- published: 17 Oct 2014
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A television program (usually television programme outside North America), also called television show, is a segment of content intended for broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series. A single program in a series is called an episode.
A television series that is intended to comprise a limited number of episodes is usually called a miniseries or serial. Series without a fixed length are usually divided into seasons or series, yearly or biannual installments of new episodes. While there is no defined length, US industry practice tends to favor longer seasons than those of some other countries.
A one-time broadcast may be called a "special", or particularly in the UK a "special episode". A television movie ("made-for-TV movie" or television film), is a film that is initially broadcast on television rather than released in cinemas or direct-to-video, although many successful TV movies are later released on DVD.
A program can be either recorded—as on video tape or other various electronic media forms—or considered live television.
Carl Edward Sagan ( /ˈseɪɡɪn/; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote. The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. Sagan wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name.
Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Ukrainian Jewish family. His father, Sam Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine; his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, a housewife. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagan's words, "the mother she never knew." Sagan graduated from Rahway High School in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1951.
Martin John C. Freeman (born 8 September 1971) is an English actor. He is known for his roles as Tim Canterbury in the BBC's Golden Globe-winning comedy The Office, John in Love Actually, Arthur Dent in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. Watson in Sherlock and Paul Maddens in Nativity!. He has been cast in the lead role of Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's two-part adaptation of The Hobbit.
Martin Freeman was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, the youngest of five children. His father, Geoffrey, a naval officer, and his mother, Philomena separated when Freeman was a child, and when Freeman was ten, Geoffrey died of a heart attack. Freeman was raised Roman Catholic. As a child, Freeman was asthmatic, and had to undergo a hip operation due to a "dodgy" leg. He was schooled at a Catholic comprehensive before attending London's Central School of Speech and Drama.
In an edition of Who Do You Think You Are? aired on 19 August 2009, he discovered that his grandfather, Leonard Freeman, was a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II. Private L W Freeman, a Territorial Army volunteer in the 150(N) Field Ambulance Regiment, was killed in Northern France on 24 May 1940 in a Stuka dawn attack. His unit was evacuated from Dunkirk two days later.