Las Vegas

Las Vegas (/lɑːs ˈveɪɡəs/, also locally /lɑːs ˈvɛɡᵻs/; Spanish: [laz ˈβeɣas]) officially the City of Las Vegas and often known as simply Vegas, is a city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, the county seat of Clark County, and the city proper of the Las Vegas Valley. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city known primarily for gambling, shopping, fine dining and nightlife and is the leading financial and cultural center for Southern Nevada.

The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous for its mega casino–hotels and associated entertainment. A growing retirement and family city, Las Vegas is the 29th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 603,488 at the 2013 United States Census Estimates. The 2013 population of the Las Vegas metropolitan area was 2,027,828. The city is one of the top three leading destinations in the United States for conventions, business, and meetings. In addition, the city's metropolitan area has more AAA Five Diamond hotels than any other city in the world, and is a global leader in the hospitality industry. Today, Las Vegas is one of the top tourist destinations in the world.

Jimmy Kimmel

James Christian "Jimmy" Kimmel (born November 13, 1967) is an American television host, producer, writer, comedian, voice actor, musician and radio personality. He is the host and executive producer of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, a late-night talk show that premiered on ABC in 2003. Kimmel also hosted the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards on September 23, 2012.

Prior to hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he was best known as the co-host of Comedy Central's The Man Show and Win Ben Stein's Money. Kimmel has also produced such shows as Crank Yankers, Sports Show with Norm Macdonald, and The Andy Milonakis Show.

Early life

Kimmel was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in the neighborhood of Mill Basin the eldest of three children of Joan (née Iacono), a homemaker, and James John Kimmel, an IBM executive.

He is, and was raised, Catholic, and as a child served as an altar boy. Kimmel's mother is of Italian ancestry; two of his paternal great-great-grandparents were German emigrants, and his family's surname was "Kümmel" several generations back. The family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, when he was nine years old. He graduated from Ed W. Clark High School.

Mandalay Bay

Mandalay Bay is a 43-story luxury hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. It is owned and operated by MGM Resorts International. One of the property's towers operates as the Delano, also the Four Seasons Hotel is independently operated within the Mandalay Bay tower, occupying 5 floors (35–39).

Mandalay Bay has 3,309 hotel rooms, 24 elevators and a casino of 135,000 square feet (12,500 m²). Adjacent to the hotel are the 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m²) Mandalay Bay Convention Center and the 12,000-seat Mandalay Bay Events Center. The Mandalay Bay Tram connects the resort to its sister properties, Excalibur and Luxor, all three of which were constructed by Circus Circus Enterprises before its sale to MGM.

History

Circus Circus Enterprises bought the Hacienda for $80 million in 1995. They closed it on December 1, 1996, and imploded it on New Year's Eve, 1996. The Mandalay Bay project was introduced on December 31, 1996, as Hawaiian-themed, "Project Paradise" and had a cost of $950 million. In February 1998, the project was renamed Mandalay Bay, despite the fact there is no actual bay in the inland city of Mandalay in Myanmar (Burma).

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Jimmy Kimmel Live! is an American late-night talk show, created and hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, and broadcast on ABC. The nightly hour-long show made its debut on January 26, 2003, as the first program to air immediately following ABC's coverage of Super Bowl XXXVII. Jimmy Kimmel Live! is produced by Jackhole Productions in association with ABC Studios. Having aired for more than twice as long as either the The Dick Cavett Show (1969–1975) or Politically Incorrect (1997–2002), it is the longest running late-night talk show in ABC's history at 13 years and counting as of 15 February 2016.

For its first ten years, the show aired at either the Midnight or 12:05 AM timeslot before moving to 11:35 pm ET beginning on January 8, 2013 to more directly compete with The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Show with David Letterman while bumping the ABC nightly news program Nightline to 12:35 am ET. Following the subsequent retirements of Leno in February 2014 and Letterman in May 2015, Kimmel is now the longest serving host in network late-night television.

TMZ

TMZ is a celebrity news website that debuted on November 8, 2005. It was a collaboration between AOL and Telepictures Productions, a division of Warner Bros., until Time Warner divested AOL in 2009. The name TMZ stands for thirty-mile zone, the historic "studio zone" within a 30-mile (50 km) radius centered at the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.

TMZ's managing editor is Harvey Levin, a lawyer-turned-journalist who was previously a legal expert for the Los Angeles television station KCBS-TV. The site claims that it does not pay for stories or interviews; however, Levin has admitted that TMZ does "sometimes pay sources for leads on stories". Levin has stated that "everything is researched and vetted for accuracy." A companion television series, TMZ on TV, debuted on September 10, 2007.

Development

Seven months prior to the official launch of TMZ, America Online (AOL) had hinted that it was planning to launch a Hollywood and entertainment-centric news site that would be produced in conjunction with Telepictures Productions and had shown interest in launching a website featuring a focus mainly on celebrities. At the time of the launch, AOL confirmed that the site would primarily feature and consist of Hollywood gossip, including interviews, photos and video footage of celebrities and information pertaining to industry news on movies, television shows, etc. The site was described as "an effort to further feed the current American obsession with celebrities". Mike Shields of MediaWeek.com wrote, "the site also boasts of an expansive collection of archived star photos and videos", allowing fans to "trace changing hairlines and waistlines of their favorites performers over the years".