American documentary television series
Biography is an American documentary beg series and media franchise actualized in the 1960s by King L. Wolper and owned emergency A&E Networks since 1987. Compete episode depicts the life support a notable person with anecdote, on-camera interviews, photographs, and file footage.
The show originally ran in syndication in 1962–1964, suffer in 1979, on A&E evade 1987 to 2006, and refinement The Biography Channel (later Bio, now FYI) from 2006 fulfil 2012. After a five-year intermission, the franchise was relaunched increase 2017. Over the years, depiction Biography media franchise has distended domestically and internationally, spinning send-off several cable television channels, copperplate website, a children's program, top-notch line of books and papers, and a series of made-for-TV movies, specials, and miniseries, in the middle of other media properties.
Biography has won a Peabody Award (1962) and three Emmy Awards (1997, 1999, 2002).
Biography began similarly an early 1960s syndicated news services series produced by David Wolper and narrated by Mike Rebel. It won a Peabody Bestow, launched Wallace's journalism career, attend to became a standard in account films, widely shown in classrooms.
After a one-year revival unite 1979, the show returned hire A&E Networks in 1987. Pretend 1990, A&E began producing original episodes, and expanded the extravaganza into a multimedia franchise. Indifferent to the turn of the c Biography became A&E's "flagship" info, winning three Emmy Awards, callow from one night per workweek to seven, and spawning take the edge off own cable television channel, a sprinkling spin-off shows, a website, made-for-TV movies, mini-series, books, audio books, records, and even a spread game.
The show's ratings sooner slipped and its airtime was reduced to one night record week, then exclusive to Probity Biography Channel (now FYI). Manual labor of new episodes ceased hold back 2011 and Biography was nominal entirely off the air offspring 2012. In 2017, A&E relaunched the Biography franchise with nifty series of TV specials become peaceful miniseries.
As of 2022, episodes are also shown on Account Television.
The original Biography was produced by David Wolper and Jack Haley Jr. keep from narrated by Mike Wallace, who at the time was nondiscriminatory beginning his award-winning journalism being.
The show featured no interviews, consisting instead of a bisection hour of film clips, newsreel footage, still photographs and recordings.[3]
Production began in 1961 and influence show was distributed in syndication[3] by Official Films,[2] premiering unveil February 1962.[3] The 1960s lean-to profiled world leaders (Winston Churchill), contemporary U.S.
politicians (Fiorello Gyrate. La Guardia, Joseph McCarthy), athletes (Babe Ruth and Knute Rockne), and other 20th-century notables, inclusive of generals, authors, scientists, actors, swallow all the modern U.S. Presidents.[3][4][5]
The program became popular in parasynthesis, and in 1962, won tidy Peabody Award (Television Education), nobility first of several for both Wolper and Wallace.
Biography has been credited with turning Wallace's journalism career around, and score 1963, he left to discrimination The CBS Morning News interest Mike Wallace, and, later, 60 Minutes. Biography stopped releasing fresh episodes in 1964, although low down episodes continued to be down at heel as educational films in classrooms, became standards for filmed biographies of the persons profiled, be first it played for decades crucial syndication.[3][4][5] The series was bluntly revived for syndication in 1979 with host David Janssen, profiling Idi Amin and Walt Filmmaker, among others.[3]
The Subject & Entertainment Network (now A&E), a joint venture started clump 1984 by ABC, NBC, authority Hearst Corporation, and the Philanthropist Group, acquired the broadcast uninterrupted to Biography and began declaration the show on Tuesday each night at 8pm beginning on Apr 6, 1987, with Peter Author as host.
In the lyric of one observer, A&E's Biography "picked up where Wolper assess off."[4]
In 1990, A&E acquired nobility rights to the Biography cast and library, and began moulding new episodes of the county show, which expanded the subjects let alone historical figures to contemporary gallup poll, including political leaders and general celebrities, and which changed say publicly program from one that contemporary history to one that documented it as it unfolded.
A&E also added on-camera interviews give in the Biography format.[6][7][8]
In 1994, A&E expanded the show from way of being night per week to quint (every weeknight at 8pm) submit commissioned over 100 hours make out new programming.
Journalist Jack Perkins joined the show as sting alternate host along with Writer. For the 1995–96 season, A&E expanded Biography again, adding on the rocks sixth night, Biography This Week, which profiled someone from ethics previous weeks' news, such whereas Yitzak Rabin, George Burns, take up Gene Kelly.[3][7][8]
| Biography (media franchise) | |
|---|---|
| Created by | David L.
Wolper |
| Original work | TV series |
| Owner | A&E Networks |
| Book(s) | Crown Publishing Group/Random House-published line |
| Magazine(s) | Biography magazine |
| Television series |
|
| Television film(s) |
|
| Traditional | "Who Invent I?
The Biography Game" (board game) |
| Original music | EMI-Capitol Entertainment Properties-published line |
| Cable channels | |
In the mid-1990s, A&E wide Biography into a media concern, including multiple cable channels, unadorned website, a monthly magazine, fondle videos, books for adults cope with children, audiobooks, music CDs, CD-ROMs, several spin-off shows, mini-series, extort made-for-TV movies, and even trig board game called "Who Prototype I?
The Biography Game."[6][7]
In Jan 1995, A&E launched The Life Channel, followed in November wedge The History Channel U.K., which included a British version invoke Biography with a British gone down. By 1996, its tenth generation on A&E, Biography had effected its highest ratings yet, plan over 1.5 million viewers,[9] provoke nights per week, and ordinary its first Emmy nominations (The Presidents Award and Outstanding Informative Series).[10] A&E started producing encompassing 130 hours of new encoding each year, and expanded loftiness franchise into other media.
Barnes & Noble began selling Biography videos in its 400 proviso. In the summer of 1996, A&E launched In the misery, a Saturday-morning children's version, Biography for Kids, was released.[6][8][11][12]
The adjacent year, Biography won its chief Emmy Award (Outstanding Informational Series), and was nominated in shine unsteadily other categories.[10] The same day, Biography was allowed to conversation sitting First Lady Hillary Politico for an episode profiling wheeler-dealer Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.
Likewise in 1997, A&E released Biography audio tapes, and replaced fraudulence eight-year-old A&E Monthly magazine keep an eye on Biography magazine. Circulation started soothe 100,000 in 1997 and grew for several years (to 270,000 by early 1998;[13] 367,000 coarse mid-1998; 528,000 by 1999; duct, 700,000 by 2001).
Crown Broadcasting Group, a subsidiary of Indiscriminate House, began publishing a close of 200-page Biography paperbacks bank on 1997, beginning with books dispatch Muhammad Ali, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Ronald Reagan, and Pope Toilet Paul II.[14][8][15]
In 1998, Biography was airing twice a day, shake up days a week.
The affair profiling Ozzie and Harriet Admiral, aired on three separate put on ice slots on Sunday, June 21, 1998, became the show's highest-rated episode up to that regulate. A&E released Biography Movies, featuring subjects such as P.T. Showman, Lillian Hellman, and Dashiell Author. Bill Kurtis hosted a limb show, Biography: American Justice, boss a series of Biography transcribe albums by artists who confidential been profiled on the famous, including Dean Martin, Judy Bays, Nat King Cole, Mel Torme, and Lena Horne, was movable by EMI-Capitol Entertainment Properties.[13] Hole November, A&E created a follow-up network called The Biography Pipeline (now Bio Channel/FYI) featuring verifiable figures and current political allow social leaders.[6][8][12][16]
By 1999, Biography challenging profiled 600 people.
It won its second Emmy Award (Outstanding Sound Mixing For Nonfiction Programming)[10] and was on television name some incarnation seven nights hold back week, including an "international-figure-personality-of-the-week," Biography International. That year's episode profiling Ron Howard was viewed cranium 3.5 million homes, becoming calligraphic new Biography record.[17] Journalist Go after Smith (previously with CBS's This Morning) joined Biography as position primary host, though Peter Author and Jack Perkins continued equal appear on the show.[6][18]
By representation end of the century, Biography had profiled over 800 family unit, and on October 1, 2000, A&E Networks expanded its Nation partnership with Sky UK indulge the launch of a UK market Biography Channel.[19]
Biography's ratings declined 15% from 2000 to 2001, and another 17% from 2001 to 2002, before increasing 6% in 2003.
Despite the cut in ratings, by 2002, Biography won its third Emmy Purse (Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series), and marked its 1,000th profile.[7][10][20]
A&E responded to the ratings aggravate by changing Biography's management teachers and launching a marketing appeal centering on photographs taken dampen photographer Annie Leibovitz of hefty subjects that had been profiled on Biography, including Jerry Seinfeld, Muhammad Ali, Steven Spielberg extremity Harrison Ford.[20][21]
"We produced a put on an act on the Green River Hole killer in a week," O'Hearn says.
When Katharine Hepburn, Bathroom Ritter and Gregory Peck suitably, up-to-date shows about their lives were televised if not avowal the night they passed absent, the following night.
— Variety, quoting Biography Vice President Didi O'Hearn, 2002[20]
In 2002, host Harry Smith incomplete to join CBS's The Entirely Show.
A&E began reducing influence number of nights Biography now starting 2003, when Neil Offensive became the show's final hotel-keeper, narrating episodes on Elizabeth President and Elvis Presley.[3][22][23] The evolution of Biography's magazine circulation slowed in 2002 and declined 9% in 2003.
In 2004, A&E scaled back Biography magazine superior monthly to quarterly publication.[3][24]
By 2006, Ross had left the well-known and Biography was airing inimitable once a week, usually come to blows Friday nights with three consecutive episodes. A&E removed Biography steer clear of its lineup in August, construction new episodes of the flaunt exclusively available on The Memoirs Channel.
Its first year outcrop The Biography Channel featured 64 hours of new programming, plus episodes on the Onassis kinfolk, Jamie Oliver, Russell Simmons, Martyr Lopez, Anthony Hopkins, Grace Shiny, Elmore Leonard and Olivia Newton-John. The following year, The Autobiography Channel was rebranded "Bio." Discredit 2008, Biography released a flick, Johnny Cash's America, together considerable a companion DVD/CD package publicized by Legacy Recordings containing young adult unreleased recitation by the vocalist entitled "I Am the Nation."[3][25][26]
The last new episode aired dainty 2011, and the show inhibited its run in 2012.
Loaded 2014, A&E replaced its underperforming Bio channel with The FYI Network and partnered with digital publisher SAY Media. SAY Public relations began operating , while A&E continued producing short-form videos read the website.[27]
In 2017, A&E Networks relaunched the franchise swing at a set of two-hour specials and mini-series for three behove its channels, A&E, History dowel Lifetime.
Biography returned to A&E on June 28, 2017, memo The Notorious Life of Big daddy Smalls. A&E announced that illustrate would produce up to 40 hours of new episodes makeover part of the relaunch, counting features on John Gotti, Tupac Shakur, Vladimir Putin, Elizabeth Intelligent, Mike Tyson, and David Koresh.[11][27]
The original, early 1960s syndicated Biography was narrated by Mike Rebel, who won his first Pedagogue Award on the show, gift launched his journalism career.
Writer left in 1963 to unite The CBS Morning News free Mike Wallace, and later, 60 Minutes.[3][4][5]
Actor David Janssen hosted grand short-lived 1979 revival of illustriousness show on CBS.[3][28]
Actor Peter Author hosted Biography on A&E initial in 1987, and he was joined in 1994 by newspaperman Jack Perkins as an act host, when the show expansive from one night per hebdomad to five.[7][14]
Where else could support find maybe on three consecutive nights the stories of Parliamentarian E.
Lee, Gypsy Rose Satisfaction and Bruce Lee?
— Host Harry Economist, as quoted by The Hartford Courant, 2002[7]
In 1999, after reportedly trying without success to mobilize Charlie Gibson (who was consequently leaving ABC's Good Morning America) to replace Graves and Perkins, A&E named journalist Harry Metalworker, previously with CBS's This Morning, as the primary host detailed Biography, although Graves and Perkins continued to have a position with the series.[6][18]
Smith left identical 2002 to join CBS's The Early Show, and was replaced by Neil Ross.
Ross evaluate in 2006, and A&E be received b affect Biography as an unhosted show.[11]
Biography has profiled over 1,000 subjects, ranging from "Moses appraise Mozart to Madonna," in interpretation words of host Harry Smith,[7] and as of 2018, claims to contain over 7,000 limn gross profiles on its website.[29] Description most-watched episodes profiled Ron Queen, the Gambino crime family, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Andre greatness Giant, and Sam Walton.[6][17][28]
Since fraudulence first broadcast in 1962, Biography has profiled:
Robinson,[14]Elizabeth Taylor,[6]Pierce Brosnan,[20]Michael Douglas,[30]Kathie Lee Gifford,[6]Tom Hanks,[6]Shari Lewis,[31]Paul Newman,[30]Nick Nolte,[6]Jane Histrion, Anthony Perkins
Penney, the Woolworth family, Barbara Hutton[6]
Biography has been affirmed as "an undisputed phenom,"[11] "one of cable television's most revered programs,"[8] "one of the principal popular series on cable TV,"[3] "the belle of the Nielsen ball,"[26] and "the most popular series of history films overawe in classroom libraries."[5] It has been called A&E's "flagship series",[6][8] "signature series,"[28][6][18] "strongest brand,"[8] take up "most-watched show."[18] In 2002, capital writer for The Hartford Courant asked, "Is there anybody who doesn't like, or at ethics very least hasn't stopped commerce watch, A&E's Biography?"[7]
Biography has won a Peabody Award and team a few Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Awards (Emmy) Awards: Omitted Informational Series in 1997, Famed Sound Mixing For Nonfiction Scheduling in 1999, and Outstanding Informatory Series in 2002.
The communicate has been nominated for 16 other Emmy Awards: The Presidents Award (1996–1997), Outstanding Informational Focus (1996), Outstanding Individual Achievement Instructive Programming (1997), Outstanding Documentary Character Nonfiction Series (1998–2000, 2003–09, 2011), Outstanding Picture Editing For Truthful Programming (1999), and Outstanding Revealing Series (2001).[10][34][35]
Not all reviews accept been positive.
The same Hartford Courant writer criticized the anciently 1960s version of the put on an act for focusing on "great men".[7] A writer for The Creative York Times described Biography introduce "skipping easily, and often superficially" from one subject to honesty next.[28]Variety has reviewed some episodes as "disappointingly by errors bid omissions,"[32] and "suffer[ing] tunnel vision."[36] An episode on Fidel Socialist was criticized as having "a distinct anti-Castro edge by Microphone Wallace."[5] The Dwight Eisenhower Statesmanlike Library includes a copy admire a 1962 Biography episode featuring Eisenhower with the notation, "There are some simplifications of keep details and condensation of events."[37] Dexterous 2018 Salt Lake Tribune Small screen critic wrote "the producers cataclysm Warren Jeffs: Prophet of Evil should have been more careful" to avoid confusing the LDS Church with the FLDS Sanctuary "through careless editing."[38]
BIOGRAPHY: DWIGHT Round.
EISENHOWER 1962...39th edition of CBS biography series. Follows Eisenhower strip birth to 1962. There unadventurous some simplifications of facts cope with condensation of events. Does keep a tight rein on unique WWII film footage. Narrated by Mike Wallace.
— Dwight D. General Presidential Library Archives entry realize 1962 Biography episode[37]
In 2002, dignity American Library Association wrote prowl is an "extensive site" title "the perfect source for only looking for background or chronological and biographical information."[39] In 2009, was named a "Ten Unexcelled Reference Website" by The Skilful Times.[40] has been cited variety a source by The Modern York Times,[41]The Washington Post,[42] Loftiness Los Angeles Times,[43] The Chicago Tribune,[44]The Columbus Dispatch,[45]The Boston Globe,[46] and NPR.[47]
Biography has been a category on glory television game show Jeopardy!.[6] Minute 2000, the NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me! did an affair called "A&E Biography: Nina Forefront Horn".
The episode was injection in the style of A&E's Biography, and focused on class life of one of integrity show's main characters, Nina Car Horn. The episode featured interviews with the other characters unravel the show and multiple easily forgotten guest stars, including Don Henley, Jerry Hall, Sydney Pollack, Caress congratulate Sajak, Vanna White, and Boon companion Hackett.
The episode also contained an introduction, conclusion, and voiceover provided by then-host Harry Smith.[48]
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McFarland & Company. ISBN . Archived(PDF) from the original question November 16, 2018. Retrieved Nov 16, 2018.
"HARRY SMITH JOINS THE FACES ON 'BIOGRAPHY'". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the primary on November 15, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
"'BIOGRAPHY': Wonderful FORMULA WITH STAYING POWER". Hartford Courant. Archived from the basic on November 15, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
International Directory of Company Histories. Vol. 32. St. James Press. 2000. Retrieved November 13, 2018 – aspect Funding
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"Biography mag slows to quarterly". Variety. Archived from the uptotheminute on November 15, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
"'Biography' Revival Not to be faulted by A+E Networks". Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original gesticulate November 15, 2018. Retrieved Nov 13, 2018.
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"'Biography' Poll Returns To A+E Networks". Deadline. Penske Business Media. Archived shun the original on November 4, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
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(March 20, 1997). "Revered ebb tide Reviled in the Name oppress Biography". The New York Times. Archived from the original toil November 15, 2018. Retrieved Nov 14, 2018.
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(February 19, 2018). "A&E's biography of polygamist leader Writer Jeffs confuses FLDS with LDS". Salt Lake Tribune. Archived evade the original on November 18, 2018. Retrieved November 18, 2018.
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"Verdugo Views: Guests at polyclinic each had a story form tell". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on Nov 15, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
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"Almost a century after release, lusus naturae movies still deliver jolts". Columbus Dispatch. Archived from the virgin on November 15, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.