Amphibians (class Amphibia, from Amphi- meaning "on both sides" and -bios meaning "life"), are a class of vertebrate animals including animals such as frogs, caecilians, and salamanders. They are characterized as non-amniote ectothermic (or cold-blooded) tetrapods. Most Amphibians undergo metamorphosis from a juvenile water-breathing form to an adult air-breathing form, but some are paedomorphs that retain the juvenile water-breathing form throughout life. Mudpuppies, for example, retain juvenile gills in adulthood. The three modern orders of amphibians are Anura (frogs and toads), Caudata (salamanders and newts), and Gymnophiona (caecilians, limbless amphibians that resemble snakes), and in total they number approximately 6,500 species. Many amphibians lay their eggs in water. Amphibians are superficially similar to reptiles, but reptiles are amniotes, along with mammals and birds. The study of amphibians is called batrachology.
Amphibians are ecological indicators, and in recent decades there has been a dramatic decline in amphibian populations around the globe. Many species are now threatened or extinct.
Amphibians evolved in the Devonian Period and were top predators in the Carboniferous and Permian Periods, but many lineages were wiped out during the Permian–Triassic extinction. One group, the metoposaurs, remained important predators during the Triassic, but as the world became drier during the Early Jurassic they died out, leaving a handful of relict temnospondyls like ''Koolasuchus'' and the modern orders of Lissamphibia.
In the Carboniferous Period, the amphibians moved up in the food chain and began to occupy the ecological position currently occupied by crocodiles. These amphibians were notable for eating the mega insects on land and many types of fishes in the water. During the Triassic Period, the better land-adapted proto-crocodiles began to compete with amphibians, leading to their reduction in size and importance in the biosphere.
Of these only the last subclass includes recent species.
With the phylogenetic classification Labyrinthodontia has been discarded as it is a paraphyletic group without unique defining features apart from shared primitive characteristics. Classification varies according to the preferred phylogeny of the author, whether they use a stem-based or node-based classification. Traditionally, amphibians as a class are defined as all tetrapods with a larval stage, while the group that includes the common ancestors of all living amphibians (frogs, salamanders and caecilians) and all their descendants is called Lissamphibia. The phylogeny of Paleozoic amphibians is by no means satisfactory understood, and lissamphibia may possibly include extinct groups like the temnospondyls (traditionally placed in the subclass “Labyrinthodontia”), and the Lepospondyls, and in some analysis even the amniots. This means that phylogenetic nomenclature list a large number of basal Devonian and Carboniferous tetrapod groups, undoubtedly were “amphibians” in biology, that are formally placed in Amphibia in Linnaean taxonomy, but not in cladistic taxonomy.
All recent amphibians are included in the subclass Lissamphibia, superorder Salientia, which is usually considered a clade (which means that it is thought that they evolved from a common ancestor apart from other extinct groups), although it has also been suggested that salamanders arose separately from a temnospondyl-like ancestor, and even that caecilians are the sister group of the advanced reptiliomorph amphibians, and thus of amniots.
Authorities also disagree on whether Salientia is a Superorder that includes the order Anura, or whether Anura is a sub-order of the order Salientia. Practical considerations seem to favor using the former arrangement now. The Lissamphibia, superorder Salientia, are traditionally divided into three orders, but an extinct salamander-like family, the Albanerpetontidae, is now considered part of the Lissamphibia, besides the superorder Salientia. Furthermore, Salientia includes all three recent orders plus a single Triassic proto-frog, ''Triadobatrachus''.
Class Amphibia
The actual number of species partly also depends on the taxonomic classification followed, the two most common classifications being the classification of the website AmphibiaWeb, University of California (Berkeley) and the classification by herpetologist Darrel Frost and The American Museum of Natural History, available as the online reference database Amphibian Species of the World. The numbers of species cited above follow Frost.
For the purpose of reproduction most amphibians require fresh water. A few (e.g. ''Fejervarya raja'') can inhabit brackish water and even survive (though not thrive) in seawater, but there are no true marine amphibians. Several hundred frog species in adaptive radiations (e.g., ''Eleutherodactylus'', the Pacific Platymantines, the Australo-Papuan microhylids, and many other tropical frogs), however, do not need any water for breeding in the wild. They reproduce via direct development, an ecological and evolutionary adaptation that has allowed them to be completely independent from free-standing water. Almost all of these frogs live in wet tropical rainforests and their eggs hatch directly into miniature versions of the adult, passing through the tadpole stage within the egg. Reproductive success of many amphibians is dependent not only on the quantity of rainfall, but the seasonal timing.
Several species have also adapted to arid and semi-arid environments, but most of them still need water to lay their eggs. Symbiosis with single celled algae that lives in the jelly-like layer of the eggs has evolved several times. The larvae of frogs (tadpoles or polliwogs) breathe with exterior gills at the start, but soon a pouch is formed that covers the gills and the front legs. Lungs are also formed quite early to assist in breathing. Newt larvae have large external gills that gradually disappear and the larvae of newts are quite similar to the adult form from early age on.
Frogs and toads however have a tadpole stage, which is a totally different organism that is a grazing algae or ongrowth or filtering plankton until a certain size has been reached, where metamorphosis sets in. This metamorphosis typically lasts only 24 hours and consists of:
The transformation of newts when leaving the water is reversible except for the loss of the external gills. When the animals enter the water again for reproduction changes are driven by prolactin, when they return to the land phase by thyroxin
Dramatic declines in amphibian populations, including population crashes and mass localized extinction, have been noted in the past two decades from locations all over the world, and amphibian declines are thus perceived as one of the most critical threats to global biodiversity. A number of causes are believed to be involved, including habitat destruction and modification, over-exploitation, pollution, introduced species, climate change, endocrine-disrupting pollutants, destruction of the ozone layer (ultraviolet radiation has shown to be especially damaging to the skin, eyes, and eggs of amphibians), and diseases like chytridiomycosis. However, many of the causes of amphibian declines are still poorly understood, and are a topic of ongoing discussion. A global strategy to stem the crisis has been released in the form of the Amphibian Conservation Action Plan (available at http://www.amphibians.org). Developed by over 80 leading experts in the field, this call to action details what would be required to curtail amphibian declines and extinctions over the next 5 years - and how much this would cost. The Amphibian Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) is spearheading efforts to implement a comprehensive global strategy for amphibian conservation. Amphibian Ark is an organization that was formed to implement the ex-situ conservation recommendations of this plan, and they have been working with zoos and aquaria around the world encouraging them to create assurance colonies of threatened amphibians. One such project is the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project that built on existing conservation efforts in Panama to create a country-wide response to the threat of chytridiomycosis rapidly spreading into eastern Panama
On January 21, 2008, Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE), as given by chief Helen Meredith, identified nature's most endangered species: "The EDGE amphibians are amongst the most remarkable and unusual species on the planet and yet an alarming 85% of the top 100 are receiving little or no conservation attention." The top 10 endangered species (in the List of endangered animal species) include: the Chinese giant salamander, a distant relative of the newt, the tiny Gardiner's Seychelles, the limbless Sagalla caecilian, South African ghost frogs, lungless Mexican salamanders, the Malagasy rainbow frog, Chile's Darwin frog (Rhinoderma rufum) and the Betic Midwife Toad.
af:Amfibie als:Amphibien ar:برمائيات an:Amphibia roa-rup:Amphibia gn:Ypegua az:Suda-quruda yaşayanlar bn:উভচর প্রাণী zh-min-nan:Lióng-chhe-lūi be:Земнаводныя be-x-old:Земнаводныя bs:Vodozemci br:Divelfenneg bg:Земноводни ca:Amfibi cs:Obojživelníci cy:Amffibiad da:Padde de:Amphibien nv:Biyáázh Tsʼǫʼasánígíí (Tayiʼ dóó Niʼkáágóó Ndaakaaígíí) et:Kahepaiksed el:Αμφίβια es:Amphibia eo:Amfibioj eu:Anfibio fa:دوزیستان hif:Amphibian fr:Amphibia ga:Amfaibiach gv:Daa-veaghagh gd:Dà-bheathach gl:Anfibios ko:양서류 hi:उभयचर hr:Vodozemci io:Amfibio id:Amfibia is:Froskdýr it:Amphibia he:דו-חיים jv:Amfibi kn:ಉಭಯಚರಗಳು pam:Amphibian ka:ამფიბიები kk:Қосмекенділер sw:Amfibia ku:Bejavî la:Amphibia lv:Abinieki lb:Lurchen lt:Varliagyviai lij:Amphibia li:Amfibieë jbo:banfi hu:Kétéltűek mk:Водоземци ml:ഉഭയജീവി mr:उभयचर प्राणी ms:Amfibia my:ကုန်းနေရေနေ သတ္တဝါ nl:Amfibieën ja:両生類 frr:Amfiibie no:Amfibier nn:Amfibium oc:Amphibia pnb:دو پاسی جندڑی ps:دوه ژوندوي nds:Amphibien pl:Płazy pt:Anfíbios kbd:Амфибиэхэр ro:Amfibian rm:Amphibia qu:Allpa yaku kawsaq rue:Земноводны ru:Земноводные sah:Амфибия stq:Amphibien sq:Amfibet scn:Anfibbiu simple:Amphibian sk:Obojživelníky sl:Dvoživke sr:Водоземци sh:Vodozemac su:Ampibi fi:Sammakkoeläimet sv:Groddjur tl:Ampibyan ta:நிலநீர் வாழிகள் tt:Җир-су хайваннары te:ఉభయచరము th:สัตว์สะเทินน้ำสะเทินบก to:Monumanu nofo ʻuta mo vai tr:İki yaşamlılar uk:Земноводні ur:جل تھلیل vi:Động vật lưỡng cư wa:Batracyin war:Ampibyan yi:אמפיביע zh-yue:兩棲動物 zea:Amfibieën zh:两栖动物
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Conan O'Brien |
---|---|
birth name | Conan Christopher O'Brien |
alias | Coco |
birth date | April 18, 1963 |
birth place | Brookline, Massachusetts, United States |
medium | Television |
nationality | American |
active | 1985–present |
genre | Improvisational comedy, sketch comedy, physical comedy, surreal humor, self-deprecation |
subjects | Self-deprecation, pop culture |
influences | Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Robert Smigel |
spouse | Elizabeth Ann Powel (since 2002; 2 children) |
notable work | ''The Simpsons''(writer, producer, 1991–1993)''Late Night with Conan O'Brien''(host, 1993–2009)''The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien''(host, 2009–2010) ''Conan'' (host, 2010–present) |
education | Harvard University |
signature | Conan O'Brien Signature.svg |
O'Brien was born in Brookline, Massachusetts and raised in an Irish Catholic family. He served as president of the ''Harvard Lampoon'' while attending Harvard University, and was a writer for the sketch comedy series ''Not Necessarily the News''. After writing for several comedy shows in Los Angeles, he joined the writing staff of ''Saturday Night Live'', and later of ''The Simpsons''. He hosted ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' from 1993 to 2009, followed by seven months hosting ''The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien'', the only person to serve as host for both NBC programs.
O'Brien attended Brookline High School, where he served as the managing editor of the school newspaper. In his senior year, O'Brien won the National Council of Teachers of English writing contest with his short story, "To Bury the Living". After graduating as valedictorian in 1981, he entered Harvard University. At Harvard, O'Brien lived in Holworthy Hall during his freshman year and Mather House during his three upper-class years. He concentrated in history and literature and graduated ''magna cum laude'' in 1985. His senior thesis concerned the use of children as symbols in the works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. Throughout college, O'Brien was a writer for the ''Harvard Lampoon'' humor magazine. He also briefly served as the drummer in a band called "The Bad Clams". During his sophomore and junior years, he served as the ''Lampoon'''s president. At this time, O'Brien's future boss at NBC, Jeff Zucker, was serving as President of the rival ''The Harvard Crimson''.
O'Brien moved to Los Angeles after graduation to join the writing staff of HBO's ''Not Necessarily the News''. He was also a writer on the short-lived ''The Wilton North Report''. He spent two years with that show and performed regularly with improvisational groups, including The Groundlings. In January 1988, ''Saturday Night Live'''s executive producer, Lorne Michaels, hired O'Brien as a writer. During his three years on ''Saturday Night Live (SNL)'', he wrote such recurring sketches as "Mr. Short-Term Memory" and "The Girl Watchers"; the latter was first performed by Tom Hanks and Jon Lovitz. O'Brien also co-wrote the sketch, "Nude Beach", with Robert Smigel, in which the word "penis" was said or sung at least 42 times. While on a writers' strike from ''Saturday Night Live'' following the 1987–88 season, O'Brien put on an improvisational comedy revue in Chicago with fellow ''SNL'' writers Bob Odenkirk and Robert Smigel called ''Happy Happy Good Show''. While living in Chicago, O'Brien briefly roomed with Jeff Garlin. In 1989, O'Brien and his fellow ''SNL'' writers received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series.
O'Brien, like many ''SNL'' writers, occasionally appeared as an extra in sketches; his most notable appearance was as a doorman in a sketch in which Tom Hanks was inducted into the SNL "Five-Timers Club" for hosting his fifth episode. O'Brien returned to host the show in 2001 during its 26th season. O'Brien and Robert Smigel wrote the television pilot for ''Lookwell'' starring Adam West, which aired on NBC in 1991. The pilot never went to series, but it became a cult hit. It was later screened at ''The Other Network'', a festival of unaired TV pilots produced by Un-Cabaret; it featured an extended interview with O'Brien and was rerun in 2002 on the Trio network.
In his speech given at Class Day at Harvard in 2000, O'Brien credited ''The Simpsons'' with saving him, a reference to the career slump he was experiencing prior to his being hired for the show.
During his time at ''The Simpsons'', O'Brien also had a side project working with former writing partner Robert Smigel on the script for a musical film based on the "Hans and Franz" sketch from ''Saturday Night Live''. The film was never produced.
Beginning in 1996, O'Brien and the ''Late Night'' writing team were nominated annually for the Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series, winning the award for the first and only time in 2007. In 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004, he and the ''Late Night'' writing staff won the Writers Guild Award for Best Writing in a Comedy/Variety Series. In 2001, he formed his own television production company, Conaco, which subsequently shared in the production credits for ''Late Night''.
A long-running joke, which stems from the recurring segment "Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland", is that O'Brien resembles the first female president of Finland, Tarja Halonen. After joking about this for several months (which led to his endorsement of her campaign), O'Brien traveled to Finland, appearing on several television shows and meeting President Halonen. The trip was filmed and aired as a special.
O'Brien ad-libbed the fictional website name "hornymanatee.com" on December 4, 2006, after a sketch about the fictional manatee mascot and its inappropriate webcam site. NBC opted to purchase the website domain name for $159, since the website did not previously exist. The network was concerned that the Federal Communications Commission would hold NBC liable for promoting inappropriate content if a third party were to register the domain and post such material. For a period of time, the website hosted material concerning Conan's initial manatee joke and other ''Tonight Show'' references, but today the site just redirects to NBC's main web page.
A popular recurring bit on the show was "Pale Force", a series of animated episodes in which comedian Jim Gaffigan and O'Brien are superheroes who fight crime with their "paleness". As Gaffigan introduced each new episode, O'Brien protested the portrayal of his character as cowardly, weak, and impotent. , ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' had for eleven years consistently attracted an audience averaging about 2.5 million viewers. O'Brien is an avid guitarist and music listener. When Bruce Springsteen and the Sessions Band appeared on the show as musical guests, O'Brien joined the 17-piece band, along with the Max Weinberg 7 and guests Jimmy Fallon and Thomas Haden Church, playing acoustic guitar and contributing backup vocals for the song "Pay Me My Money Down". On the June 13, 2008, episode of ''Late Night'', O'Brien simply walked onto the stage at the start of the show. Instead of his usual upbeat antics and monologue, O'Brien announced that he had just received news about the sudden death of his good friend, fellow NBC employee and frequent ''Late Night'' guest, Tim Russert. O'Brien proceeded to show two clips of his favorite Russert ''Late Night'' moments. On February 20, 2009, NBC aired the last episode of ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien''. The show consisted of a compilation of previous ''Late Night'' clips and included a surprise appearance by former sidekick, Andy Richter. Will Ferrell, John Mayer, and the White Stripes also appeared. O'Brien ended the episode by destroying the set with an axe, handing out the pieces of the set to the audience, and thanking a list of people who helped him get to that point in his career. Among those thanked were Lorne Michaels, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and O'Brien's wife and children.
During the taping of the Friday, September 25, 2009, episode of ''The Tonight Show'', O'Brien suffered from a mild concussion after he slipped and hit his head while running a race as part of a comedy sketch with guest Teri Hatcher. He was examined at a hospital and released the same day. A rerun was aired that night, but O'Brien returned to work the following Monday and poked fun at the incident.
On January 12, O'Brien released this statement: "I sincerely believe that delaying ''The Tonight Show'' into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. ''The Tonight Show'' at 12:05 simply isn’t ''The Tonight Show.''" On January 21, 2010, it was announced that Conan had reached a deal with NBC that would see him exit ''The Tonight Show'' the next day. The deal also granted him $45 million, of which $12 million was designated for distribution to his staff, who had moved with Conan to Los Angeles from New York when he left ''Late Night''.
The final ''Tonight Show'' with Conan aired January 22, 2010, and featured guests Tom Hanks, Steve Carell (who did an exit interview and shredded Conan's ID badge), Neil Young (singing "Long May You Run"), and Will Ferrell. For Ferrell's appearance, Conan played guitar with the band and Ferrell sang "Free Bird" while reprising his ''SNL'' cowbell. Ferrell's wife, Viveca Paulin, together with Ben Harper, Beck, and ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, also joined the band for this final performance.
Jay Leno returned to ''The Tonight Show'' following NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Under the $45 million deal with NBC, Conan was allowed to start working for another network as soon as September 2010. Conan's rumored next networks ranged anywhere from Fox to Comedy Central.
On February 24, 2010, O'Brien attracted media attention for starting a Twitter account. His tweets, although primarily jokes, amounted to his first public statements since leaving ''The Tonight Show'' one month earlier. After about one hour, O'Brien's subscriber list had rocketed to over 30,000 members and approximately 30 minutes later, he was on the brink of passing 50,000 followers, already 20,000 more than the verified @jayleno account. After 24 hours, O'Brien had well over 300,000 followers. In late May 2010, he surpassed the one million mark for number of Twitter followers, and he has over 3.3 million followers.
O'Brien has been named to the 2010 Time 100, a list compiled by TIME of the 100 most influential people in the world as voted on by readers. After being prohibited from making television appearances of any kind until May, O'Brien spoke about the ''Tonight Show'' conflict on the CBS newsmagazine ''60 Minutes'' on May 2, 2010. During the interview with Steve Kroft, O'Brien said the situation felt "like a marriage breaking up suddenly, violently, quickly. And I was just trying to figure out what happened." He also said he "absolutely" expected NBC to give him more of a chance and that, if in Jay Leno's position, he would not have come back to ''The Tonight Show''. However, Conan said he did not feel he got shafted. "It's crucial to me that anyone seeing this, if they take anything away from this, it's I'm fine. I'm doing great," said O'Brien. "I hope people still find me comedically absurd and ridiculous. And I don't regret anything."
On April 12, 2010, O'Brien opened his two-month comedy tour in Eugene, Oregon, with a crowd of 2,500 and no TV cameras. The tour traveled through America's Northwest and Canada before moving on to larger cities, including Los Angeles and New York City, where he performed on the campuses that house both of the NBC-owned studios he formerly occupied. The tour ended in Atlanta on June 14. With ticket prices starting at $40, "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour" was effectively sold out.
Other networks that were reportedly interested in O'Brien include TBS' sister networks TNT and HBO, Fox, FX, Comedy Central, Showtime, Revision3, and even the NBC Universal-owned USA Network.
On September 1, 2010, O'Brien announced via his Twitter account and Team Coco YouTube page that the title of his new show on TBS would simply be ''Conan''.
O'Brien has made multiple voice appearances on the Adult Swim series ''Robot Chicken'', including the specials ''Robot Chicken: Star Wars'', and ''Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II'' as the voice of the bounty hunter Zuckuss. On the TV show ''30 Rock'', O'Brien is depicted as an ex-boyfriend of lead character Liz Lemon, who works in the same building. In the episode "Tracy Does Conan," Conan appears as himself, awkwardly reunited with Lemon and coerced by network executive Jack Donaghy into having the character Tracy Jordan on ''Late Night'', despite having been assaulted in Jordan's previous appearance.
O'Brien made an appearance on ''Futurama'' in the second-season episode "Xmas Story". O'Brien plays himself as a head in a jar and still alive in the year 3000. O'Brien performs a stand-up routine at a futuristic ski lodge while being heckled by Bender the robot.
O'Brien also made a cameo appearance on the U.S. version of ''The Office''. In the episode "Valentine's Day", Michael believes that he spots former ''SNL'' cast member, Tina Fey, but has actually mistaken another woman for her. In the meantime, Conan has a quick walk-on and the camera crew informs Michael, when he returns from talking to the Tina Fey lookalike.
In January 2010, O'Brien appeared in ''The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice!'' to honor the show he had written for in the early 1990s.
O'Brien created a superhero character with veteran DC Comics animator Bruce Timm during one episode of ''Conan''. Named "The Flaming C", the superhero bears a likeness to O'Brien, with a typically muscular superhero body and costume with chest insignia, but also with idiosyncrasies arbitrarily suggested by O'Brien like an oven mitt, a jai alai glove, marijuana leaf buckle, golf shoes, sock garters and fishnet stockings. O'Brien later aired a clip in which the character appears in ''Young Justice''.
While O'Brien has done few commercials, he "does do plenty of promoting, weaving product pitches into his show"; he has said "it's increasingly incumbent to help with tie-ins [but] if it can't be funny, I'd rather go hungry."
One of O'Brien's trademarks is to perform the "string dance." He also does intentionally poor and exaggerated impressions of celebrities that are often reduced to a specific characteristic, phrase, or gesture that represents that person.
O'Brien repeatedly affirms his Irish Catholic heritage on his show. On a 2009 episode of ''Inside the Actors Studio'', he stated that both sides of his family moved to America from Ireland in the 1850s, subsequently marrying only other Irish Catholics, and that his lineage is thus 100% Irish Catholic.
He has been a staunch Democrat since casting his first vote for President in 1984 for Walter Mondale, although he considers himself a moderate on the political spectrum. O'Brien's longtime friend and former roommate at Harvard is Father Paul B. O' Brien, with whom he founded ''Labels Are For Jars'', an antihunger organization based in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and helped open the ''Cor Unum'' meal center in 2006. The two are not related.
In January 2008, after his show was put on hold for two months owing to the strike by the Writers Guild of America, he reemerged on late-night TV sporting a beard, which guest Tom Brokaw described as making him look like "a draft dodger from the Civil War." After leaving ''The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien'' on Jan. 22, 2010, O'Brien again grew a beard, which he kept until May 2, 2011, when it was partially shaved on the set of his TBS talk show, ''Conan'', by Will Ferrell with battery-operated clippers (and completely shaved off-screen by a professional barber). The event was dubbed on the show as "Beardocalypse," and included a contest for fan-submitted artwork.
O'Brien purchased a $10.5-million mansion in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, to prepare for his move there in 2009 from New York City to host ''The Tonight Show'' at Universal Studios Hollywood. As part of a long running gag, he brought his 1992 Ford Taurus SHO with him to California, showcasing it on both the inaugural episodes of ''The Tonight Show'' and ''Conan''.
In a March 23, 2011, interview with WWE Champion The Miz on ''Conan'', The Miz dubbed Conan "The Ginja Ninja", a reference to Conan's red hair and the fact that he came back fighting to get his new late-night talk show. A week later, "Team Ginja Ninja" T-shirts were available on TeamCoco.com.
;Other shows:
Year | Award | Work | Category | Result |
1989 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program | ||
1990 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program | ||
1991 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program | ||
1996 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | ||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
1998 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | ||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
People's Choice Award | Favorite Late Night Talk Show Host | |||
Telvis Award | For the color spot of the year | Special Telvis | ||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
People's Choice Award | Favorite Late Night Talk Show Host | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
2008 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | ||
Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Variety or Music Program | |||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
Outstanding Comedy, Music or Variety Series | ||||
Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Series | ||||
Writers Guild of America Award | Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series | |||
People's Choice Award | rowspan="4" | Favorite TV Talk Show Host | ||
Outstanding Comedy, Music or Variety Series | ||||
Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Series | ||||
Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety, Music or Comedy Series | ||||
American Express | Outstanding Commercial |
Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:American comedians Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American television writers Category:Emmy Award winners Category:The Groundlings Category:Harvard Lampoon people Category:Harvard University alumni Category:American comedians of Irish descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:Late night television talk show hosts Category:Late Night with Conan O'Brien Category:People from Brookline, Massachusetts Category:Writers from Massachusetts Category:Massachusetts Democrats
ar:كونان أوبراين bg:Конан О'Брайън ca:Conan O'Brien da:Conan O'Brien de:Conan O’Brien et:Conan O'Brien es:Conan O'Brien eo:Conan O'Brien eu:Conan O'Brien fa:کونن اوبراین fr:Conan O'Brien ga:Conan O'Brien id:Conan O'Brien it:Conan O'Brien he:קונאן או'בריין hu:Conan O’Brien nl:Conan O'Brien ja:コナン・オブライエン no:Conan O'Brien pl:Conan O'Brien pt:Conan O'Brien ru:О’Брайен, Конан sq:Conan O'Brien simple:Conan O'Brien fi:Conan O’Brien sv:Conan O'Brien tl:Conan O’Brien th:โคแนน โอ'ไบรอัน tr:Conan O'Brien zh:康納·歐布萊恩This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Sir David Attenborough |
---|---|
birth date | May 08, 1926 |
birth place | Isleworth, London, England |
residence | Richmond, London |
nationality | British |
alma mater | |
occupation | |
title | |
spouse | Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel (m. 1950–1997, her death) |
children | |
footnotes | }} |
He is a younger brother of director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough.
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme ''The Amber Time Machine''.
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in Natural Sciences. In 1947, he was called up for National Service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth.
In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; the marriage lasted until her death in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan.
His son, Robert Attenborough, is a senior lecturer in Bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series ''The Pattern of Animals''. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Sir Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was ''Zoo Quest'', first broadcast in 1954, which Attenborough presented at short notice, due to Lester being taken ill.
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front the ''Zoo Quest'' programmes as well as produce other documentaries, notably the ''Travellers’ Tales'' and ''Adventure'' series.
In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as Controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as Controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included ''Man Alive'', ''Call My Bluff'', ''Chronicle'', ''Life'', ''One Pair of Eyes'', ''The Old Grey Whistle Test'', ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' and ''The Money Programme''. When BBC Two became the first British channel to broadcast in colour in 1967, Attenborough took advantage by introducing televised snooker, as well as bringing rugby league to British television on a regular basis via the BBC2 Floodlit Trophy.
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, ''Civilisation'' set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "tombstone" or "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's ''The Ascent of Man'' (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's ''America''. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Chris Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with the title ''Life on Earth'' and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.
In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to Director of Programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.
On his return, he began to work on the scripts for ''Life on Earth''. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (''The Tribal Eye'', 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (''The Explorers'', 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled ''Fabulous Animals'' (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as the griffin and kraken. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and ''Life on Earth'' moved into production in 1976.
The success of ''Life on Earth'' prompted the BBC to consider a follow-up, and five years later, ''The Living Planet'' was screened. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of livings things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, ''The Trials of Life'' completed the original "Life" trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life. The series drew strong reactions from the viewing public for its sequences of killer whales hunting sea lions on a Patagonian beach and chimpanzees hunting and violently killing a colobus monkey.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" moniker for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented ''Life in the Freezer'', the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver five hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result, ''The Private Life of Plants'' (1995), showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to the animal kingdom and in particular, birds. As he was neither an obsessive twitcher, nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make ''The Life of Birds'' (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For ''The Life of Mammals'' (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, ''Life in the Undergrowth'' introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.
At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants — only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When ''Life in Cold Blood'' was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called ''Life on Land''. In an interview that year, Attenborough was asked to sum up his achievement, and responded:
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his forthcoming ''First Life'' — dealing with evolutionary history before ''Life on Earth'' — should also be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary ''Attenborough's Journey'' he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."
Attenborough narrated every episode of ''Wildlife on One'', a BBC One wildlife series which ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has also narrated over 50 episodes of ''Natural World'', BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. (Its forerunner, ''The World About Us'', was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television.) In 1997, he narrated the ''BBC Wildlife Specials'', each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.
As a writer and narrator, he continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on ''The Trials of Life'' and ''Life in the Freezer'', was making ''The Blue Planet'' (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for ''Planet Earth'' (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television, and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, Attenborough wrote and narrated ''Life'', a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated ''Nature's Great Events'', which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles.
By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In ''State of the Planet'' (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of man's activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (''The Truth about Climate Change'', 2006) and human population growth (''How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?'', 2009). He also contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's ''Saving Planet Earth'' project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.
Interestingly, although Attenborough's documentaries have attained immense popularity in the United States, several have never been made available on DVD in NTSC format, most notably those that cast doubt upon conservative religious or political positions. These include:
He is writing and presenting ''Frozen Planet'', a major new series for BBC One which examines the impact of a warming climate on the people and wildlife of the polar regions. He has also recently completed two projects for BBC Two. ''Madagascar'' (which first aired weekly between the 9 to 23 February 2011) a three-part series giving an overview of Madagascar's unique wildlife. The accompanying documentary ''Attenborough and the Giant Egg'' (which first aired on the 2nd of March 2011) features the elephant bird egg which Attenborough discovered on his first filming expedition to the island in the 1960s.
Attenborough is also forging a new partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration is ''Flying Monsters 3D'', a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day 2010. A second film, ''Penguin Island 3D'', has also been announced. Both are produced by Atlantic Productions, the company behind Attenborough's 2010 series ''First Life''.
In 1990, he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif as part of the BBC's ''Prisoners of Conscience'' series.
In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled ''David Attenborough's Life Stories'', they are broadcast on Radio 4 in the Friday night slot vacated by Alistair Cooke's ''Letter from America''. Part of Radio 4's ''A Point of View'' strand, the talks are also available as podcasts.
He appeared in the 2009 Children's Prom at the BBC Promenade Concerts and in the Last Night of the Proms on 12 September 2009, playing a floor polisher in Sir Malcolm Arnold's "A Grand, Grand Overture" (after which he was "shot" by Rory Bremner, who was playing the gun).
Attenborough also serves on the advisory board of ''BBC Wildlife'' magazine.
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time". His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and has influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (2000) and the Society of Antiquaries (2007).
Attenborough was named as the most trusted celebrity in Britain in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll,. and the following year he won ''The Culture Show'''s Living Icon Award. He has also been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to ''New Statesman'' magazine.
He has the distinction of having a number of newly-discovered species and fossils being named in his honour. In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile ''Plesiosaurus conybeari'' had not, in fact, been a true plesiosaur, the paleontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species ''Attenborosaurus conybeari''. A fossilised armoured fish discovered at the Gogo Formation, Western Australia in 2008 was given the name ''Materpiscis attenboroughi'', after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in ''Life on Earth''. The ''Materpiscis'' fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation.
He has also lent his name to a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree, ''Blakea attenboroughi'', one of the world's largest carnivorous plants, ''Nepenthes attenboroughii'', and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna, the critically endangered ''Zaglossus attenboroughi'', discovered by explorer and zoologist Tim Flannery in the Cyclops Mountains of New Guinea in 1998.
In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.
However, his closing message from ''State of the Planet'' was forthright:
The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there's a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species.
Attenborough has subsequently become more vocal in his support of environmental causes. In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International project to stop the killing of albatross by longline fishing boats. He gave public support to WWF's campaign to have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's rainforest designated a protected area. He also serves as a vice-president of BTCV, vice-president of Fauna and Flora International, president of Butterfly Conservation and president of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. In 2003 he launched an appeal to create a rainforest reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher Parsons, the producer of ''Life on Earth'' and a personal friend, who had died the previous year. The same year, he helped to launch ARKive, a global project instigated by Parsons to gather together natural history media into a digital library. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of which Attenborough is a patron. He later became patron of the World Land Trust, and an active supporter. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal.
Attenborough has repeatedly said that he considers human overpopulation to be the root cause of many environmental problems. In ''The Life of Mammals'', he made a plea for humans to curb population growth so that other species will not be crowded out. In 2009, he became a patron of Population Matters, (formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust), a UK charity advocating sustainable human populations.
He has written and spoken publicly about the fact that, despite past scepticism, he believes the Earth's climate is warming in a way that is cause for concern, and that this can likely be attributed to human activity. He summed up his thoughts at the end of his 2006 documentary "Can We Save Planet Earth?" as follows:
In the past, we didn't understand the effect of our actions. Unknowingly, we sowed the wind and now, literally, we are reaping the whirlwind. But we no longer have that excuse: now we do recognise the consequences of our behaviour. Now surely, we must act to reform it — individually and collectively, nationally and internationally — or we doom future generations to catastrophe.
In a 2005 interview with ''BBC Wildlife'' magazine, Attenborough said he considered George W. Bush to be the era's top "environmental villain". In 2007, he further elaborated on the USA's consumption of energy in relation to its population. When asked if he thought America to be "the villain of the piece", he responded:
I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [...] If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it.
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world."
In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson, Attenborough was asked if he at any time had any religious faith. He replied simply, "No." He has also said "It never really occurred to me to believe in God".
In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation. In 2009, Attenborough stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to dominate, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment, and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of the environment. Attenborough further explained to the science journal ''Nature'', "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in."
Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast an Attenborough one-hour special, ''Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life''. In reference to the programme, Attenborough stated that "People write to me that evolution is only a theory. Well, it is not a theory. Evolution is as solid a historical fact as you could conceive. Evidence from every quarter. What is a theory is whether natural selection is the mechanism and the only mechanism. That is a theory. But the historical reality that dinosaurs led to birds and mammals produced whales, that's not theory." He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot "intelligent design", saying that a survey that found a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons was "really terrible".
In March 2009, Attenborough appeared on ''Friday Night with Jonathan Ross''. Attenborough stated that he felt evolution did not rule out the existence of a God and accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God."
PSB, to me, is not about selecting individual programme strands here or there, financing them from some outside source and then foisting them upon commercial networks. Public Service Broadcasting, watched by a healthy number of viewers, with programmes financed in proportion to their intrinsic needs and not the size of the audience, can only effectively operate as a network — a network whose aim is to cater for the broadest possible range of interests, popular as well as less popular, a network that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule.
Public service broadcasting is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here. I have spent all my life in it. I would be very distressed if public service broadcasting was weakened. I have been at the BBC since 1952, and know the BBC is constantly being battered. It is today.
If you could demonstrate that the BBC was grossly extravagant there might be a case for saying OK take it away. But in fact the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. If you take the money away, which part of the BBC will you remove? The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts. It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. There is always that threat from politicians who will say your licence fee is up for grabs. We will take it. There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.
There have always been politicians or business people who have wanted to cut the BBC back or stop it saying the sort of things it says. There's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland.
Attenborough expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by Director-General John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and even closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation’s output to private production companies, in line with the Broadcasting Act 1990. He has said:
There is no question but that Birtism . . . has had some terrible results. On the other hand, the BBC had to change. Now it has to produce programmes no one else can do. Otherwise, forget the licence fee.
The Bristol Unit has suffered along with the rest of the BBC from recent staff cuts. Yet it remains confident in the belief that the BBC will maintain it, in spite of the vagaries of fashion, because the Corporation believes that such programmes deserve a place in the schedules of any broadcaster with pretensions of providing a Public Service. In due course, similar specialist Units were also established in London, in order to produce programmes on archaeology and history, on the arts, on music and on science. They too, at one time, had their successes. But they have not survived as well as the Unit in Bristol. The statutory requirement that a certain percentage of programmes must come from independent producers has reduced in-house production and the Units necessarily shrank proportionately in size. As they dwindled, so the critical mass of their production expertise has diminished. The continuity of their archives has been broken, they have lost the close touch they once had worldwide with their subjects and they are no longer regarded internationally as the centres of innovation and expertise that they once were.
When Birt gets up and says the whole of the BBC was a creative mess and it was wasteful, I never saw any evidence of that. I absolutely know it wasn’t so in my time. Producers now spend all their time worrying about money, and the thing has suffered for it.
In 2008, he criticised the BBC’s television schedules:
I have to say that there are moments when I wonder — moments when its two senior networks, first set up as a partnership, schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network. Then there are times when both BBC One and BBC Two, intoxicated by the sudden popularity of a programme genre, allow that genre to proliferate and run rampant through the schedules. The result is that other kinds of programmes are not placed, simply because of a lack of space. Do we really require so many gardening programmes, make-over programmes or celebrity chefs? Is it not a scandal in this day and age, that there seems to be no place for continuing series of programmes about science or serious music or thoughtful in-depth interviews with people other than politicians?
In 2009, Attenborough commented on the general state of British television, describing the newly introduced product placement on commercial television as something he considered an "appalling" idea 20 years earlier:
I think it's in great trouble. The whole system on which it was built — a limited number of networks, with adequate funding — is under threat. That funding is no longer there. As stations proliferate, so audiences are reduced. The struggle for audiences becomes ever greater, while money diminishes. I think that's a fair recipe for trouble. Inevitably, this has an impact on the BBC … Fortunately, the BBC doesn't think natural history programmes must compete with ''Strictly Come Dancing'' in terms of audience. The BBC says, 'Make proper, responsible natural history programmes.'
Attenborough is also an honorary member of BSES Expeditions, a youth development charity that operates challenging scientific research expeditions to remote wilderness environments.
"Time Flies", a sketch by David Ives, features a pair of anthropomorphic mayflies engaging in a courtship ritual, while watching themselves on television in a documentary narrated by David Attenborough.
The character of Nigel Thornberry, a nature documentarian on Nickelodeon's The Wild Thornberrys is strongly influenced by Attenborough.
He has also been parodied by the Australia 1980s sketch show The Comedy Company where Ian McFadyen portrays a character called David Rabbitborough.
The video game ''Discworld'', based on the series of books by Terry Pratchett, parodies his unique delivery to explain different aspects of the Discworld Universe, such as L-Space.
Mythbusters host Adam Savage often imitates Attenborough when speaking about his co-host Jamie Hyneman, which Jamie verified in the YouTube Special Episode.
Attenborough is known foremost for writing and presenting the ten ''Life'' series, which are presented in chronological order below:
His voice is synonymous with wildlife documentaries for British audiences, and the principal series with which his narration is associated include:
In addition, Attenborough has recorded some of his own works in audiobook form, including ''Life on Earth'', ''Zoo Quest for a Dragon'' and his autobiography ''Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster''.
Category:1926 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Category:Alumni of University College London Category:BBC Two controllers Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order Category:English agnostics Category:English conservationists Category:English environmentalists Category:English television personalities Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London Category:Fellows of the Zoological Society of London Category:Kalinga Prize recipients Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Members of the Linnean Society of London Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Members of the Order of Merit Category:People associated with the University of Leicester Category:People from Leicester Category:People from London Category:Presenters of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures Category:British Book Award winners
ar:ديفيد آتينبارا bn:ডেভিড অ্যাটেনব্রো zh-min-nan:David Attenborough bg:Дейвид Атънбъро ca:David Attenborough cs:David Attenborough da:David Attenborough de:David Attenborough et:David Attenborough es:David Attenborough eo:David Attenborough fa:دیوید اتنبرو fr:David Attenborough ga:David Attenborough id:Sir David Attenborough it:David Attenborough he:דייוויד אטנבורו la:David Attenborough hu:David Attenborough nl:David Attenborough ja:デイビッド・アッテンボロー no:David Attenborough pnb:ڈیوڈ ایٹن برا pl:David Attenborough pt:David Attenborough ru:Аттенборо, Дэвид simple:David Attenborough szl:David Attenborough fi:David Attenborough sv:David Attenborough tl:David Attenborough ta:டேவிட் ஆட்டன்பரோ th:เดวิด แอทเทนเบอเรอห์ uk:Девід Аттенборо ur:ڈیوڈ ایٹن برا zh:戴維·阿滕伯勒This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.