CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS, CBSA) is an American mass media corporation focused on commercial broadcasting, publishing, billboards and television production, with most of its operations in the United States. The president and chief executive of the company is Leslie Moonves. Sumner Redstone, owner of National Amusements, is CBS's majority shareholder and serves as executive chairman. The company began trading on the NYSE on January 3, 2006. Until then, the corporation was known as Viacom, and is the legal successor to said company. A new company, keeping the Viacom name was spun off from CBS. CBS, not Viacom, retains control of over-the-air television (CBS, CW) and radio broadcasting, TV production and distribution, publishing, pay-cable, recording, and outdoor advertising assets formerly owned by the larger company. CBS has its headquarters in CBS Building, Midtown, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States.

Viacom was created in 1970 as the television syndication division of CBS, and was spun off in 1971. However, in 1999, Viacom acquired its former parent, by this time also named CBS Corporation, formerly Westinghouse Electric. The prior CBS Corporation also owned CMT and The Nashville Network (now Spike), which remained Viacom properties after the 2005 split, but the prior CBS did not own UPN, Showtime, Paramount Television, Paramount Parks, or Simon and Schuster.

John Emil List (September 17, 1925 – March 21, 2008) was a US fugitive convicted of murder. On November 9, 1971, he killed his wife, mother, and three children in their home in Westfield, New Jersey, and then disappeared. He had planned the murders so meticulously that nearly a month passed before anyone noticed that anything was amiss. A fugitive from justice for nearly 18 years, List, after assuming a false identity and remarrying, was finally apprehended on June 1, 1989, after the story of his murders was broadcast on America's Most Wanted. List was found guilty of the murders and sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment. He died of pneumonia while in prison custody in 2008.

Born in Bay City, Michigan, List was the only child of German American parents, John Frederick List (1859–1944) and Alma Maria Barbara Florence List (1887–1971). He was a devout Lutheran and taught Sunday school. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and later was given an ROTC commission as a Second Lieutenant. He attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's degree in accounting. List met his wife, Helen, in 1951, and they married shortly after.

James George Janos (born July 15, 1951), better known as Jesse Ventura, is an American statesman, actor, author, and former professional wrestler who served as the 38th Governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003.

Ventura served as a Navy UDT during the Vietnam War. He later embarked on an 11-year professional wrestling career from 1975 to 1986, taking up the stage name Jesse "The Body" Ventura. He had a long tenure in the World Wrestling Federation as a performer and color commentator, and was inducted into the company's Hall of Fame in 2004. After leaving wrestling, Ventura began a successful film career, appearing in films such as 1987's Predator.

Ventura first entered politics as Mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota from 1991 to 1995. He ran as the Reform Party candidate in the Minnesota gubernatorial election of 1998, running a campaign centered on grassroots events and unusual ads that implored citizens not to "vote for politics as usual". The campaign was successful, and Ventura served from January 4, 1999, to January 6, 2003, without running for a second term.