Harris Interactive, Inc.

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Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: HPOL
Industry	Market research
Predecessor(s)	1956 (1956) (Louis Harris & Associates) 1975 (1975) (Gordon S. Black Corporation)
Founded	1997 (1997)
Founder(s)	Gordon S. Black
Headquarters	New York, New York
Key people	Howard Shecter (Chairman)[1] Al Angrisani (President and CEO)[1]
Revenue	US$ 165 million (2011)[2]
Operating income	(US$ 7 million) (2011)[2]
Net income	(US$ 8 million) (2011)[2]
Total assets	US$ 72 million (2011)[2]
Total equity	US$ 11 million (2011)[2]
Employees	733 (full-time), 187 (part-time) (2011)[2]
Website	www.harrisinteractive.com

Harris Interactive (NASDAQ: HPOL), headquartered in New York, New York, is a market research firm, known for the Harris Poll. Harris works in a wide range of industries, across countries and territories through North America, Europe, and Asia. The company is a member of several research organizations, including the US National Council of Public Polls, the British Polling Council , the Council of American Survey Research Organizations, the US Council for Marketing and Opinion Research, and the UK Market Research Society.

History[link]

Former headquarters in Brighton, Monroe County, New York

Harris Interactive was founded by Dr. Gordon S. Black in 1975, then a professor of political science at the University of Rochester in New York. The company was originally named the Gordon S. Black Corporation. In 1996, it acquired Louis Harris & Associates (founded in 1956) from the Gannett Corporation. In 1997, the merged company renamed itself Harris Black International Ltd.^[3]

Growth of online polling[link]

In 1997, the Internet was relatively new to the non-technical public. Harris Black International Ltd began exploring its use in the fall of that year.^[3] In December 1999, it went public and re-branded itself as Harris Interactive, a name that hinted at the increasing role of interactive surveys on the Internet.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Sale of Business[link]

The Gordon S. Black Corporation was founded in 1975 as a New York corporation. It formed and became part of the Delaware corporation now known as Harris Interactive in 1997. During these years, the company’s acquisitions have included:

• February 1996 — all of the stock of Louis Harris and Associates, Inc., headquartered in New York.^[3]
• February 2001 — the custom research division of Yankelovich Partners, Inc., headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut.^[4]
• August 2001 — all of the capital stock of Market Research Solutions Limited, a privately-owned U.K. company headquartered in Oxford, England.^[3]
• September 2001 — all of the capital stock of M&A Create Limited, a privately-owned company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.^[3]
• November 2001 — all of the capital stock of Total Research Corporation, a Delaware corporation headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey.^[3]
• March 2004 — all of the capital stock of Novatris, S.A. (“Novatris”), a share corporation organized and existing under the laws of France.^[3]
• September 2004 — all of the capital stock of Wirthlin Worldwide, Inc. a privately-held California corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia.^[5]
• April 2007 — all of the capital stock of MediaTransfer AG Netresearch & Consulting, a privately-held German stock corporation headquartered in Hamburg, Germany.^[6]
• August 2007 — all of the capital stock of Decima Research Inc. (“Decima”), a corporation incorporated in Ontario, Canada.^[7]
• August 2007 — all of the capital stock of Marketshare Limited, a company incorporated under the laws of Hong Kong, and Marketshare Pte Ltd, a company incorporated under the laws of Singapore.^[7]

Harris Poll[link]

The Harris Poll has been running since 1963 and covers a broad variety of topics.^[8] In 1997, Harris Interactive began developing an on-line version of The Harris Poll. It has also developed several Internet-based polls in conjunction with other companies.

References[link]

"Harris Interactive Files Suit Against AOL, Microsoft, Qwest, and other ISPs Over Restraint of Trade"

"Harris Interactive Drops Lawsuit Against MAPS, ISPs" in Direct, Sept 13, 2000.</ref>

"Harris Interactive- Information from Answers.com"

Ed Harris
Harris at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Edward Allen Harris (1950-11-28) November 28, 1950 (age 61) Englewood, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, director, screenwriter
Years active	1978–present
Spouse	Amy Madigan (1983–present)

Edward Allen "Ed" Harris (born November 28, 1950) is an American actor, writer, and director, known for his performances in Appaloosa, The Rock, The Abyss, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, A History of Violence, The Truman Show, and The Hours. Harris has also narrated commercials for The Home Depot and other companies. He is a three-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, along with an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for the title role in Pollock.

Early and personal life[link]

Harris was born in Englewood Hospital, and raised in Tenafly,^[1] the son of Margaret, a travel agent, and Robert L. Harris, who sang with the Fred Waring chorus and worked at the bookstore of the Art Institute of Chicago.^[2] He has an older brother, Robert, and a younger brother, Spencer. His parents were originally from Oklahoma.^[3] Harris was raised in a middle-class Presbyterian family.^[4][5][6] He graduated from Tenafly High School in 1969, where he played on the football team, serving as the team's captain in his senior year.^[7][8] He was a star athlete in high school,^[1] and competed in athletics at Columbia University in 1969. Two years later his family moved to New Mexico, and he followed, after having discovered his interest in acting in various theater plays. He enrolled at the University of Oklahoma to study drama.^[1] After several successful roles in the local theater, he moved to Los Angeles, and enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts.

Harris's wife is actress Amy Madigan. The couple married on 21 November 1983, while they were filming Places in the Heart in which they played an adulterous couple. They have a daughter, Lilly Dolores Harris, born in 1993.^[9]

Career[link]

Harris at the premiere of A History of Violence at the Toronto International Film Festival, 2005

Harris's first important film role was in Borderline with Charles Bronson. In Knightriders (1981), he played the king of a motorcycle-riding renaissance-fair troupe in a role modeled after King Arthur.

In 1983, Harris became well known, after playing astronaut John Glenn in The Right Stuff.^[1] Twelve years later, a film with a similar theme led to Harris being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his portrayal of NASA flight director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13.^[1]

Further Oscar nominations arrived in 1999, 2001, and 2003, for The Truman Show, Pollock, and The Hours, respectively. Harris also portrayed a German Army sniper, Major Erwin König, in Enemy at the Gates (2001). He appeared as a vengeful mobster in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005) and as a police officer alongside Casey Affleck and Morgan Freeman, in Gone, Baby, Gone (2007), directed by Ben Affleck. Also in 2007, he appeared in National Treasure: Book of Secrets as antagonist Mitch Wilkinson.

Along with theatrical films, he has starred in television adaptations of Riders of the Purple Sage (1996) and Empire Falls (2005).

Harris made his cinema directing debut in 2000, with Pollock, in which he starred as the acclaimed American artist Jackson Pollock.^[1] He has also portrayed such diverse real-life characters as William Walker, a 19th Century American who appointed himself president of Nicaragua, in the film Walker, Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt in the Oliver Stone biopic Nixon, composer Ludwig van Beethoven in the film Copying Beethoven, and Senator John McCain in HBO's made-for-television drama Game Change.

Harris has directed a number of theater productions as well as having an active stage acting career. Most notably, he starred in the production of Neil LaBute's one-man play Wrecks at the Public Theater in New York City and later at the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles. For the LA production, he won the LA Drama Critics Circle Award. Wrecks premiered at the Everyman Theater in Cork, Ireland and then in the US at the Public Theater in New York.

Harris and wife Amy Madigan starred together in Ash Adams' indie crime drama Once Fallen, alongside Brian Presley, Sharon Gless, Adams himself, and a large all-star cast. It was released in 2010.

Anti SAG/AFTRA merger[link]

On 30 March 2012, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) completed a merger of equals to form a new union SAG-AFTRA. Harris along with former SAG President Edward Asner, Martin Sheen, Valerie Harper as well as voice actors Michael Bell and Wendy Schall to name a few are adamantly opposed to such as merger and have filed a lawsuit against SAG President Ken Howard and several SAG Vice Presidents seeking to have the merger overturned and the two unions separated to their pre-merger organizations.^[10][11] The lawsuit is currently working its way through the court system.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ed Harris

• Ed Harris at the Internet Movie Database
• Ed Harris at the TCM Movie Database
• Ed Harris at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ed Harris at the Internet Off-Broadway Database