and informative (E/I) block "Litton's Weekend Adventure" was the first children's program block on U.S. network television to feature programs available in HD upon its September 2011 debut. The HD programming is broadcast in 5.1 surround sound.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: On September 1, 2016, ABC began to use framing for of its most graphical imaging (primarily the network's bug, in-program promotions and generic closing credit sequences as well as sports telecasts, where the BottomLine and scoreboard elements now extend outside the 4:3 frame), requiring its stations and pay television providers to display its programming in a compulsory widescreen format, either in high definition or standard definition. With this change, some programs also began positioning their main on-screen credits outside the 4:3 aspect ratio.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The ABC logo has evolved many times since the network's creation in 1943. The network's first logo, introduced in 1946, consisted of a television screen containing the letters "T" and "V", with a vertical "ABC" microphone in the center, referencing the network's roots in radio. When the ABC-UPT merger was finalized in 1953, the network introduced a new logo based on the FCC seal, with the letters "ABC" enclosed in a circular shield surmounted by a bald eagle. In 1957, just before the television network began its first color broadcasts, the ABC logo consisted of a tiny lowercase "abc" in the center of a large lowercase letter "a", a design known as the ABC Circle A.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In 1962, graphic designer Paul Rand redesigned the ABC logo into its current and best-known form, with the lowercase letters "abc" enclosed in a single black circle. The new logo debuted on-air on October 19 of the same year, but it was not until the following spring that it was fully adopted. The letters are strongly reminiscent of the Bauhaus typeface designed by Herbert Bayer in the 1920s, but also share similarities with several other fonts, such as ITC Avant Garde and Horatio, and most closely resembling Chalet. The logo's simplicity made it easier to redesign and duplicate, which was beneficial before the advent of computer graphics. A color version of the logo was also developed around 1963, and animated as a brief 10-second intro to be shown before the then-small handful of network programs broadcast in color (similar to the NBC "Laramie" peacock intro used during that era). The "a" was rendered in red, the "b" in blue, and the "c" in green, against the same single black circle. A variant of this color logo, with the colored letters against a white circle, was also commonly used throughout the 1960s.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of many graphical imaging packages for the network which based the logo's setting mainly on special lighting effects then under development including white, blue, pink, rainbow neon, and glittering dotted lines. Among the ABC Circle logo's many variants was a 1977 ID sequence that featured a bubble on a black background representing the circle with glossy gold letters, and was the first ABC identification card to simulate a three-dimensional appearance.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In 1983, for the 40th anniversary of the network's founding, ID sequences had the logo appear in a gold CGI design on a blue background, accompanied by the slogan "That Special Feeling" in a script font. Ten years later, in 1993, the "ABC Circle" logo reverted to its classic white-on-black color scheme, but with gloss effects on both the circle and the letters, and a bronze border surrounding the circle. The ABC logo first appeared as an on-screen bug in the 1993–94 season, appearing initially only for 60 seconds at the beginning of an act or segment, then appearing throughout programs beginning in the 1995–96 season; the respective iterations of the translucent logo bug were also incorporated within program promotions until the 2011–12 season.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: During the 1998–99 season, the network began using a minimalist graphical identity with a yellow and black motif, designed by Pittard Sullivan, featuring a small black-and-white "ABC Circle" logo on a yellow background (promotions during this time also featured a sequence of still photos of the stars of its programs during the timeslot card as well as the schedule sequence that began each night's prime time lineup). A new four-note theme tune was introduced alongside the package, based around the network's then-new "We Love TV" image campaign from the 1998–99 season, creating an audio signature in comparative parlance to the NBC chimes, CBS's various four-note sound marks (including the current version introduced in 1992) and the Fox Fanfare. The four-note signature has been updated with every television season thereafter until 2020–21 season.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In 2000, ABC launched a web-based promotional campaign focused around its circle logo, also called 'the dot', in which comic book character Little Dot prompted visitors to "download the dot", a program which would cause the ABC logo to fly around the screen and settle in the bottom-right corner. The network hired the Troika Design Group to design and produce its 2001–02 identity, which continued using the black-and-yellow coloring of the logo and featured dots and stripes in various promotional and identification spots.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: On June 16, 2007, ABC began to phase in a new imaging campaign for the upcoming 2007–08 season, "Start Here", accompanied by a glassy version of the ABC logo. Also developed by Troika, marketing used a series of icons intended to emphasize the availability of ABC content across multiple platforms, and sought to "simplify and bring a lot more consistency and continuity to the visual representation of ABC". On-air, the logo was accompanied by animated water and ribbon effects. Red ribbons were used to represent the entertainment division, while blue ribbons were used for ABC News.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: ABC introduced a revision to its logo and branding by LoyalKaspar for the 2013–14 season; the logo carried a simpler gloss design than the 2007 version, and had lettering closer-resembling Paul Rand's original version of the circle logo. A custom typeface inspired by the ABC logotype, ABC Modern, was also created for use in advertising and other promotional elements. The logo was used in various color schemes, with a gold version used primarily for ABC's entertainment divisions, a red version used primarily for ESPN on ABC, steel blue and dark grey versions used primarily by ABC News, and all four colors used interchangeably in promotions.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Upon a reimaging by The New Blank for the 2018–19 season, the blue, red, and yellow variants were dropped, with the dark grey version becoming ABC's main logo. Surrounding promotional elements adopted a circular "echo" motif and the new slogan "America's Network".


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Another revision to the logo was introduced on August 9, 2021, ahead of the 2021–22 season. Designed by Trollbäck & Company, it is designed to adhere to flat design trends, and returns to a solid, two-dimensional design with smaller and bolder lettering. The main logo is rendered in a dark, blue-gray color; outlined and black-on-red variations are also used, such as for the on-screen bug and promotional usage respectively.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The Circle 7 logo, designed in 1962, is also commonly associated with ABC affiliates who broadcast on channel 7, including its flagship local stations WABC-TV (New York City), KABC-TV (Los Angeles), KGO-TV (San Francisco) and WLS-TV (Chicago). This logo was intended to be used somewhat interchangeably by these stations with the main circular network logo and has itself also become an iconic symbol of the ABC network. KGO was the first of the ABC-owned stations to use the Circle 7 logo, starting on August 27, 1962; by the end of the year, the other ABC-owned stations began using the logo, and have continued to do so since.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The first attempts to internationalize the ABC television network dates to the 1950s, when Goldenson tried to use the same strategies he had in expanding UPT's theater operation to the international market. Goldenson said that ABC's first international activity was broadcasting the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953; CBS and NBC were delayed in covering the coronation due to flight delays. Goldenson tried international investing, having ABC invest in stations in the Latin American market, acquiring a 51% interest in a network covering Central America and in 1959 established program distributor Worldvision Enterprises. Goldenson also cited interest in Japan in the early 1950s, acquiring a 5% stake in two new domestic networks, the Mainichi Broadcasting System in 1951 and TV Asahi in 1957. Goldenson also invested in broadcasting properties in Beirut in the mid-1960s.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The goal was to create a network of wholly and partially owned channels and affiliates to rebroadcast the network's programs. In 1959, this rerun activity was completed with program syndication, with ABC Films selling programs to networks not owned by ABC. The arrival of satellite television ended the need for ABC to hold interests in other countries; many governments also wanted to increase their independence and strengthen legislation to limit foreign ownership of broadcasting properties. As a result, ABC was forced to sell all of its interests in international networks, mainly in Japan and Latin America, in the 1970s.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: The second period of international expansion is linked to that of the ESPN network in the 1990s, and policies enacted in the 2000s by Disney Media Networks. These policies included the expansion of several of the company's U.S.-based cable networks including Disney Channel and its spinoffs Toon Disney, Playhouse Disney and Jetix; although Disney also sold its 33% stake in European sports channel Eurosport for $155 million in June 2000. In contrast to Disney's other channels, ABC broadcasts in the United States with programming syndicated in other countries. The policy regarding wholly owned international networks was revived and on September 27, 2004, ABC announced the launch of ABC1, a free-to-air channel in the United Kingdom owned by the ABC Group. However, ABC1 could not attain sustainable viewership and was shut down in October 2007.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Prior to the ABC1 closure, on October 10, 2006, Disney–ABC Television Group entered into an agreement with satellite provider Dish TV to carry its ABC News Now channel in India. However, this operation was not put into effect.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: In Australia, the Nine Network maintained close ties with ABC and has used a majority of the U.S. network's image campaigns and slogans since the 1970s; in particular, "Still the One", ABC's slogan it adopted for the 1977–78 television season and again for the 1979–80 television season, was adopted by Nine for the 1978 Australian television season (before, Nine also used ABC's "Let Us Be the One" slogan), and lasted longer ever since it was re-adopted in 1980—it was Nine's main slogan until it was replaced in December 2006, only to be reintroduced in November 2021. ABC's other slogans were also adopted by Nine during the 1980–2006 period, as secondary slogans complementing the "Still the One" slogan.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Most Canadians have access to at least one U.S.-based ABC affiliate, either over-the-air (in areas located within proximity of the Canada–United States border) or through a cable, satellite or IPTV provider. Most ABC programs are subject to simultaneous substitution regulations imposed by the CRTC, which require television service providers to replace an American station's signal with the feed of a Canadian broadcaster carrying the same syndicated program to protect domestic programming rights and advertising revenue.


title: American Broadcasting Company

text: Like Canada, ABC programming is available in Mexico through free-to-air affiliates in markets located within proximity to the Mexico–United States border whose signals are readily receivable over-the-air in border areas of northern Mexico.


title: Divergent (film)

text: Divergent is a 2014 American dystopian science fiction action film directed by Neil Burger, based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Veronica Roth. The film is the first installment in "The Divergent Series" and was produced by Lucy Fisher, Pouya Shahbazian, and Douglas Wick, with a screenplay by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor. It stars Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn, Ansel Elgort, and Maggie Q. The story takes place in a dystopian and post-apocalyptic Chicago where people are divided into distinct factions based on human virtues. Beatrice Prior is warned that she is Divergent and thus will never fit into any one of the factions. She soon learns that a sinister plot is brewing in the seemingly perfect society.


title: Divergent (film)

text: Development of "Divergent" began in March 2011 when Summit Entertainment picked up the film rights to the novel with Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher's production company Red Wagon Entertainment. Principal photography began April 16, 2013, and concluded on July 16, 2013, with reshoots taking place from January 24–26, 2014. Production mostly took place in Chicago.


title: Divergent (film)

text: "Divergent" was released on March 21, 2014, in the United States. The film received mixed reviews: although its action sequences and performances, notably Woodley's, were praised, critics deemed its execution and handling of its themes to be generic and unoriginal, and compared it unfavorably to other young adult fiction adaptations. The film grossed $288 million worldwide against its budget of $85 million. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on August 5, 2014.


title: Divergent (film)

text: In a future dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions: Abnegation (the selfless), Amity (the peaceful), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), and Erudite (the intellectual). The remaining population, the Factionless, have no status or privilege. Upon turning 16, children undergo a serum-induced psychological aptitude test which indicates their best-suited faction, but can choose any faction as their permanent group at the subsequent Choosing Ceremony.


title: Divergent (film)

text: Beatrice Prior was born into Abnegation, which runs the government. Her father Andrew serves on the ruling council along with Abnegation's leader Marcus Eaton. After her test results show equal attributes of multiple factions (Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless), marking her as Divergent, her proctor Tori Wu, a Dauntless woman, records her results as Abnegation, warns her to conceal her true results, and says that because Divergents can think independently and sense any serums injected into them, the government feels they threaten the existing social order.


title: Divergent (film)

text: The next day, at the Choosing Ceremony, Beatrice's brother Caleb chooses Erudite, while, after some hesitation, she chooses Dauntless. Afterwards, she meets Christina, Al, and Will, three other faction transfers to Dauntless. Christina and Al are from Candor, and Will is from Erudite. Eric Coulter, a brutal Dauntless leader, reminds the initiates that anyone not meeting the faction's high expectations of commitment and fearlessness will become Factionless. Beatrice volunteers to jump from a tall building into a dark hole and lands into a net. When Four, a transfer initiates' instructor, asks her name, she shortens it to "Tris", shedding her earlier identity.


title: Divergent (film)

text: Tris initially struggles in Dauntless training and ranks far below the cutoff after the first evaluation, but with Four's help, she slowly improves. Eric matches her against her nemesis, Candor transfer Peter Hayes, in a fight, who soundly defeats her. Unwilling to miss the most important test, Capture The Flag, she leaves the infirmary, joins the other initiates, secures her team's victory, and makes the final cut. In the next phase of training, the initiates face their worst fears in psychological simulations. Tris's divergence allows her to creatively solve the tests, but Four warns her to hide her abilities and to solve them as a normal Dauntless would, as Divergents can also manipulate tests and serums. Tris visits Caleb, who tells her that Erudite plans to overthrow Abnegation. When she returns, Al, Peter, and their fellow Candor transfer Drew attack her before Four rescues her. The next day, Al begs Tris to forgive him but she refuses and calls him a coward. He later kills himself by jumping into "The Chasm," rather than live with the shame.


title: Divergent (film)

text: To prepare her for the final test, Four takes Tris into his own fear simulations, where she learns he is Tobias Eaton, and his father Marcus used to beat him as a child. Tris then passes her test and officially joins Dauntless. The other Dauntless are injected with a serum from Erudite, supposedly for tracking but actually for mind control. The next morning, the Dauntless prepare to execute Abnegation under Erudite's orders. As the new serum fails on Divergents, Tris must blend in to avoid suspicion. She finds Four, who identifies as Divergent. When the Dauntless move to raid Abnegation, the pair separate from the group and attempt to locate her parents, but Eric, realizing Four is not under control, captures both of them, taking Four into custody and ordering Tris's execution. Her mother Natalie appears and saves her but is shot and killed as they attempt escape.


title: Divergent (film)

text: Tris finds her father hiding with Caleb, Marcus, and several Abnegation members. The group sneaks into Dauntless headquarters, where Tris encounters Peter and forces him to lead them to Erudite's control center. Her father sacrifices himself in a shootout, and Tris goes in alone to find Four, now under stronger mind control designed for Divergents. Knowing his fears, she manages to wake him from the mind control, and both enter the central control room, where Erudite's leader Jeanine Matthews nearly has Dauntless execute the entire Abnegation faction. Tris uses a sample of the mind control serum on her to force her to cancel the program. The group escapes the compound and boards a train out of the complex.