Show name	Frasier
Caption	Season 11 title screen
Format	Sitcom
Picture format	480i (SDTV; NTSC in US broadcasts, shown in PAL or NTSC in international syndication)1080i (HDTV; seasons 10–11)
Audio format	Stereo
Camera	Film; Multi-camera
Runtime	24 minutes
Company	Grub Street ProductionsGrammnet Productions (seasons 10–11, uncredited)Paramount Network Television
Distributor	CBS Television Distribution
Creator	David AngellPeter CaseyDavid Lee
Starring	Kelsey GrammerJane LeevesDavid Hyde PiercePeri GilpinJohn MahoneyDan ButlerMoose (uncredited)Enzo (uncredited)
Executive producer	Peter CaseyDavid Lee (both; entire run)David Angell (seasons 1–8)Christopher Lloyd(seasons 2–8 and 11)Kelsey Grammer (seasons 6–11)Joe Keenan (seasons 6–7 and 11)Dan O'Shannon (seasons 9–10)Mark Reisman (season 9)Rob Hanning (season 10)Sam Johnson andChris MarcilLori Kirkland BakerJeffrey Richman(all; seasons 10–11)
Producer	Maggie Blanc
Country	United States
Language	English
Num seasons	11
Network	NBC
First aired
Last aired
Preceded by	Cheers
Related	The Tortellis
Num episodes	264
Status	Ended
List episodes	List of Frasier episodes

Frasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons, from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee (as Grub Street Productions) in association with Grammnet (2004) and Paramount Network Television.

A spin-off from Cheers, Frasier stars Kelsey Grammer as psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane; David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Jane Leeves, Peri Gilpin, and Moose (later, Enzo; both Jack Russell Terriers, uncredited). It is one of the most successful spin-off series in television history and one of the most critically acclaimed comedy series of all time.

Situation

Psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane (Grammer) returns to his hometown of Seattle, Washington, following the end of his marriage and his life in Boston (as seen in Cheers). His plans for a new life as a bachelor are complicated when he is obliged to take in his father, a retired detective from the Seattle Police Department, Martin (Mahoney), who is unable to live by himself after being shot in the line of duty. Frasier and Martin are joined by Daphne Moon (Leeves), Martin's English, live-in physical therapist and caretaker, and Martin's dog Eddie (played by Moose and Enzo). Frasier's younger brother Niles (Pierce), a fellow psychiatrist, frequently visits their apartment. Niles' infatuation with, and eventual love for Daphne—feelings which he does not confess to her openly until the final episode of the seventh season—form a complex story arc that spans the entire series.

Frasier hosts the popular The Dr. Frasier Crane Show on the talk radio station KACL. but this was beaten by the principal cast of The Simpsons, although Grammer and Arness still hold the record in live action.

In addition to the ensemble, a number of additional characters were introduced to advance the storyline. These included characters from Frasier's former incarnation on Cheers, such as his ex-wife Lilith Sternin, played by Bebe Neuwirth. Some other characters, such as Bob 'Bulldog' Briscoe, played by Dan Butler, the host of a radio sports show that aired following Frasier's show, made regular appearances. He was billed with the main cast for three seasons (seasons 4-6) before that he was a recurring character. After season 6 he was placed back on recurring guest status.

Three of the main cast members reunited in an episode of The Simpsons. Grammer reprised his role for the tenth time as Sideshow Bob, Pierce reprised his role for the second time as Sideshow Bob's brother, Cecil Terwilliger, and Mahoney appeared as Cecil and Bob's father, Dr. Robert Terwilliger, in the episode "Funeral For A Fiend".

Production

Creation

As Cheers approached its last season in 1993, Grammer approached Angell, Casey, and Lee. The actor had enjoyed his appearance on an episode of the three men's Wings, and hoped that they could create a new show for him. Grammer did not want to continue playing Frasier Crane, and Angell, Casey, and Lee did not want the new show to be compared to Cheers, which they had worked on before Wings. The three proposed that the actor play a wealthy, Malcolm Forbes-like paraplegic publisher with a "street smart" Hispanic live-in nurse. While Grammer liked the concept, Paramount Television disliked it because it was unrelated to the enormously popular Cheers. Although Grammer agreed to star in a Cheers spin-off, the producers set the new show as far from Boston as possible to prevent NBC from demanding that other characters from the old show make guest appearances on the new show during its first season. After first choosing Denver, Angell, Casey, and Lee ultimately chose Seattle as the setting. NBC suggested that Martin's nurse be English instead of Hispanic as it favored Leeves for the role. Grammer was initially reluctant as he thought the casting made the show resemble Nanny and the Professor, but approved Leeves after a read-through with her. The only main role that required auditions was Roz Doyle, named in memory of a producer of Wings.

Only one episode, "The 1000th Show", was filmed in Seattle. and at various locations in and around Los Angeles.

The radio station callers' lines were spoken by anonymous voice-over actors while filming the show in front of a live audience. This gave the cast something to which they could react. During post-production, the lines were replaced by celebrities, who literally phoned in their parts without having to come into the studio. The end credits of season finales showed headshots of all the celebrities who had "called in" that season.

The closing credits for each episode features the song "Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs", sung by Grammer, and a short silent skit. Season finales were the exception, usually showing black-and-white photos of guest callers.

Skyline

No building or apartment in Seattle really has the view from Frasier's residence. It was created so the Space Needle would appear more prominently. According to the Season 1 DVD bonus features, the photograph used on the set was taken from atop a cliff, possibly the ledge at Kerry Park, a frequent photography location. Despite this, Frasier has been said to have contributed to the emergence of an upscale urban lifestyle in 1990s Seattle, with buyers seeking properties in locations resembling that depicted in the show, in search of "that cosmopolitan feel of Frasier". Other commentators, such as Haydn Bush disagree, believing the success of Frasier can be attributed to the comedic timing and the chemistry between the characters.(in millions) |- | 1 || 1993–1994 || # 7 |- | 2 ||1994–1995 || # 15 |- | 3 ||1995–1996 || # 11 |- | 4 ||1996–1997 || # 16 |- | 5 ||1997–1998 || # 10 |- | 6 ||1998–1999 || # 3 |- | 7 ||1999–2000 || # 6 |- | 8 ||2000–2001 || # 17 |- | 9 ||2001–2002 || # 16 |- | 10 ||2002–2003 || # 26 |- | 11 ||2003–2004 || # 35 |}

Merchandising

Video and audio

Paramount Home Entertainment and CBS DVD have released all 11 seasons of Frasier on DVD in Region 1, 2 and 4. A 44-disc package containing the entire 11 seasons has also been released.

The first four seasons were also released on VHS along with a series of 'Best Of' tapes. These tapes consisted of four episodes taken from seasons 1-4. No more video releases have been announced.

One Frasier CD has been released featuring a number of songs taken from the show.

Books

Several books about Frasier have been released, including the following:

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Category:1990s American comedy television series Category:2000s American comedy television series Category:1993 American television series debuts Category:2004 American television series endings Category:American television sitcoms Category:Best Musical or Comedy Series Golden Globe winners Category:Cheers Category:English-language television series Category:Frasier Category:NBC network shows Category:Peabody Award winners Category:Television series by CBS Paramount Television Category:Television shows set in Seattle, Washington Category:Television spin-offs

Name	Bill Gates
Caption	Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2007
Birth date	October 28, 1955
Birth place	Seattle, Washington, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Chairman of MicrosoftChairman of CorbisCo-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationDirector of Berkshire HathawayCEO of Cascade Investment
Net worth	US$54 billion (2010)Mary Maxwell Gates

William Henry "Bill" Gates III, (born October 28, 1955) At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard

Microsoft

BASIC

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.

Microsoft's BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment. The company moved from Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.

Windows

Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, mounting creative differences undermined the partnership. Gates distributed an internal memo on May 16, 1991, announcing that the OS/2 partnership was over and Microsoft would shift its efforts to the Windows NT kernel development. When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend." On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.

Appearance in ads

Gates appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008. The first commercial, co-starring Jerry Seinfeld, is a 90-second talk between strangers as Seinfeld walks up on a discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) in a mall and notices Gates buying shoes inside. The salesman is trying to sell Mr. Gates shoes that are a size too big. As Gates is buying the shoes he holds up his discount card, which uses a slightly altered version of his own mugshot of his arrest in New Mexico in 1977 for a traffic violation. As they are walking out of the mall, Seinfeld asks Gates if he has melded his mind to other developers, after getting a yes, he then asks if they are working on a way to make computers edible, again getting a yes. Some say that this is an homage to Seinfeld's own show about "nothing" (Seinfeld). In a second commercial in the series, Gates and Seinfeld are at the home of an average family trying to fit in with normal people.

Post-Microsoft

Since leaving Microsoft, Gates continues his philanthropy and, among other projects, purchased the video rights to the Messenger Lectures series called The Character of Physical Law, given at Cornell University by Richard Feynman in 1964 and recorded by the BBC. The videos are available online to the public at Microsoft's Project Tuva.

In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he asked the students to take on the hard problems of the world in their futures.

Personal life

, June 2009.]] Gates married Melinda French from Dallas, Texas on January 1, 1994. They have three children: daughters Jennifer Katharine Gates (born 1996) and Phoebe Adele Gates (born 2002), and son Rory John Gates (born 1999). The Gates' home is an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina. According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000.

His estate has a swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a gym and a dining room.

Also among Gates's private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994. Gates is also known as an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby. He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis, and golf.

Gates was number one on the "Forbes 400" list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of "The World's Richest People" from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call him a "centibillionaire". Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought. Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667, and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667. He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett. In March 2010 Bill Gates was bumped down to the 2nd wealthiest man behind Carlos Slim.

Philanthropy

, Queen Rania of Jordan, Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Yar Adua of Nigeria and other participants in a 'Call to Action on the Millennium Development Goals' during the Annual Meeting 2008 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.]]

Gates began to realize the expectations others had of him when public opinion mounted that he could give more of his wealth to charity. Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations into one to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world. The foundation is set up to allow benefactors access to how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. The generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Gates and his father have met with Rockefeller several times and have modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations. As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity.

The foundation has also received criticism because it invests the assets that it has not yet distributed with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world. In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments to assess social responsibility. It subsequently cancelled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices. Gates has made The Giving Pledge to donate over half of his wealth to charity.

Recognition

In 1987 Gates was officially declared a billionaire in the pages of Forbes' 400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday. As the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was worth $1.25 billion, over $900 million more than he'd been worth the year before, when he'd debuted on the list.

Time magazine named Gates , as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time". Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999 and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.

In 1994, he was honoured as the twentieth Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000; the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002; Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in April 2007; Harvard University in June 2007; the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, in January 2008, and Cambridge University in June 2009. He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007. Gates was also made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005, in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor.

In November 2006, he and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores". In October 2009, it was announced that Gates will be awarded the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership of The Franklin Institute for his achievements in business and for his philanthropic work. In 2010 he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.

Investments

Cascade Investments LLC, a private investment and holding company, incorporated in United States, is controlled by Bill Gates, and is headquartered in the city of Kirkland, WA.

bgC3, a new think-tank company founded by Bill Gates.

Corbis, a digital image licensing and rights services company.

TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company.

Bibliography

Gates has authored two books:

The Road Ahead (1995)

Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999)

Filmography

Gates has appeared in at least one film: Waiting For Superman

See also

List of billionaires (also see List of college dropout billionaires and List of wealthiest non-inflated historical figures)

Paul Allen – Microsoft's co-founder, friend, and fellow billionaire

Books

References

Further reading

"The Meaning of Bill Gates: As his reign at Microsoft comes to an end, so does the era he dominated", The Economist, June 28, 2008.

External links

The Official Site of Bill Gates – The Gates Notes

Biography of Bill Gates at Microsoft.com

Forbes profile page on Bill Gates

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

How I Work: Bill Gates

TED Talks: Bill Gates trying to change the world now at TED in 2009

Category:American billionaires Category:American computer businesspeople Category:American chief executives Category:American computer programmers Category:American philanthropists Category:American technology writers Category:Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation people Category:Businesspeople in software Category:Harvard University people Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Category:Microsoft employees Category:History of Microsoft Category:National Medal of Technology recipients Category:People from Seattle, Washington Category:People from King County, Washington Category:Windows people Category:Fellows of the British Computer Society Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:Time Persons of the Year