Media in Manchester integral part of Manchester's culture and economy for many generations and has been described as the only other British city to rival to London in terms of television broadcasting. Today, Manchester is second largest centre of the creative and digital industries in Europe.

Most notable television exports include the longest running serial soap drama in the world in Coronation Street and the longest running documentary series in 7 Up!, A wide array of award-winning British television programmes have originated from, and often been set in Manchester, such as Coronation Street, A Question of Sport, Dragon's Den, The Royle Family, University Challenge, Mastermind, Songs of Praise, Top of the Pops, It's a Knockout, World in Action, Seven Up!, Jewel in the Crown, Brideshead Revisited, Stars in Their Eyes, The Krypton Factor, Red Dwarf, Life on Mars, Cold Feet, Cracker and The Street. In the BFI TV list of greatest British television programmes decided by industry professionals in 2000, nine television programmes which were devised and produced in Manchester made the top 50.

Coordinates: 53°28′N 2°14′W / 53.467°N 2.233°W / 53.467; -2.233

Manchester ⁱ/ˈmæntʃɛstər/ is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England with an estimated population of 498,800 in 2010. Manchester lies within one of the United Kingdom's largest urban areas; the Greater Manchester Urban Area which has a population of 2.2 million. The demonym of Manchester is Mancunian and the local authority is Manchester City Council.

Manchester is situated in the south-central part of North West England, fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south and the Pennines to the north and east. The recorded history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort of Mamucium, which was established in c. 79 AD on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Historically, most of the city was a part of Lancashire, although areas south of the River Mersey were in Cheshire. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township, but it began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city. An early 19th-century factory building boom transformed Manchester from a township into a major mill town and borough that was granted city status in 1853. In 1894 the Manchester Ship Canal was built, creating the Port of Manchester.

Garry Cook (born 10 January 1958) is a former British athlete, who competed mainly in the 800 metres with a best time of 1:44.55.

He competed for Great Britain in the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, United States in the 4 x 400 metre relay where he won the Silver medal with his team mates Kriss Akabusi, Todd Bennett and Philip Brown.

He was a World Record holder in the rarely run 4x800m as a part of a quartet that also contained Peter Elliott, Steve Cram and Sebastian Coe. They ran a time of 7 minutes 3.89 seconds on 30 August 1982 at Crystal Palace.

After a successful athletics career, Cook qualified as a teacher specialising in Physical Education and Geography. His most notable teaching role to date is a post at Hallfield School in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Hallfield School is an independent primary day school, enrolling pupils from aged 2–11. Cook left Hallfield School in the summer of 2003 to take up a more senior teaching post at a school in Walsall.

He is married to former fellow Olympian Kathy Cook; they have three children, Sarah (1988), Matthew (1989) and George (1992) and reside in Walsall, England.

Alexander L. Gustafsson (born January 15, 1987) is a Swedish professional mixed martial artist who has competed for Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki, Shooto, FinnFight and UFC in his career. He is currently signed with the UFC fighting in their light heavyweight division. As of April 2012, Gustafsson is ranked the #7 light-heavyweight in the world by MMAWeekly and as #4 by Fight! Magazine

Gustafsson started training MMA in 2006, and before that he trained in boxing which he started when he was around 10 years old. Before signing with the UFC, Gustafsson fought mostly in smaller promotions in Sweden and other parts of Europe. By 2009, he had racked up a perfect pro-record of 8-0, with 6 wins coming by the way of KO/TKO.

He made his UFC debut against Jared Hamman on November 14, 2009 at UFC 105. Gustafsson won the fight via KO at 0:41 in round 1.

His next fight was against Phil Davis at UFC 112 in the preliminary card. Gustafsson was defeated by Davis due to submission (anaconda choke) at 4:55 of the first round. Prior to this, Gustafsson showed good wrestling and takedown defense which Joe Rogan praised him for. Gustafsson even attempted a takedown of his own. Finally he succumbed to Davis' takedown and was submitted.

Philip Kim is a condensed matter physicist known for study of quantum transport in carbon nanotubes and graphene, including observations of quantum Hall effects in graphene.

Kim studied physics at Seoul National University and earned his bachelor's degree in 1990 and a master's degree in 1992, and a doctorate in applied physics at Harvard University in 1999 under the supervision of Charles Lieber. He worked at the University of California, Berkeley as a Miller Research Fellow until 2001, when he joined the faculty at Columbia University.

Kim and coworkers have made important contributions in the field of nanoscale low-dimensional materials. In 1999, he and Lieber published a highly cited paper on electrostatically controlled carbon nanotube NEMS devices. In Feb. 2005, his group at Columbia reported electrical measurements of thin graphite films produced by an atomic force microscope technique. In Sept. 2005, they reported observation of the quantum Hall effect in single graphene layers simultaneously with the group of Andre Geim, and in 2007, the two groups jointly published observations of the quantum Hall effect in graphene at room temperature. Kim's group authored an influential paper in 2007 describing a transport gap introduced by lithographic patterning of graphene to form nanoribbons. This was an important proof of principle in the development of graphene electronics as it allowed on-off switching of the graphene devices by a factor of 1000 at low temperature. In Feb. 2009, his group and coworkers have synthesized the large-scale graphene films by CVD method. He indicated that the quality of CVD-grown graphene is comparable to that of mechanically cleaved graphene, as observation of the half-integer quantum Hall effect in CVD-grown graphene. The group reported observation of the fractional quantum Hall effect in suspended graphene in Nov. 2009.