title: Mini (marque)

text: The Mini Clubman is an estate Mini, introduced for the 2008 model year and available in One, Cooper, Cooper S, and Cooper D variations. While identical to the Hatch/Hardtop from the B-pillars forward, the Clubman is longer overall, with a correspondingly stretched wheelbase that is longer; this provides more rear-seat leg room and substantially increased cargo space when compared to the Hardtop— longer, giving 260 litres (9.2 cubic feet) of space. It has twin "barn doors," alternately referred to as "the Splitdoor," enclosing the boot instead of a pull-up hatch, and also features a "Clubdoor" on the right-hand side regardless of the intended market. This means that in right-hand drive markets, the rear door is on the road side of the car, requiring rear passengers to exit into the road. Engine and transmission selections are identical to those used in the Hatch/Hardtop model, except the One Diesel; and the rear suspension set-up shares many of the same designs features including the rear trailing arms and the anti-roll bars.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The use of the name "Clubman" for the Mini estate van was a break with classic Mini tradition. "Clubman" was originally the name given to the 1970s face-lift of the classic Mini, which mostly resulted in a squared-off front end, whereas the classic Mini estates had traditionally been named "Traveller" or "Countryman". However, BMW did not initially purchase the rights to use those names.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The second generation Mini Convertible was unveiled at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show and the 2009 Geneva International Motor Show as a 2009 model-year vehicle (first available for sale on 28 March 2009). A device, marketed as the "Openometer", records the number of minutes the vehicle has operated with its roof retracted. Available variants and corresponding powertrain selections are the same as in the Mini Hatch range, including the diesel engine in some markets.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The Mini Countryman was announced in January 2010, and formally launched at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. It is the first Mini crossover SUV, and the first five-door model to be launched in the BMW-era. It is offered with a choice of two- or four-wheel drive (known as ALL4), and with 1.6 L petrol or diesel and 2.0 L diesel four-cylinder engines in various states of tune. Sales started in September 2010 as a 2011 model-year vehicle.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The Countryman has a longer wheelbase, more interior room, and higher ground clearance than the Clubman. It uses the same engines as the Hatch/Clubman range, but with an optional all-wheel-drive powertrain (dubbed "ALL4") to allow minimal off-road and rugged terrain driving. A six-speed manual transmission is standard on all models, with automatic transmission available on all petrol and diesel models except the 90 bhp One D.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Mini revealed the Coupé in June 2011. It is the first two-seat Mini and the first to have a three-box design; the engine compartment, the passenger compartment and the luggage compartments are all separated. It will also be the fastest production Mini ever: in John Cooper Works trim, it does in 6.4 seconds and goes on to a top speed of as it is powered by a turbocharged 1,598 cc four-cylinder.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The Mini Roadster was first shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2009 and is the convertible version of the Mini Coupe. The Roadster is available in three trim levels: Cooper, Cooper S, and John Cooper Works.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The Mini Paceman three-door crossover version of the Countryman debuted as a concept car at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show. On 5 July 2012, senior vice president of Mini brand management, Dr. Kay Segler, announced that, "the Mini Paceman is the official name of the brand's seventh model, which will be launched next year (2013) in the U.S." The production version was launched at the 2012 Paris Motor Show, with sales starting in most international markets by the second quarter of 2013.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The third generation Mini was unveiled by BMW in November 2013, with sales starting in the first half of 2014. The new car is 98 mm longer, 44 mm wider, and 7 mm taller than the outgoing model, with a 28 mm longer wheelbase and an increase in track width (+42 mm front and +34 mm rear). The increase in size results in a larger interior and a boot volume increase to 211 litres.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The original Mini was designated ADO 15, the 15th model developed by the Austin Drawing Office. ADO 20 is the code name to the Mini Mark III. The 1961 Cooper was referred to code ADO 50.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Until 2013, all Rover and BMW era Mini models have R-series model numbers assigned to them, a legacy of the Mini's original development within Rover Group. Future models will have an F-series model number. The following designations are known:


title: Mini (marque)

text: Before BMW's ownership, the traditional Mini had been at the Longbridge plant located next to the headquarters of Rover until the sale of the company by BMW in March 2000.


title: Mini (marque)

text: In the selling of Rover by BMW to Phoenix Venture Holdings, the Longbridge plant was included in the sales contract.


title: Mini (marque)

text: In time, production was rationalised to just Longbridge and so this was where the last of the cars were made, making Longbridge the "natural home" for the new Mini prior to BMW splitting up the company. However, as a result of the change of ownership, BMW redeveloped the entire Cowley plant, demolishing much of the factory, to create a new factory and renamed this "Plant Oxford", on the site of what was historically the Pressed Steel Company's Cowley Body Plant and next door to what was historically the Morris factory.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Since 2006, Plant Hams Hall produces the new Mini petrol engines, Plant Oxford is responsible for the body shell production, paint and assembly, and Plant Swindon produces body pressings and sub-assemblies, creating the "Mini Production Triangle". Mini claim that 60% of components of the Mini Mk II come from suppliers based in the UK compared to 40% for the 2001 model. The Countryman is the first modern Mini assembled outside the UK, with the contract won by Magna Steyr in Austria.


title: Mini (marque)

text: At Plant Oxford 4,000 employees, referred to as "associates", produce up to 800 cars each day (approximately 240,000 per year). The bodyshop at Cowley holds 429 robots, assembling 425 body panels; the bodyshells are then moved to the neighbouring paint shop where paint robots apply the 14 exterior colour options and optional contrasting roof colours. Final assembly is performed at Cowley, which involves the fitting of 2,400 components to produce the numerous variants that may be ordered.


title: Mini (marque)

text: All Prince four-cylinder petrol engines for Mini and BMW are produced at the Hams Hall Plant near Birmingham, United Kingdom, which has around 800 employees. Diesel engines are manufactured by BMW's Plant Steyr in Austria, having previously been manufactured in France and England by PSA.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Mini sub-assemblies and pressings such as doors are supplied by the plant at Swindon, where 1,000 are employed and 280 pressed parts are produced using 135 welding robots. The Swindon plant was originally Swindon Pressings Ltd, founded in 1955 by the Pressed Steel Company and became a wholly owned subsidiary of the BMW Group in May 2000.


title: Mini (marque)

text: In 2013, assembly of the Countryman was expanded to three international locations: from April 2013 at BMW's plant near Chennai, India, specifically for the Indian market from June 2013 at the BMW Group Malaysia Assembly Plant in Kulim, Kedah, and at the BMW Manufacturing Thailand plant in Rayong from August 2013. Since 2014 cars have also been assembled under contract by VDL Nedcar near Maastricht in Limburg.


title: Mini (marque)

text: A total of around 5.3 million of the original two-door Minis were sold, making it by far the most popular British car of all time. Thousands of these are still on the road, with the remaining pre-1980s versions being firmly established as collectors' items.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Deliveries of Minis has ranged from 188,077 in 2006 to 232,425 in 2008. In 2009 216,538 cars were delivered, with 69.3% being Mini Hatch/Hardtop, 13.1% Convertible models and 17.6% the Clubman variant. Over 53% were the Cooper version, with 26.2% Cooper S, and the basic One 20.2%.


title: Mini (marque)

text: In 2009, the Mini was Britain's seventh best selling car—the first time that a BMW-era Mini had appeared among the nation's top 10 selling cars. It also was Britain's seventh best selling car in June 2010.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Mini sales worldwide were up 22% in 2011 over 2010, with 285,000 cars delivered across the globe. In the U.S., the brand's largest market, 57,000 were sold in 2011, a 26% increase over 2010. The next two largest markets, the United Kingdom and Germany, saw 13% and 28% sales increases over 2010, respectively.


title: Mini (marque)

text: A total of 301,526 Mini vehicles were sold worldwide in 2012. The largest national market was the United States, with 66,123 units sold, followed by the United Kingdom with 50,367. The Mini Countryman sold a total of 102,250 units in the year.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, Mini's advertising agency, produced a video series in 2007 called Hammer & Coop, directed by Todd Phillips as part of an ad campaign for the Mini.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Mini's advertising agency, produced a movie called "Counterfeit Mini Coopers" as part of the ad campaign.


title: Mini (marque)

text: To advertise Mini Clubman's 2008 introduction to the Chinese market, Beijing Mini offered a Mini Rickshaw, which uses the rear half of Mini Clubman.


title: Mini (marque)

text: It is reported that BMW was ordered by U.S. regulators to reduce fuel economy ratings on four 2014 Mini Coopers as results from EPA testing did not match the automaker's submissions.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Rear turn signals has been heavily criticized for pointing in the wrong way, as that may lead to accidents.


title: Mini (marque)

text: In 1969, the original British Mini was featured in the gold-heist film "The Italian Job" starring Michael Caine and Noël Coward.


title: Mini (marque)

text: In 2002, an original Austin Mini Mayfair MKV was featured in the Bourne Identity. In the action scene, Matt Damon's character is chased through Paris, France .


title: Mini (marque)

text: In 2003, the new MINI Cooper was shown in a remake of "The Italian Job". One Chilli Red MINI was a Cooper S Hatch R53, the Electric Blue MINI was a Cooper Hatch R53, and the Pepper White MINI was also a Cooper Hatch R53. Charlize Theron's character also drivers an original Rover Mini Cooper.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The Mini E is a front-wheel drive electric car powered version of the Mini and was unveiled in 2008 at the Los Angeles Auto Show, with an electric motor rated and , 380 V lithium-ion battery with distance of . It has top speed of . The vehicle gliders are built in the Mini factory in Oxford, while batteries, electric drive and power electronics are manufactured in Munich. The components are then shipped to a specially equipped manufacturing complex, situated on BMW plant premises where the electric motor, battery units, performance electronics and transmission can be integrated.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The Mini E is a demonstration car part of BMW's "Project i", which will be followed in mid-2011 by a similar trial with the BMW ActiveE (all-electric vehicle), which will be built based on the lessons learned from the Mini E field testing. The last phase of "Project i" is the development of the Mega City Vehicle (MCV) urban electric car, a new brand that will be sold separately from BMW or Mini, and is expected to go into mass production between 2013 and 2015.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Field testing began in June 2009 and 450 Mini E were made available through leasing to private users in Los Angeles and the New York/New Jersey area. In May 2010 BMW announced that leasing could be renewed for another year at a lower leasing price.


title: Mini (marque)

text: Another field test was launched in the UK in December 2009, where more than 40 Mini E cars were handed to private users for a two consecutive six-month field trial periods.


title: Mini (marque)

text: This trial program allowed the BMW Group to become the world's first major car manufacturer to deploy a fleet of more than 500 all-electric vehicles for private use.


title: Mini (marque)

text: There were several Mini concept cars produced to show future ideas and forthcoming models such as the ACV30 in 1997 and the Crossover in 2008 which became the Mini Countryman in 2010.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The ACV30 featured several elements that influenced the eventual new Mini of 2001 such as the black a-pillars, chunky wheel arch detailing and white roof. The concept was attributed to the BMW designer Adrian van Hooydonk and Frank Stephenson.


title: Mini (marque)

text: BMW demonstrated a hydrogen-powered internal combustion technology in some of their concept cars in 2000 and 2001, and Mini showcased a hydrogen-powered concept car in 2001 at the Frankfurt Auto Show. The car differs from electric-motor hydrogen concepts, such as the Honda FCX in that it uses a cylinder-based internal combustion engine.


title: Mini (marque)

text: An all-electric Mini is in use at the British Embassy in Mexico that uses around of Lithium Ion batteries. Three electric Minis were also made for use in some subway scenes in the 2003 movie "The Italian Job" to satisfy the subway authorities concerns over possible carbon monoxide poisoning.


title: Mini (marque)

text: PML Flightlink developed a prototype series-hybrid conversion, called "Mini QED", replacing the drivetrain with an electric motor in each wheel and an efficient on-board petrol generator.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The Mini Cooper S won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1964, 1965 and 1967. Minis were initially placed first, second and third in the 1966 rally as well, but were controversially disqualified for the use of a variable resistance headlamp dimming circuit in place of a dual-filament lamp.


title: Mini (marque)

text: An R56 Challenge vehicle was entered in the 2008 Mini Challenge. The Mini Challenge Motorsport Category runs globally, with the categories in Germany, Australia, England, Spain, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia commencing in 2010.


title: Mini (marque)

text: On 27 July 2010, Mini announced plans to enter the World Rally Championship. The Countryman is the chosen donor model and Prodrive have been selected to prepare the Mini Countryman WRC. The factory team competed in a reduced programme for the 2011 WRC season, before cutting funding. Prodrive will still produce all specs of the Countryman WRC cars, but will self fund a reduced programme for the 2012.


title: Mini (marque)

text: On 30 March 2021, Mini announced the fully-electric Pacesetter. The car is intended for use from the 2020–21 Formula E World Championship onwards.


title: Mini (marque)

text: The original two-door Mini has won numerous awards, perhaps the most notable being: "Car of the Century" ("Autocar" magazine 1995), "Number One Classic Car of All Time" ("Classic & Sports Car" magazine 1996) and "European Car of the Century" in a worldwide Internet poll run by the prestigious Global Automotive Elections Foundation in 1999. The original Mini achieved second place for "Global Car of the Century" in the same poll (behind the Model T Ford).


title: Mini (marque)

text: The Mini Cooper/Cooper S (2001–2006) won the North American Car of the Year award in 2003. The convertible model won the Most Spirited/Entry-Level category of the 2005 International Car of the Year. Following the launch of the Mk II Mini, Top Gear named the new Cooper S their "Small Car of the Year 2006". The car was runner up in the 2007 World Car of the Year. In 2008 the green version of the Mini, the Mini Cooper D, was nominated for WhatGreenCar.com Car of the Year Awards. The judges commended the Cooper D for its EfficientDynamics stop-start and regenerative braking technology and were impressed by the car's driving experience. The Cooper D reached the shortlist for the "Green Car Awards", but lost to the Ford Focus ECOnetic. In April 2010 Kelley Blue Book included the Mini Cooper as one of its "Top 10 Green Cars for 2010".


title: Mini (marque)

text: Dr. Alex Moulton, the designer of the suspension system for the original two-door Mini, spoke about the new Mini in an interview with "MiniWorld" magazine: "It's enormous—the original Mini was the best packaged car of all time—this is an example of how not to do it. It's huge on the outside and weighs the same as an Austin Maxi. The crash protection has been taken too far. I mean, what do you want, an armoured car? It is an irrelevance insofar as it has no part in the Mini story."


title: Mini (marque)

text: The Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive journalist Dan Neil has suggested that, with the introduction of the Countryman, Mini had pushed the marque beyond relevance by making a car so long, wide and tall it forsook the inner logic of the brand: excellent handling in a tiny size. In the 2013 International Engine of the Year Awards which took place on 5 June 2013, Mini won an award for its 1.6 liter four-cylinder TwinPower Turbo from the Mini Cooper S for the third time in a row in the category of 1.4 to 1.8 liter engines. The engine has "twin-scroll turbocharging with an overboost function, direct petrol injection and valve control based on the Valvetronic system" and has an output of 135 kW/184 hp and provides enough power for the Mini Cooper S to accelerate from 0–100 in 7.0 seconds and in 2013 is available for Mini Cooper S Countryman and Mini Cooper S Paceman and an ALL-4 transmission can also be added to the configuration.


title: New Tricks

text: New Tricks is a British television police procedural comedy drama, created by Nigel McCrery and Roy Mitchell, produced primarily by Wall to Wall (until its final year, when it was handled by Headstrong Pictures), and broadcast on BBC One. The programme originally began with a pilot episode on 27 March 2003, before a full season was commissioned for 1 April 2004, with it concluding after twelve seasons on 6 October 2015. The show utilises an ensemble cast, of which Dennis Waterman was the only constant over all twelve series; this cast variously included Alun Armstrong, James Bolam, Amanda Redman, Denis Lawson, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Tamzin Outhwaite, and Larry Lamb.


title: New Tricks

text: The series focuses on the work of the Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (UCOS) – a fictional division within London's Metropolitan Police Service tasked with re-investigating unsolved crimes. UCOS primarily functioned with a senior police detective overseeing the work of three retired police officers who would handle each case, and who could bring in police support when needed. Each episode focuses on a different investigation, with characters often coping with problems at their age but using their wisdom to overcome hurdles in the original investigation of cold cases. Both creators, McCrery and Mitchell, devised the title of the programme around the proverb "You can't teach an old dog new tricks".


title: New Tricks

text: "New Tricks" began as a one-off episode broadcast on 27 March 2003. This attracted sufficient viewers for the BBC to commission a series of six episodes, which began on 1 April 2004. An eight-episode series was subsequently commissioned for 2005, 2006, and 2007. A fifth series was commissioned by the BBC after the audience share rose week upon week for the previous series. In 2007, an episode from the fourth series received viewing figures of 9.25 million, becoming the second most-watched programme on BBC One that week, and the most-watched "New Tricks" episode to that point. The fifth series continued this good run – on two occasions it was the most-watched programme in Britain for the week, and the seventh episode gained a new series high rating of 9.36 million—second only to the "X Factor" that week. The fifth series aired from 7 July to 25 August 2008. The sixth series finished location filming on 8 May 2009 in central London and began airing on 16 July 2009. The opening episode of series six was watched by 8.07 million, despite clashing with Five's "The Mentalist" (1.64m) and ITV's "Living with Michael Jackson" (3.64m). The second episode clashed with "The Mentalist" and the relaunch of "The Bill" on ITV, and was watched by 7.59 million.


title: New Tricks

text: Series 7 and 8 were commissioned by the BBC in September 2009, ensuring that the show would run until 2011. The seventh series began airing on 10 September 2010 and completed its run on 12 November. The eighth series opened on 4 July 2011 with 9.2 million viewers, the show's highest rating for three years, and the first since the fifth series to break the 9 million barrier. The third episode of series 8, "Lost in Translation", was the show's highest rated episode to date with 9.7 million viewers, becoming the most-watched television programme of the week in the UK. Episode 7, "The Gentleman Vanishes," surpassed this figure with 9.87 million viewers, and was again the top programme of the week.


title: New Tricks

text: The BBC confirmed in September 2011 that a further two series, each of 10 episodes, had been commissioned, to be broadcast in 2012 and 2013. James Bolam, who played the part of Jack Halford, left the show, claiming that it had "become stale", making his final regular appearance in the first episode of Series 9 and a guest appearance in Series 10, episode 8. In the fourth episode, Denis Lawson joined the cast, as the new character of retired DI Steve McAndrew. Prior to the ninth series premiere, both Amanda Redman and Alun Armstrong announced that they would be leaving the show after the 10th series. The first programme of series nine was broadcast on 27 August 2012, and gained 8.52 million viewers, which was the highest rating of the week. "Only Fools and Horses" actor Nicholas Lyndhurst and former "EastEnders" actress Tamzin Outhwaite appeared in Series 10, which was broadcast in Britain between 30 July and 1 October 2013. The opening episode of the 10th series gained an audience of 8.86 million viewers, making it the 12th most-watched programme of the year.


title: New Tricks

text: Episode 1 of season 11 was broadcast at 21:00 GMT on BBC One and BBC One HD on 18 August 2014. Ratings fell considerably from series 10 to series 11 when most of the original cast left; series 10 had an average per-episode viewership of 8.35 million, while series 11 managed an average per-episode viewership of 5.75 million. Departed star Amanda Redman, criticised the drama for becoming “bland”, adding, “the characters are not being as anarchic as they used to be, which I think is a huge shame”.


title: New Tricks

text: Filming of a 12th series of the show began in the autumn of 2014, and its broadcasting started on 4 August 2015. It was also revealed that Dennis Waterman would be leaving the series in the early episodes. In February 2015


title: New Tricks

text: BBC announced that the 12th season would be the last in order to make room for a new series. It was shot at West London Film Studios.


title: New Tricks

text: The series was broadcast in at least 25 countries, and was also available on DVD and via online streaming. "New Tricks" was produced by Wall to Wall Television for the BBC between 2003 and 2014, and Headstrong Pictures thereafter.


title: New Tricks

text: In 2011, James Bolam left the show to be replaced by Denis Lawson. In 2012, both Alun Armstrong and Amanda Redman departed to be replaced by Nicholas Lyndhurst and Tamzin Outhwaite, respectively. In September 2014, Dennis Waterman announced that he would be leaving the show after filming two episodes of the next series. Larry Lamb replaced him for the rest of the final series.


title: New Tricks

text: As well as the "cold case" in each episode, the series drew on the characters personal lives including Sandra's fast-tracked career, Brian's alcoholism and relationship with his wife Esther, Jack's bereavement from his wife Mary and Gerry's ex-wives.


title: New Tricks

text: Roy Mitchell supports football team West Bromwich Albion and so named numerous characters after their players. The original three main male characters derived their names from the club's oldest stand, "The Halfords Lane Stand", at The Hawthorns football ground in West Bromwich.


title: New Tricks

text: The theme tune of the programme is sung by cast member Dennis Waterman. The song is "It's Alright" (written by Mike Moran). Production music was composed by father and son team Brian and Warren Bennett with technical assistance from Olivia Davies. The British release of the first series DVD contains a cover version of "End of the Line" sung by Dennis Waterman at the end of the pilot episode.


title: New Tricks

text: Series 1 to 12 of "New Tricks" are available on DVD on Region 2 (UK). These titles are distributed by Acorn Media UK.


title: Mark McKinney

text: Mark Douglas Brown McKinney (born June 26, 1959) is a Canadian actor and comedian. He is best known as a member of the sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, which includes starring in the 1989 to 1995 TV series "The Kids in the Hall" and 1996 feature film "". He was a cast member on "Saturday Night Live" from 1995 to 1997; and from 2003 to 2006, he co-created, wrote and starred in the series "Slings & Arrows" and he also appeared as Tom in FXX's "Man Seeking Woman". In recent years he has appeared as store manager Glenn Sturgis on NBC's "Superstore".


title: Mark McKinney

text: McKinney was born in Ottawa, Ontario, the son of Chloe, an architectural writer, and Russell McKinney, a diplomat. Because of his father's career, he did a lot of travelling when he was young. Some of the places he lived while growing up were Trinidad, Paris, Mexico, and Washington, D.C. He also attended Trinity College School, a boarding school in Port Hope, Ontario. For a short while, McKinney was a student at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he was a political science major.


title: Mark McKinney

text: He started performing comedy with the Loose Moose Theatre Company in Calgary, Alberta. There, McKinney met Bruce McCulloch. Together they formed a comedy team called "The Audience." Eventually, McKinney and McCulloch moved to Toronto, and met Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald, who were in the process of forming a comedy troupe. Along with Scott Thompson, who joined after coming to a stage show, The Kids in the Hall was formed in 1985.


title: Mark McKinney

text: The troupe appeared in their own TV series, "The Kids in the Hall", which was co-produced by Lorne Michaels and ran from 1988 to 1995. Notable characters on the show played by McKinney include the Chicken Lady, Darill (pronounced da-RILL), bluesman Mississippi Gary, and Mr. Tyzik the Headcrusher, an embittered Eastern European who pretended to crush the heads of passers-by between his thumb and forefinger.


title: Mark McKinney

text: After "The Kids in the Hall", McKinney joined the cast of another Lorne Michaels sketch comedy show, "Saturday Night Live", in the middle of the 1994-1995 season (season 20) as a repertory player. McKinney survived the cast overhaul that occurred at the end of season 20 and stayed on "SNL" until the end of the 1996–1997 (season 22). During his time on "SNL", McKinney had six recurring characters (some of note include Ian Daglers from "Scottish Soccer Hooligan Weekly", Melanie, a Catholic schoolgirl, and Lucien Callow, a fop often paired with David Koechner's fop character Fagan) and twenty-seven celebrity impersonations (some of note include Mel Gibson, Barney Frank, Al Gore, Paul Shaffer, Mark Russell, Jim Carrey, Lance Ito, Tim Robbins, Steve Forbes, Wolf Blitzer, Bill Gates, and Ellen DeGeneres).


title: Mark McKinney

text: He has appeared in several films, including the "SNL" spinoffs "Superstar", "The Ladies Man" and "A Night at the Roxbury". McKinney also starred opposite Isabella Rossellini in Guy Maddin's tragicomedy "The Saddest Music in the World". He also appeared in the Spice Girls' movie "Spice World". In 1999 he appeared in the Canadian television film adaptation "Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang".


title: Mark McKinney

text: McKinney cowrote and starred in the Kids in the Hall movie "Brain Candy", in which, among other roles, he spoofed "SNL" and "KITH" executive producer Lorne Michaels.


title: Mark McKinney

text: His theatre appearances include "The Ugly Man" with One Yellow Rabbit at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and Glasgow. He was in the cast of The Roundabout theatre production of "Flea in her Ear" and David Lindsay Abaire's "Fuddy Meers" for the Manhattan theatre club. During the fall of 2001 McKinney performed the one-man show "Fully Committed" at the Wintergarden theatre in Toronto and again in the summer of 2002 at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal. In September 2022 he will appear in the European premiere of "Eureka Day" at The Old Vic theatre in London.


title: Mark McKinney

text: He also appeared in the first season of "Robson Arms", as well as on the Canadian comedy "Corner Gas".


title: Mark McKinney

text: From 2003 to 2006, he co-created, co-wrote and starred in the TV series "Slings & Arrows", about the backstage goings-on in a Canadian Shakespearean theatre company struggling with financial problems as they rehearse and present various productions.


title: Mark McKinney

text: In 2006–7 he both worked as a story editor on and a recurring role in NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" as Andy Mackinaw, a humourless widowed writer/story editor for the show-within-a-show. He appeared as a cast member on the CBC comedy "Hatching, Matching, and Dispatching" and its 2017 follow up "A Christmas Fury".


title: Mark McKinney

text: As well, he directed and appeared on the CBC Radio post-apocalyptic comedy "Steve, The First" and its sequel, "Steve, The Second", for his friend Matt Watts. He also wrote one episode of Watts' sitcom "Michael, Tuesdays and Thursdays", which aired on CBC Television in fall 2011.


title: Mark McKinney

text: In the summer of 2007, he became the show-runner and executive producer of "Less Than Kind", a half hour comedy starring Maury Chaykin.


title: Mark McKinney

text: McKinney was in an episode of the Canadian children's TV show "Dino Dan" called "Prehistoric Zoo/Ready? Set? Dino!" He plays Dino Dan's track coach in the second part, "Ready? Set? Dino!", of this two-part episode released 4 October 2010 (Canada).


title: Mark McKinney

text: In 2011, he was an executive producer of "Picnicface", a sketch TV series from the Halifax comedy troupe of the same name produced for The Comedy Network.


title: Mark McKinney

text: In 2013, he co-starred in "Rocket Monkeys" as the main antagonist, Lord Peel. In 2014, he appeared in the CBC television series "The Best Laid Plans". Beginning in 2015, he was a co-star on the NBC sitcom "Superstore" which was cancelled in 2021.


title: Mark McKinney

text: In 2020, he appeared as a guest on the "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" marathon fundraiser episode of "The George Lucas Talk Show."


title: Western Union

text: The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado.


title: Western Union

text: Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company changed its name to the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1856 after merging with several other telegraph companies. The company dominated the American telegraphy industry from the 1860s to the 1980s, pioneering technology such as telex and developing a range of telegraph-related services (including wire money transfer) in addition to its core business of transmitting and delivering telegram messages.


title: Western Union

text: After experiencing financial difficulties, Western Union began to move its business away from communications in the 1980s and increasingly focused on its money transfer services. The company ceased its communications operations completely in 2006, at which time The New York Times described it as "the world's largest money-transfer business" and added that due to the large number of immigrants, wiring money home will keep this top position.


title: Western Union

text: The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was founded in Rochester, New York by David Hoyt, Samuel L. Selden, Hiram Sibley, and others in 1851. In 1856 the company merged with its competitor the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, controlled by John James Speed, Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith and Ezra Cornell and, at Cornell's insistence, changed its name to Western Union Telegraph Company.


title: Western Union

text: In 1857 Western Union participated in the 'Treaty of Six Nations', an attempt by six of the largest telegraph firms to create a system of regional telegraphy monopolies with a shared network of main lines. After the creation of the 'Six Nations' system, Western Union continued to acquire both larger & smaller telegraph companies and by 1864 had transformed from a regional monopoly into a national oligopolist with its only serious competitors being the American Telegraph Company and the United States Telegraph Company.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph in 1861 and formed the Russian–American Telegraph Company in an attempt to link America to Europe, via Alaska, into Siberia, to Moscow – a project abandoned in 1867 following the successful laying of a transatlantic cable in 1866.


title: Western Union

text: In 1866 Western Union acquired the American Telegraph Company & the United States Telegraph Company, its two main competitors, for a time gaining a virtual monopoly over the American telegraphy industry. The company also began to develop new telegraphy-related services beyond the transmission and delivery of telegrams, launching the first stock ticker in 1866, a standardized time service in 1870 and wire money transfer in 1871.


title: Western Union

text: In the 1870s the company faced increased competition from newly formed rival telegraphy conglomerate Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company and from the nascent telephony industry led by the Bell Telephone Company. Western Union instead attempted to launch a rival telephony system before settling a patent lawsuit with Bell and leaving the telephone business completely in 1879.


title: Western Union

text: Financier Jay Gould orchestrated a merger of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company with Western Union in 1881, giving him a controlling share of the merged company.


title: Western Union

text: When the Dow Jones Railroad Average stock market index for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was created in 1884, Western Union was one of the original eleven companies to be included. By 1900, Western Union operated a million miles of telegraph lines and two international undersea cables.


title: Western Union

text: AT&T gained control of Western Union in 1909, acquiring a 30% stake in the company. However in 1913 AT&T, under indictment for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, was forced to sell its shares in the company which once again became independent.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union acquired its only major competitor in the American telegraphy sector Postal Telegraph, Inc. in 1945, effectively giving the company monopoly power over the industry. After 1945 the telegraphy industry began to experience a decline, with total telegraph messages almost halving from 1945 to 1960.


title: Western Union

text: In 1958, Western Union began offering telex services to customers in New York City. Teleprinter equipment for the telex network was originally provided by Siemens & Halske AG and later by Teletype Corporation. Direct international telex services commenced in the summer of 1960, with limited service to London and Paris.


title: Western Union

text: In honor of Valentine's Day 1959, Western Union introduced the Candygram, a box of chocolates accompanying a telegram that was featured in a commercial with the rotund Don Wilson.


title: Western Union

text: In 1963, Western Union organized its international cable system properties and its right-of-way for connecting international telegraph lines into a separate company called Western Union International (WUI), which it sold that year to American Securities.


title: Western Union

text: In 1967, American Securities listed WUI as a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. WUI was acquired by Xerox for $207 million in stock in 1979 and subsequently sold for $185 million in cash to MCI Communications in 1981. MCI renamed WUI to MCI International, ceasing the use of Western Union branding.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union purchased the TWX system from AT&T in January 1969, the only major competitor to its own telex network.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union became the first American telecommunications corporation to maintain its own fleet of geosynchronous communications satellites, starting in 1974. The fleet of satellites, called Westar, carried communications within the Western Union company for telegram and mailgram message data to Western Union bureaus nationwide. It also handled traffic for its telex and TWX services. The Westar satellites' transponders were also leased by other companies for relaying video, voice, data, and facsimile (fax) transmissions.


title: Western Union

text: In 1981, Western Union purchased a 50% interest in Airfone. It sold Airfone to GTE in 1986 for $39 million in cash. From 1982, as a result of financial services deregulation, Western Union began offering wire money transfer services globally.


title: Western Union

text: In 1984, after years of declining profits and mounting debts, Western Union began to negotiate with its creditors regarding debt restructuring. The restructuring was completed in 1987 when investor Bennett S. LeBow acquired control of Western Union through an outside of chapter 11 process that was a complex leveraged recapitalization. The transaction was backed by a total of $900 million in high-yield bonds and preferred stock underwritten by Michael Milken's group at Drexel Burnham Lambert as part of an exchange offer. LeBow installed Robert J. Amman as President and CEO who led a complete strategic, operational and balance sheet restructuring of the company over the next six years.


title: Western Union

text: Amman executed a strategy of redirecting Western Union from being an asset-based provider of communications services, with a money transfer business as a large but less important part of the business, into being a provider of consumer-based money transfer financial services. Thus, Amman ran the company as two separate companies. One business consisted of the money transfer business, which was funded and operated to take advantage of the significant growth opportunity. The second unit consisted of all the non-strategic communications assets such as the long-distance analog voice network, satellite business and undersea cable assets.


title: Western Union

text: In the 3-year period through 1990 Amman was supported by Robert A. Schriesheim, also installed by LeBow, as a special advisor who oversaw the divestiture of the four non-strategic telecommunications assets for about $280 million.


title: Western Union

text: The official name of the corporation was changed to New Valley Corporation in 1991, as part of the company's move to seek bankruptcy protection to eliminate the firm's overleveraged balance sheet while continuing to grow the money transfer business. The name change was used to shield the Western Union name from being dragged through the proceedings (and the resulting bad PR). Under the day to day leadership of Amman and the backing of LeBow, the company's value increased dramatically through its years operating under chapter 11.


title: Western Union

text: Following various restructurings, including negotiations with Carl Icahn who became a large bond holder, New Valley Corporation was sold in a bankruptcy auction to First Financial Management Corporation in 1994 for $1.2 billion. In 1995, First Financial merged with First Data Corporation in a $6 billion transaction.


title: Western Union

text: After acquiring the company, First Data Corporation made the decision to relaunch telegraphy services under the Western Union brand.


title: Western Union

text: On January 26, 2006, First Data announced its intention to spin off Western Union into independent publicly-traded financial services company focused on money transfers through a tax-free spin-off to First Data shareholders. The spin off occurred as planned on September 29, 2006. The next day Western Union announced that it would cease offering telegram transmission and delivery.


title: Western Union

text: In May 2009, Western Union announced its plan to acquire Canada-based Custom House from Peter Gustavson. The deal closed in September 2009 for a purchase price of US$371 million. This acquisition led the company to be re-branded as Western Union Business Solutions. Custom House and its subsidiary XE.com were sold to Euronet Worldwide in 2015 and operate under its HiFX brand.


title: Western Union

text: In January 2011, Western Union acquired Angelo Costa, a group active in money transfer and services to immigrants. Angelo Costa has a network of 7,500 points of sale throughout Europe. The agreement was signed for US$200 million.


title: Western Union

text: In October 2011, Western Union completed the acquisition of Finint S.r.l., one of Western Union's leading money transfer network agents in Europe, with more than 10,000 subagent locations across Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.


title: Western Union

text: In May 2015, rumors emerged over a proposed merger of Western Union and competitor MoneyGram, at a time when both companies’ revenue were declining. Western Union denied this was the case. In January 2017, Ant Financial, Alibaba’s financial technology firm instead unsuccessfully attempted to acquire MoneyGram for $880 million, but this was blocked by the U.S. government citing national security concerns.


title: Western Union

text: In 2018, the company moved its headquarters from Englewood, Colorado to the Denver Tech Center. The Englewood office complex was sold in 2020 for $40 million.


title: Western Union

text: In November 2020, Western Union acquired 15% stake in the digital payment unit of Saudi Arabia's STC Group for $200 million.


title: Western Union

text: Money can be sent online or in-person at Western Union agent locations. Cash can be collected in person at any other Western Union agent location worldwide by providing the 10-digit MTCN (Money Transfer Control Number) and identification. In some cases, a secret question and answer can be used instead of identification.


title: Western Union

text: In October 2007, Western Union announced plans to introduce a mobile money-transfer service with the GSM Association, a global trade association representing more than 700 mobile operators in 218 countries and covering 2.5 billion mobile subscribers.


title: Western Union

text: The proliferation of mobile phones in developed and developing economies provides a widely accessible consumer device capable of delivering mobile financial services ranging from text notifications associated with Western Union cash delivery services to phone-based remittance options. Western Union's mobile money transfer service offering will connect its core money-transfer platform to m-bank or m-wallet platforms provided by mobile operators and/or locally regulated financial institutions.


title: Western Union

text: The company launched the Western Union Connect service in October 2015, following partnership agreements with major instant messaging apps WeChat and Viber. The partnership allows users of WeChat to send up to $100 to China, the US and 200 other countries, while Viber users can send up to $100 for $3.99 plus exchange rate fees, with that fixed fee increasing the more money is sent up a limit of $499.


title: Western Union

text: Along with satellite telecommunications, Western Union was also active in other forms of telecommunication services:


title: Western Union

text: Most of these services were discontinued by Western Union in the late 1980s due to a lack of profitability, with the company's divisions providing said services being divested and sold to other companies, such as the 1988 sale of WU's satellite fleet and services to Hughes Space and Communications, and the sale of WU's Airfone service to GTE in 1986.


title: Western Union

text: As the Internet became an arena for commerce at the turn of the millennium, Western Union started its online services. BidPay was renamed "Western Union Auction Payments" in 2004 before being renamed back to BidPay. BidPay ceased operations on December 31, 2005, and was purchased for US$1.8 million in March 2006 by CyberSource Corp. who announced their intention to re-launch BidPay. BidPay was later discontinued by CyberSource effective December 31, 2007.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union was a major shirt-sponsor of the Sydney Roosters NRL team from 2002–2003. The company still sponsors the team, but not as a shirt-sponsor. Globally Western Union sponsors numerous community events that help support the diaspora communities that use the global Money Transfer service. They also sponsored numerous WWE and WCW pay-per-view events such as the No Way Out 1998 and Slamboree 2000. They sponsored UEFA Europa League from 2012 until 2015.


title: Western Union

text: The First Data Western Union Foundation donates money to charitable causes globally. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Foundation donated US$1,000,000 to the relief effort.


title: Western Union

text: The Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association announced a three-year deal making Western Union the team's jersey sponsor, beginning with the 2017–18 NBA Season.


title: Western Union

text: Liverpool F.C. announced on August 9, 2017 that Western Union would become their first ever sleeve sponsors, from the start of the 2017–18 Season. They signed a £25m deal for 5 years as Liverpool's sleeve sponsor.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union telegrams were transmitted through a store and forward message switching system. Early versions were manual telegraph systems. Later systems using teleprinters were semi-automatic, using punched paper tape to receive, store, and retransmit messages. Plan 55-A, Western Union's last paper tape based switching system (1948–1976), was fully automatic, with automatic routing.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union was a prime contractor in the Automatic Digital Network (AUTODIN) program. AUTODIN, a military application for communication, was first developed in the 1960s and became the precursor to the modern Internet in the 1990s. The Defense Message System (DMS) replaced AUTODIN in 2000.


title: Western Union

text: AUTODIN, originally named "ComLogNet", was a reliable service that operated at 99.99% availability, using mechanical punched card readers and tab machines to send and receive data over leased lines. During the peak operation of AUTODIN, the US portion of the network handled 20 million messages a month. Western Union failed in its attempts to engineer a replacement (AUTODIN II), leading to the development of an acceptable packet-switched network by BBN (the developer of the ARPANET) which became the foundation of today's Internet. AUTODIN service ceased in 2000, years after it had become obsolete.


title: Western Union

text: A related innovation that came from AUTODIN was Western Union's computer based EasyLink service. This system allowed one of the first marketable email systems for non-government users. The system allowed the same message to be sent simultaneously to multiple recipients via email, fax, mailgram, or telex services as well as allowing messages to be sent from the integrated formats. With the service, users could also perform research utilizing its InfoLink application. EasyLink was spun off as a separate company and is now part of OpenText.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union advises its customers not to send money to someone that they have never met in person. Despite its efforts in increasing customers' awareness of the issue, Western Union is used for internet fraud by scammers.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union has been required to maintain records of payout locations of the individuals who may be laundering the money, though this information may be obtained only through the use of a subpoena. Hence advance-fee fraud and romance scammers continue to receive funds via Western Union confident in the knowledge that money lost to overseas scammers is almost always unrecoverable. For this reason, it is banned as a medium of payment through eBay, and discouraged on other online auction websites.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union admitted to allowing wire fraud in January 2017 and agreed to pay $586m, for turning a blind eye as criminals used its service for advance fee fraud. Scammers engaging in various 419 advance fee scams including offering fake job offers and lottery prizes, were able to process transactions using Western Union money transfer, mainly by giving the agents a share of the earnings from their scams. Western Union failed to investigate hundreds of thousands of complaints that were filed by victims.


title: Western Union

text: The Central Bank of Ireland reprimanded and fined Western Union €1.75m in May 2015 because of failures in anti money laundering practices which could have left the firm's payment services open to being used for money laundering and/or terrorist financing saying that they were concerned that Western Union "failed to have in place sufficiently robust systems and procedures to train agents, to monitor and identify suspicious activity in respect of smaller transactions, and to maintain appropriate records" and "the splitting of payments into many separate smaller payments is a common method used to launder money. Similarly, terrorist financing is often carried out by small payment transfers."


title: Western Union

text: Western Union agents also allowed Chinese immigrants to the US to use the service to send hundreds of millions of dollars, by sending the amounts in smaller increments to avoid transfer reporting requirements, to pay human smugglers.


title: Western Union

text: In 2017, Western Union admitted to anti-money laundering and consumer fraud violations and agreed to pay $586 million in a settlement with the Department of Justice. Among other charges, the Justice Department showed that Western Union was complicit in creating an ecosystem where criminals were able to engage in consumer fraud and human trafficking. The charges were dismissed in March 2020.


title: Western Union

text: In 2018, Western Union was fined $60 million by the New York State Department of Financial Services. The press release accompanying the fine stated that, "Western Union executives put profits ahead of the company’s responsibilities to detect and prevent money laundering and fraud, by choosing to maintain relationships with and failing to discipline obviously suspect, but highly profitable, agents."


title: Western Union

text: On May 29, 2019, Western Union announced the departure of a company executive, Odilon Almeida, who served as executive vice president and president of Global Money Transfer. In 2012, Stewart Stockdale, who had the same position as Almeida, left the company in a similar situation.


title: Western Union

text: The book "The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11" alleged that Western Union provided United States military intelligence with personal information.


title: Western Union

text: Western Union has been accused of engaging in anti-competitive behavior in Africa as a result of a lack of competition on the continent. According to a report by the Overseas Development Institute, this allows Western Union to artificially inflate its fees for money transfers, charging what has been called an “Africa charge” of 8% consistently “applied across countries regardless of the size of the market, regulatory costs or market risk.” However, the fees can be as high as 10% or more, depending on the region. Africa's remittance market remains the most expensive in the world, and the region is estimated to incur excess costs of $1.4 billion to $2.3 billion per year as a result of these high remittance fees.


title: Western Union

text: The company has also been criticized for its use of exclusivity agreements with banks in countries that receive remittances, restricting competition and harming the consumer, by requiring the consumer to conduct transactions via nominated banks. This also allows for the imposition of above-average transaction fees.


title: Western Union

text: In February 2016, Harada Ltd filed a complaint with the EU antitrust regulator claiming that Western Union colluded with banks to push out smaller rivals from the money transfer market.


title: Tony Awards

text: The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in Midtown Manhattan.


title: Tony Awards

text: The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances. One is also given for regional theatre. Several discretionary non-competitive awards are given as well, including a Special Tony Award, the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award.


title: Tony Awards

text: The awards were founded by theatre producer and director Brock Pemberton and are named after Antoinette "Tony" Perry, an actress, producer and theatre director who was co-founder and secretary of the American Theatre Wing. The trophy consists of a spinnable medallion, with faces portraying an adaptation of the comedy and tragedy masks, mounted on a black base with a pewter swivel.


title: Tony Awards

text: The rules for the Tony Awards are set forth in the official document "Rules and Regulations of The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards", which applies for that season only. The Tony Awards are the New York theatre industry's equivalent to the Emmy Awards for television, the Grammy Awards for music, and the Academy Awards (Oscars) for film, and a person who has won all four is said to have won the EGOT. The Tony Awards are the U.S. equivalent of the United Kingdom's Laurence Olivier Awards and France's Molière Awards.


title: Tony Awards

text: The 75th annual ceremony was held on June 12, 2022, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and was broadcast live on CBS, as well as the Paramount+ streaming service. Ariana DeBose served as the host.


title: Tony Awards

text: , there were 26 categories of awards, in addition to several special awards. Starting with 11 awards in 1947, the names and number of categories have changed over the years. Some examples: the category Best Book of a Musical was originally called "Best Author (Musical)." The category of Best Costume Design was one of the original awards. For two years, in 1960 and 1961, this category was split into Best Costume Designer (Dramatic) and Best Costume Designer (Musical). It then went to a single category, but in 2005 it was divided again. For the category of Best Director of a Play, a single category was for directors of plays and musicals prior to 1960.


title: Tony Awards

text: A newly established non-competitive award, The Isabelle Stevenson Award, was given for the first time at the awards ceremony in 2009. The award is for an individual who has made a "substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of one or more humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations."


title: Tony Awards

text: The category of Best Special Theatrical Event was retired as of the 2009–2010 season. The categories of Best Sound Design of a Play and Best Sound Design of a Musical were retired as of the 2014–2015 season. On April 24, 2017, the Tony Awards administration committee announced that the Sound Design Award would be reintroduced for the 2017–2018 season.


title: Tony Awards

text: The award was founded in 1947 by a committee of the American Theatre Wing (ATW) headed by Brock Pemberton. The award is named after Antoinette Perry, nicknamed Tony, an actress, director, producer and co-founder of the American Theatre Wing, who died in 1946. As her official biography at the Tony Awards website states, "At <nowiki>[</nowiki>Warner Bros. story editor] Jacob Wilk's suggestion, [Pemberton] proposed an award in her honor for distinguished stage acting and technical achievement. At the initial event in 1947, as he handed out an award, he called it a Tony. The name stuck." Nevertheless, the awards were sometimes referred to as the "Perry Awards" in their early years.


title: Tony Awards

text: The 1st Tony Awards was held on April 6, 1947, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. The first prizes were "a scroll, cigarette lighter and articles of jewelry such as 14-carat gold compacts and bracelets for the women, and money clips for the men". ATW co-founder Louise Heims Beck was responsible for over seeing the organization of the first awards. It was not until the third awards ceremony in 1949 that the first Tony medallion was given to award winners.


title: Tony Awards

text: Since 1967, the award ceremony has been broadcast on U.S. national television and includes songs from the nominated musicals, and occasionally has included video clips of, or presentations about, nominated plays. The American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League jointly present and administer the awards. Audience size for the telecast is generally well below that of the Academy Awards shows, but the program reaches an affluent audience, which is prized by advertisers. According to a June 2003 article in "The New York Times": "What the Tony broadcast does have, say CBS officials, is an all-important demographic: rich and smart. Jack Sussman, CBS's senior vice president in charge of specials, said the Tony show sold almost all its advertising slots shortly after CBS announced it would present the three hours. 'It draws upscale premium viewers who are attractive to upscale premium advertisers,' Mr. Sussman said..." The viewership has declined from the early years of its broadcast history (for example, the number of viewers in 1974 was 20 million; in 1999, 9.2 million) but has settled into between six and eight million viewers for most of the decade of the 2000s. In contrast, the 2009 Oscar telecast had 36.3 million viewers.


title: Tony Awards

text: The Tony Award medallion was designed by art director Herman Rosse and is a mix of mostly brass and a little bronze, with a nickel plating on the outside; a black acrylic glass base, and the nickel-plated pewter swivel. The face of the medallion portrays an adaptation of the comedy and tragedy masks. Originally, the reverse side had a relief profile of Antoinette Perry; this later was changed to contain the winner's name, award category, production and year. The medallion has been mounted on a black base since 1967.


title: Tony Awards

text: A larger base was introduced in time for the 2010 award ceremony. The new base is slightly taller , up from and heavier , up from . This change was implemented to make the award "feel more substantial" and easier to handle at the moment the award is presented to the winners. According to Howard Sherman, the executive director of the American Theatre Wing:


title: Tony Awards

text: For the specific Tony Awards presented to a Broadway production, awards are given to the author and up to two of the producers free of charge. All other members of the above-the-title producing team are eligible to purchase the physical award. Sums collected are designed to help defray the cost of the Tony Awards ceremony itself. An award cost $400 as of at least 2000, $750 as of at least 2009, and, as of 2013, had been $2,500 "for several years", according to Tony Award Productions.


title: Tony Awards

text: For the purposes of the award, a new play or musical is one that has not previously been produced on Broadway and is not "determined… to be a 'classic' or in the historical or popular repertoire", as determined by the Administration Committee (per Section (2g) of the Rules and Regulations). The rule about "classic" productions was instituted by the Tony Award Administration Committee in 2002, and stated (in summary) "A play or musical that is determined ... to be a 'classic' or in the historical or popular repertoire shall not be eligible for an award in the Best Play or Best Musical Category but may be eligible in that appropriate Best Revival category." Shows transferred from Off-Broadway or the West End are eligible as "new", as are productions based closely on films.


title: Tony Awards

text: This rule has been the subject of some controversy, as some shows, such as "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and "Violet", have been ruled ineligible for the "new" category, meaning that their authors did not have a chance to win the important awards of Best Play or Best Musical (or Best Score or Best Book for musicals). On the other hand, some people feel that allowing plays and musicals that have been frequently produced to be eligible as "new" gives them an unfair advantage because they will have benefited from additional development time as well as additional familiarity with the Tony voters.


title: Tony Awards

text: The Tony Awards Administration Committee has twenty-four members: ten designated by the American Theatre Wing, ten by The Broadway League, and one each by the Dramatists Guild, Actors' Equity Association, United Scenic Artists and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. This committee, among other duties, determines eligibility for nominations in all awards categories.


title: Tony Awards

text: The Tony Awards Nominating Committee makes the nominations for the various categories. This rotating group of theatre professionals is selected by the Tony Awards Administration Committee. Nominators serve three-year terms and are asked to see every new Broadway production. The Nominating Committee for the 2012–13 Broadway season (named in June 2012) had 42 members; the Nominating Committee for the 2014–2015 season has 50 members and was appointed in June 2014.


title: Tony Awards

text: There are approximately 868 eligible Tony Award voters (as of 2014), a number that changes slightly from year to year. The number was decreased in 2009 when the first-night critics were excluded as voters. That decision was changed, and members of the New York Drama Critics' Circle were invited to be Tony voters beginning in the 2010–2011 season.


title: Tony Awards

text: The eligible Tony voters include the board of directors and designated members of the advisory committee of the American Theatre Wing, members of the governing boards of Actors' Equity Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, United Scenic Artists, and the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers, members of the Theatrical Council of the Casting Society of America and voting members of The Broadway League (in 2000, what was then The League of American Theaters and Producers changed membership eligibility and Tony voting status from a lifetime honor to all above-the-title producers, to ones who had been active in the previous 10 years. This action disenfranchised scores of Tony voters, including Gail Berman, Harve Brosten, Dick Button, Tony Lo Bianco, and Raymond Serra).


title: Tony Awards

text: To be eligible for Tony Award consideration, a production must have officially opened on Broadway by the eligibility date that the Management Committee establishes each year. For example, the cut-off date for eligibility the 2013–2014 season was April 24, 2014. The season for Tony Award eligibility is defined in the Rules and Regulations.


title: Tony Awards

text: In 2020, the 74th Annual Tony Awards were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 21, 2020, it was announced that the 74th Annual Tony Awards would take place digitally later in 2020.


title: Tony Awards

text: A Broadway theatre is defined as having 500 or more seats, among other requirements. While the rules define a Broadway theatre in terms of its size, not its geographical location, the list of Broadway theatres is determined solely by the Tony Awards Administration Committee. As of the 2016–2017 season, the list consisted solely of 41 theaters: 40 located in the vicinity of Times Square in New York City and Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater.


title: Tony Awards

text: While the theatre-going public may consider the Tony Awards to be the Oscars of live theatre, critics have suggested that the Tony Awards are primarily a promotional vehicle for a small number of large production companies and theatre owners in New York City. In a 2014 "Playbill" article, Robert Simonson wrote that "Who gets to perform on the Tony Awards broadcast, what they get to perform, and for how long, have long been politically charged questions in the Broadway theatre community..." The producers "accept the situation ... because just as much as actually winning a Tony, a performance that lands well with the viewing public can translate into big box-office sales." Producer Robyn Goodman noted that, if the presentation at the ceremony shows well and the show wins a Tony, "you’re going to spike at the box office".


title: Tony Awards

text: The awards met further criticism when they eliminated the sound design awards in 2014. In 2014, a petition calling for the return of the Sound Design categories received more than 30,000 signatures. Addressing their previous concerns over Tony voters in the category, it was announced that upon the awards' return for the 2017–2018 season, they would be decided by a subset of voters based on their expertise.


title: Tony Awards

text: Some advocates of gender equality and non-binary people have criticized the separation of male and female acting categories in the Tony Awards, Academy Awards, and Emmy Awards. Though some commentators worry that gender discrimination would cause men to dominate unsegregated categories, other categories are unsegregated. The Grammy Awards went gender-neutral in 2012, while the Daytime Emmy Awards introduced a single Outstanding Younger Performer in a Drama Series category in 2019 to replace their two gender-specific younger actor and actress categories.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: A Dangerous Method is a 2011 historical drama film directed by David Cronenberg. The film stars Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Sarah Gadon, and Vincent Cassel. Its screenplay was adapted by writer Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play "The Talking Cure", which was based on the 1993 non-fiction book by John Kerr, "A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein".


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Set on the eve of World War I, "A Dangerous Method" describes the turbulent relationships between Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology; Sigmund Freud, founder of the discipline of psychoanalysis; and Sabina Spielrein, initially a patient of Jung and later a physician and one of the first female psychoanalysts.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: A co-production between British, Canadian and German production companies, the film marks the third consecutive collaboration between Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen (after "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises"). This is also the third Cronenberg film made with British film producer Jeremy Thomas, after completing together the William Burroughs adaptation "Naked Lunch" and the J. G. Ballard adaptation "Crash". Filming took place between May and July 2010 in Cologne on a soundstage, with exterior shots filmed in Vienna.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: "A Dangerous Method" premiered at the 68th Venice Film Festival and was also featured at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was theatrically released in Germany on 10 November 2011 by Universal Pictures International, in Canada on 13 January 2012 by Entertainment One and in the United Kingdom on 10 February 2012 by Lionsgate. The film grossed $24 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, many praising the performances of Mortensen and Fassbender and Cronenberg's direction. It appeared on several critics' year-end lists. At the 70th Golden Globe Awards, Mortensen was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his portrayal of Freud.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: In August 1904, Sabina Spielrein arrives at the Burghölzli, the pre-eminent psychiatric hospital in Zürich, suffering from hysteria and begins a new course of treatment with the young Swiss doctor Carl Jung. He uses word association and dream interpretation as part of his approach to psychoanalysis, and finds that Spielrein's condition was triggered by the humiliation and sexual arousal she felt as a child when her father spanked her naked.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Jung and chief of medicine Eugen Bleuler recognize Spielrein's intelligence and energy, and allow her to assist them in their experiments. She measures the physical reactions of subjects during word association, to provide empirical data as a scientific basis for psychoanalysis. She soon learns that much of this new science is founded on the doctors' observations of themselves, each other, and their families, not just their patients. The doctors, Jung and Freud, correspond at length before they meet, and begin sharing their dreams and analysing each other, and Freud himself soon adopts Jung as his heir and agent.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Jung finds in Spielrein a kindred spirit, and their attraction deepens due to transference. Jung resists the idea of cheating on his wife, Emma, and breaking the taboo of sex with a patient, but his resolve is weakened by the wild and unrepentant confidences of his new patient Otto Gross, a brilliant, philandering, unstable psychoanalyst. Gross decries monogamy in general and suggests that resistance to transference is symptomatic of the repression of normal, healthy sexual impulses, exhorting Jung to indulge himself with abandon.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Jung finally begins an affair with Spielrein, including rudimentary bondage and spanking. Things become even more tangled as he becomes her advisor to her dissertation; he publishes not only his studies of her as a patient but eventually her treatise as well. Spielrein wants to conceive a child with Jung, but he refuses. After his attempt to confine their relationship again to doctor and patient, she appeals to Freud for his professional help, and forces Jung to tell Freud the truth about their relationship, reminding him that she could have publicly damaged him but did not want to.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Jung and Freud journey to America. However, cracks appear in their friendship as they begin to disagree more frequently on matters of psychoanalysis. Jung and Spielrein meet to work on her dissertation in Switzerland, and begin their sexual relationship once more. However, after Jung refuses to leave his wife for her, Spielrein decides to go to Vienna. She meets Freud, and says that although she sides with him, she believes he and Jung need to reconcile for psychoanalysis to continue to develop.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Following Freud's collapse at an academic conference, he and Jung continue correspondence via letters. They decide to end their relationship after increasing hostilities and accusations regarding the differences in their conceptualisation of psychoanalysis. Spielrein marries a Russian doctor and, while pregnant, visits Jung and his wife. They discuss psychoanalysis and Jung's new mistress. Jung confides that his love for Spielrein made him a better person.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: The film's footnote reveals the eventual fates of the four analysts. Gross starved to death in Berlin in 1920. Freud died of cancer in London in 1939 after being driven out of Vienna by the Nazis. Spielrein trained a number of analysts in the Soviet Union, before she and her two daughters were shot by the Nazis in 1942. Jung emerged from a nervous breakdown to become the world's leading psychologist before dying in 1961.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Hampton's earliest version of the screenplay, dating back to the 1990s, was written for Julia Roberts in the role of Sabina Spielrein, but the film was never realized. Hampton re-wrote the screenplay for the stage, before producer Jeremy Thomas acquired the rights for both the earlier script and the stage version.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: The film was produced by Britain's Recorded Picture Company, with Germany's Lago Film and Canada's Prospero Film acting as co-producers. Additional funding was provided by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, MFG Baden-Württemberg, Filmstiftung NRW, the and Film Fund, Ontario Media Development Corp and Millbrook Pictures.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Christoph Waltz was initially cast as Sigmund Freud, but was replaced by Viggo Mortensen due to a scheduling conflict. Christian Bale had been in talks to play Carl Jung, but he too had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Filming began on 26 May and ended on 24 July 2010. Exteriors were shot in Vienna and interiors were filmed on a soundstage in Cologne (MMC Studios Köln), Germany. Viennese locations included the Café Sperl, Berggasse 19, and the Schloss Belvedere. Lake Constance (Bodensee) stood in for Lake Zurich.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: A noted feature of the film is the extensive use in the musical score of leitmotifs from Wagner's third "Ring" opera "Siegfried", mostly in piano transcription. In fact the composer Howard Shore has said that the structure of the film is based on the structure of the "Siegfried" opera.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Universal Pictures released the film in German-speaking territories, while Lionsgate took rights to the United Kingdom and Sony Pictures Classics distributed the film in the United States. The film debuted at the Venice Film Festival in Italy on 2 September 2011.


title: A Dangerous Method

text: On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 78% approval rating, based on 187 reviews with an average rating of 6.85/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "A provocative historical fiction about the early days of psychoanalysis, "A Dangerous Method" is buoyed by terrific performances by Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Viggo Mortensen."


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Louise Keller reports from "Urban Cinephile", "The best scenes are those between Mortensen and Fassbender...the tension between the two men mounts as their views conflict: Freud insists that sex is an underlying factor in every neurosis while Jung, interested in spiritualism and the occult, is disappointed by what he considers to be Freud's 'rigid pragmatism.'"


title: A Dangerous Method

text: Andrew O'Hehir's review on "Salon" notes that on the one hand Freud's "single-minded focus on sexual repression as the source of neurosis led to the creation of psychiatry as a legitimate medical and scientific field—one that was often resistant to change and dominated by authoritarian father figures." On the other hand, Sabina's effect on Jung, and "the discoveries they had made together, both in the office and the bedroom," including the potential in "a creative fusion of opposites—doctor and patient, man and woman, dark and light, Jew and Aryan," led to a falling out between the two men "over a variety of issues, most notably the scientific limits of psychiatric inquiry."


title: A Dangerous Method

text: In contrast, Steven Rea of "The Philadelphia Inquirer" wrote that, despite the film's exploration of "the way our subconscious works, the way we repress, and suppress, natural urges—the constant battle between the rational and the instinctive, the civilized and the wild", the film "feels distant, and clinical, in ways you wished it did not." In an interview with "The Daily Beast"s Marlow Stern, Cronenberg himself is quoted as saying that the love scenes between Jung and Spielrein were "quite clinical. These were people who, even when they were having sex, they were observing themselves having sex because they were so interested in their reactions to things."


title: Dulce de leche

text: Dulce de leche (; ), also known as caramelized milk, milk candy or milk jam in English, is a confection from Latin America prepared by slowly heating sugar and milk over a period of several hours. The resulting substance, which takes on a spreadable, sauce-like consistency, derives its rich flavour and colour from non-enzymatic browning. It is typically used to top or fill other sweet foods.


title: Dulce de leche

text: "Dulce de leche" is Spanish for "sweet [made] of milk". Other regional names in Spanish include "manjar" ("delicacy") and "arequipe"; in Mexico and some Central American countries "dulce de leche" made with goat's milk is called 'cajeta'. In French it is called "confiture de lait." It is also known under the name of "kajmak" in Polish cuisine, where it was independently created based on Turkish kaymak, a kind of clotted cream. Kajmak is most commonly used for wafers or the mazurek pie traditionally eaten on Easter.


title: Dulce de leche

text: The most basic recipe calls for slowly simmering milk and sugar, stirring almost constantly until the sugar dissolves (baking soda then can be added), after more constant stirring (between 1.5 - 2 hours) until the mixture thickens and finally turns a rich brown golden-brown colour.


title: Dulce de leche

text: Another method calls for letting a gallon of milk stand in room temperature for an entire 24 hours. The gases will spoil the milk and what is left is curd and whey. This is then boiled, causing the solids to flow to the top. The solids are removed and sugar is added. This mixture is stirred until it becomes hard, after which it is removed from the heat and left to cool. After it cools, it is broken up for consumption. Out of a gallon, this method yields about two cups.


title: Dulce de leche

text: Other ingredients such as vanilla may be added for flavor. Much of the water in the milk evaporates and the mix thickens; the resulting "dulce de leche" is usually about a sixth of the volume of the milk used. The transformation that occurs in preparation is caused by a combination of two common non-enzymatic browning reactions called caramelization and the Maillard reaction.


title: Dulce de leche

text: A homemade form of "dulce de leche" sometimes is made by boiling an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk for two to three hours (or 30 to 45 minutes in a pressure cooker), particularly by those living in countries where it cannot be bought ready-made. This results in a product that is much sweeter than the slow-boiled kind. This method could be dangerous, and should not be done on a stove: if the pot is allowed to boil dry, the can will overheat and explode.


title: Dulce de leche

text: "Dulce de leche" can be eaten alone, but is more commonly used as a topping or filling for other sweet foods, such as cakes, churros, cookies (see "alfajor"), waffles, "crème caramel" (known as "flan" in Spanish-speaking regions and "pudim" in Portuguese-speaking ones), fruits like banana, and ice creams; it is also a popular spread on crepes (panqueques) and toast, while the French variant "confiture de lait" is commonly served with "fromage blanc".


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Pennsylvania Station, also known as New York Penn Station or simply Penn Station, is the main intercity railroad station in New York City and the busiest transportation facility in the Western Hemisphere, serving more than 600,000 passengers per weekday . It is located in Midtown Manhattan, beneath Madison Square Garden in the block bounded by Seventh and Eighth Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets, and in the James A. Farley Building, with additional exits to nearby streets. It is close to Herald Square, the Empire State Building, Koreatown, and Macy's Herald Square.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Penn Station has 21 tracks fed by seven tunnels (the two North River Tunnels, the four East River Tunnels, and the single Empire Connection tunnel). It is at the center of the Northeast Corridor, a passenger rail line that connects New York City to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and intermediate points. Intercity trains are operated by Amtrak, which owns the station, while commuter rail services are operated by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and NJ Transit (NJT). Connections are available within the complex to the New York City Subway and buses.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Penn Station is named for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), its builder and original owner, and shares its name with several stations in other cities. The current facility is the remodeled underground remnant of the original Pennsylvania Station, a more ornate station building designed by McKim, Mead, and White and considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style. Completed in 1910, it enabled direct rail access to New York City from the south for the first time. Its head house was torn down in 1963, galvanizing the modern historic preservation movement. The rest of the station was rebuilt in the following six years, while retaining most of the rail infrastructure from the original station.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: A new direct entrance from 33rd Street to the LIRR concourse opened in December 2020. Moynihan Train Hall, an expansion of Penn Station into a mixed-use redevelopment of the adjacent Farley Post Office building, opened in January 2021.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Plans call for further expanding the LIRR concourse, adding railway platforms in a new southern annex to accommodate two proposed Gateway Program tunnels under the Hudson River, adding underground connections to the Herald Square station and with the PATH to the 33rd Street station, and renovating the core Penn Station under Madison Square Garden.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Until the early 20th century, the PRR's rail network terminated on the western side of the Hudson River (once known locally as the North River) at Exchange Place in Jersey City, New Jersey. Manhattan-bound passengers boarded ferries to cross the Hudson River for the final stretch of their journey.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: The rival New York Central Railroad's line ran down Manhattan from the north under Park Avenue and terminated at Grand Central Depot (later replaced by Grand Central Terminal) at 42nd Street. Many proposals for a cross-Hudson connection were advanced in the late 19th century, but financial panics in the 1870s and 1890s scared off potential investors. In any event, none of the proposals advanced during this time were considered feasible.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: An early proposal for a bridge was considered but rejected. The alternative was to tunnel under the river, but this was infeasible for steam locomotive use. The development of the electric locomotive at the turn of the 20th century made a tunnel feasible. In 1901, PRR president Alexander Cassatt announced the railroad's plan to enter New York City by tunneling under the Hudson and building a grand station on the West Side of Manhattan south of 34th Street. The station would sit in Manhattan's Tenderloin district, a historical red-light district known for its corruption and prostitution.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Beginning in June 1903, the two single-track North River Tunnels were bored from the west under the Hudson River. A second set of four single-track tunnels, the East River Tunnels, were bored from the east under the East River, linking the new station to Queens, the PRR-owned Long Island Rail Road, and Sunnyside Yard in Queens, where trains would be maintained and assembled. Construction was completed on the Hudson River tunnels on October 9, 1906, and on the East River tunnels on March 18, 1908.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: A small portion of Penn Station opened on September 8, 1910, in conjunction with the opening of the East River Tunnels, and LIRR riders gained direct railroad service to Manhattan. On November 27, 1910, Penn Station was fully opened to the public. With the station's full opening, the PRR became the only railroad to enter New York City from the south.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: During half a century of operation by the Pennsylvania Railroad (1910–1963), scores of intercity passenger trains arrived and departed daily to Chicago and St. Louis on "Pennsy" rails and beyond on connecting railroads to Miami and the west. Along with Long Island Rail Road trains, Penn Station saw trains of the New Haven and the Lehigh Valley railroads. A side effect of the tunneling project was to open the city up to the suburbs, and within 10 years of opening, two-thirds of the daily passengers coming through Penn Station were commuters.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: The station put the Pennsylvania Railroad at comparative advantage to its competitors offering direct service from Manhattan to the west and south. Other railroads began their routes at terminals in Weehawken, Hoboken, Pavonia and Communipaw which required passengers from New York City to take the interstate Hudson Tubes (now PATH) or ferries across the Hudson River before boarding their trains. By 1945, at its peak, more than 100 million passengers a year traveled through Penn Station.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: By the late 1950s, intercity rail passenger volumes had declined dramatically with the coming of the Jet Age and the Interstate Highway System. The station's exterior had become somewhat grimy, and due to its vast scale, the station was expensive to maintain. A renovation covered some of the grand columns with plastic and blocked off the spacious central hallway with a new ticket office. The Pennsylvania Railroad optioned the air rights, which called for the demolition of the head house and train shed, to be replaced by an office complex and a new sports complex, while the tracks of the station would remain untouched.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Plans for the new Penn Plaza and Madison Square Garden were announced in 1962. In exchange for the air rights to Penn Station, the PRR would receive a smaller underground station at no cost and a 25 percent stake in the new Madison Square Garden Complex. Modern architects rushed to save the ornate building, but to no avail; demolition of the above-ground head house began in October 1963.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: A giant steel deck was placed over the tracks and platforms to allow rail service to continue during construction. Photographs of the day showed passengers waiting for trains even as the head house was demolished around them. This was possible because most of the rail infrastructure (including the waiting room, concourses, and boarding platforms) was below street level.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: The demolition of the Penn Station head house was controversial and caused outrage internationally. "One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat," the architectural historian Vincent Scully famously wrote of the original station. The controversy over the demolition of such a well-known landmark, and its deplored replacement, is often cited as a catalyst for the architectural preservation movement in the United States. New laws were passed to restrict such demolition. Within the decade, Grand Central Terminal was protected under the city's new landmarks preservation act, a protection upheld by the courts in 1978 after a challenge by Grand Central's owner, Penn Central.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Post-1968, the core Penn Station has been underground, sitting below Madison Square Garden, 33rd Street, and Two Penn Plaza. The core has three levels: concourses on the upper two levels and train platforms on the lowest. The two levels of concourses, while renovated and expanded during the construction of Madison Square Garden, are original to the 1910 station, as are the tracks and platforms.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Over the following decades, renovation attempted to add service and some concourse space. The West End Concourse under Eighth Avenue opened in 1986. In 1987, a rail connection to the West Side Rail Yard opened, and in 1991, the opening of the Empire Connection allowed Amtrak to consolidate all of its New York City trains at Penn Station. Previously, all trains running along the Empire Corridor terminated at nearby Grand Central Terminal. This was a legacy of the two stations' roots in separate railroads–the PRR and New York Central, respectively. The consolidation saved Amtrak the expense of having to maintain two stations in New York City, including having to pay the MTA $600,000 in fees a year.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: In 1994, the station was renovated to add the 34th Street LIRR entrance and central corridor, along with artwork and improved waiting and concession areas. The new entrance consisted of a structure with a glass and brick facade, a clock salvaged from the original station, and air-conditioning units for the terminal. In 2002, the NJ Transit concourse was created in space previously occupied by retail and Amtrak office space, although the concourse could only be accessed from the Amtrak entrance on 32nd Street. Plans for a new entrance from 31st Street to the NJ Transit concourse were announced in 2006, and the entrance opened in 2009.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: After the September 11 attacks, security was increased and passenger flow curtailed. In 2002, $100 million of work added security features such as lighting, cameras, and barricades. The taxiway under Madison Square Garden, which ran from 31st Street to 33rd Street at mid-block, was permanently closed off with concrete Jersey barriers. Escalators providing direct access to the lobby of Madison Square Garden were closed and later removed. The underground Gimbels Passageway connecting pedestrians to 34th Street–Herald Square has been sealed off since 1986, after decades of safety concerns and sexual assaults.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Despite the modest renovations, the underground Penn Station continued to be criticized as "reviled," "dysfunctional," and a low-ceilinged "catacomb" lacking charm, especially when compared to the much larger and more ornate Grand Central Terminal. The "New York Times", in a November 2007 editorial supporting development of an enlarged terminal, said that "Amtrak's beleaguered customers...scurry through underground rooms bereft of light or character," and "Times" transit reporter Michael M. Grynbaum called Penn Station "the ugly stepchild of the city’s two great rail terminals." After its nadir in the 1960s, ridership exploded in subsequent decades, a situation never contemplated by the structure's designers. By the 2010s, the station operated at almost three times its intended capacity; over 600,000 passengers used the station daily in 2019.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: In the early 1990s, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan proposed building a new station in the James A. Farley Building, the city's former main post office across the street. Moynihan had shined shoes in the original station as a boy. Many redevelopment or expansion concepts were unveiled over the 1990s and 2000s, but none reached fruition until funding from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act enabled the expansion of the West End Concourse of the LIRR under the Farley Building in 2016. Building on it, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2016 announced plans for renovation of Penn Station and mixed-use redevelopment of the Farley Building, including development of a new train hall, which he called the Empire Station Complex. The new expansion, Moynihan Train Hall, opened in January 2021, named for the man who had conceived it. The $1.6 billion, renovation retained the original, landmarked Beaux Arts Farley Building, added a central atrium with a glass roof, and provided access to Amtrak and LIRR trains. A new 33rd Street entrance to the LIRR concourse opened at the same time.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: The station received a place in the world selection for the 2021 Prix Versailles in the passenger stations category.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: The station is served by 1,300 arrivals and departures per day, twice the number during the 1970s. There are more than 600,000 subway, commuter rail and Amtrak passengers who use the station on an average weekday, or up to 1,000 every ninety seconds. It is the busiest passenger transportation facility in the United States and in North America.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: All except the "Acela Express," "Northeast Regional" and "Vermonter" originate and terminate at Penn Station.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Despite its status as Amtrak's busiest station, Amtrak's Superliner railcars cannot use Penn Station due to incompatible platform heights and inadequate clearances in the North River and East River Tunnels.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Amtrak normally uses tracks 5–12 alongside New Jersey Transit and shares tracks 13–16 with the LIRR and NJ Transit.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: All branches connect at Jamaica station except the Port Washington Branch. Jamaica station also connects to Airtrain JFK for service to John F. Kennedy International Airport.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Normally, the LIRR uses tracks 17 to 21 exclusively and shares tracks 13 to 16 with Amtrak and NJT. The LIRR uses tracks 11 and 12 on rare occasions.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: NJT normally uses tracks 1 to 4 exclusively, as these four tracks end at bumper blocks to their east. NJT shares tracks 5 through 12 with Amtrak, and occasionally uses tracks 13 to 16, which are shared with Amtrak and the LIRR.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Connections are also available to the PATH system at 33rd Street station, under Sixth Avenue on Herald Square. The JSQ-33 and HOB-33 services terminate at 33rd Street on weekdays, and are combined into the JSQ-33 (via HOB) service on late nights, weekends and holidays.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: NYC Airporter provides bus transportation to and from John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, and is authorized by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the New York City Department of Transportation.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Intercity bus service to and from Penn Station is provided by Vamoose Bus, Tripper Bus, and Go Buses. Vamoose Bus runs buses from a stop near Penn Station to Bethesda, Maryland; Arlington, Virginia; and Lorton, Virginia. Tripper Bus runs buses from a stop near Penn Station to Bethesda, Maryland and Arlington, Virginia. Go Buses runs buses from a stop near Penn Station to Newton, Massachusetts and Cambridge, Massachusetts.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Most intercity and commuter bus services to and from midtown Manhattan use the Port Authority Bus Terminal, located approximately 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) to the north of Penn Station.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Penn Station includes a United Airlines ticketing office, located at the ticket lobby. This was previously a Continental Airlines ticketing office.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to bring Metro-North Railroad commuter trains to Penn Station as part of its Penn Station Access project. The East Side Access project, expected to open in 2022, will free up track and platform space at Penn Station by redirecting some LIRR trains from Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal. This new capacity, as well as track connections resulting from the East Side Access project, would allow Metro-North trains on the New Haven Line to run to Penn Station via Amtrak's Hell Gate Bridge.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Four new local Metro-North stations in the Bronx are planned as part of this project, at Co-op City, Morris Park, Parkchester/VanNest, and Hunts Point. The MTA also proposes a second connection from the Metro-North's Hudson Line to Penn Station using Amtrak's West Side Line in Manhattan. The Penn Station Access project would provide direct rides from Connecticut, Westchester County, the Lower Hudson Valley, and the Bronx to West Midtown; ease reverse-commuting from Manhattan and the Bronx to Westchester County, the Lower Hudson Valley, and Connecticut; and provide transportation service to areas of the Bronx without direct subway service.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: Penn Station does not have a unified design or floor plan but rather is divided into separate Amtrak, LIRR and NJ Transit concourses with each concourse maintained and styled differently by its respective operator. The Amtrak and NJ Transit concourses are located on the first level below the street level while the Long Island Rail Road concourse is two levels below street level.


title: Pennsylvania Station (New York City)

text: The main concourse, which was principally used by Amtrak until the opening of the Moynihan Train Hall, is at the west end of the station directly beneath Madison Square Garden. It was created out of the original station's waiting rooms and main concourse, though few remnants of the original still exist in the space. It was renovated in the early 2000s in anticipation of "Acela" service and includes an enclosed waiting area for ticketed passengers with seats, outlets and WiFi.