title: New Journey to the West

text: The show's first season reunites the former 2 Days & 1 Night Season 1 members Lee Seung-gi, Kang Ho-dong, Eun Ji-won and Lee Soo-geun. The four members each take one of the characters from the classic 16th-century Chinese novel "Journey to the West" as they go on a 5-days and 4 night backpacking trip through Xian, China, to play various games. The show was a success with over 42 million views on Naver TV Cast and 10 million views on Chinese portal site QQ.


title: New Journey to the West

text: After gaining positive response on the first season, the second season of the show was filmed in Chengdu, which included a new cast member Ahn Jae-hyun (replacing Lee Seung-gi who left for military conscription). Aside from airing on online platforms, the show was aired on cable channel tvN. It garnered over 100 million views in China. The third season of the show, added boy band members Kyuhyun (Super Junior) and Mino (Winner), filmed in Guilin. The fourth season of the show was filmed in Vietnam. The fifth season was filmed in Hong Kong with a new member P.O (Block B), replacing Kyuhyun who could not participate due to his mandatory military service. Then, it is continuously followed with the sixth season that was filmed in Hokkaido. The show returns for the seventh season in October 2019, with a returning Cho Kyu-hyun and was set in South Korea. However, Ahn Jae-hyun did not participate in the seventh and eighth season due to his personal family issue.


title: New Journey to the West

text: In Season 1, Lee Seung Gi plays Tang Sanzang (a Buddhist monk in the novel) who leads and worries constantly about the monsters hyungs (his co-cast members) who don't listen to him. Lee Soo Geun plays Sun Wukong a monkey character with the greatest sin, Eun Ji Won plays Sha Wujing (a celestial being) who is either immature or genius villain, and Kang Ho Dong plays Zhu Bajie (a pig character) with low brain power but great strength and appetite. Together, they take a journey to the west (Xi'an, China) while completing various missions to find seven dragon balls which can grant wishes for those who collect them.


title: New Journey to the West

text: Na Young Suk PD expressed, “The four are too familiar with each other, and they know what each other is thinking just from looking at each other's eyes. Everyone had a great and fun time during the 5 days four nights trip. We are working hard on the post-production at the moment, so that the viewers can experience the fun that we all had.” Prior to the start of Season 2, tvN rebroadcast the online version of Season 1 to the TV by compiling it to two episodes on 8 and 15 April 2016.


title: New Journey to the West

text: In Season 2 to 4, the show followed the similar concept as Season 1 as they travelled with new characters and new cast members to several parts of China and Vietnam to find the seven dragon balls.


title: New Journey to the West

text: In Season 2, Kang Ho-dong, Eun Ji-won and Lee Soo-geun with Ahn Jae-hyun (replacing Lee Seung-gi) travel to China (Chengdu and Lijiang). Each member takes on one of the characters as in Season 1 and played various games. The season started on 22 April and ended on 17 June 2016. Simultaneously, the show was also broadcast online via Naver TVCast between 19 April and 14 June 2016.


title: New Journey to the West

text: Season 2.5 consists of two new members (Mino and Kyuhyun) for familiarizing with the current members from Season 2.


title: New Journey to the West

text: In Season 3, Kang Ho-dong, Eun Ji-won, Lee Soo-geun, Ahn Jae-hyun, Mino and Kyuhyun travel to China (Guilin and Xiamen). New characters (Master Roshi and Bulma) were also introduced. The season started on 8 January and ended on 12 March 2017.


title: New Journey to the West

text: In Season 4, the show continued with the same members from Season 3 as the whole group takes a journey to Vietnam. The season started on 13 June and ended on 22 August 2017. With the new theme of ""The apocalypse of Hell"", each member has his new character: Kang Ho-dong plays Zhu Bajie; Lee Soo-geun plays Piccolo; Eun Ji-won plays Sun Wukong; Ahn Jae-hyun plays monk Xuan Zhang; Kyuhyun plays Sha Wujing; and since Min-ho loses the Ping-pong competition and shaves his hair, he plays the character of Krillin. In Gangshi Game, members complete all the tasks in time, Mino accurately selects the gift buttons (luxury cars) after spinning 15 turns around. Instead of giving expensive cars, Na Young-suk PD promises to give them dragon balls and other rewards. Min-ho also receives a new nickname as Song Garak (Song finger). In this Season, members successfully collect all seven dragon balls and receive their rewards from the production team. Na Young-suk PD promises to put ""Kang's Kitchen"" and ""Youth Over Flowers"" into schedule.


title: New Journey to the West

text: In Season 5 and 6, new sets of characters and themes (Ghost Special and Season of Harvest) were introduced as the cast members traveled to Hong Kong and Hokkaido. As Kyuhyun started his military conscription, P.O joined in as a replacement and guest member.


title: New Journey to the West

text: In Season 5, they make a journey to Hong Kong (China) with a new theme of ""Ghost Special or Horror Special"." In Season 6, members travelled to Hokkaido (Japan) with a new theme of ""Geobong Geobong Geobong" (Kyoho grape)". Then in Season 6.5, members return to Seoul (South Korea). They spend time together in a house and play different games to win the rewards. The season started on 30 September and ended on 2 December 2018. At the end of the show, the production team announced that ""Kang's Kitchen 2"" would return soon.


title: New Journey to the West

text: In Season 7, Kang Ho-dong, Lee Soo-geun, Eun Ji-won, Song Mino, P.O, and a returning Cho Kyu-hyun travel around South Korea. The season started on 25 October 2019 and ended on 3 January 2020. In this season, the show was filmed in South Korea with the theme "Homecoming" and Na PD got the concept from the Spider-Man: Homecoming.


title: New Journey to the West

text: In Season 8, current members from Season 7 returned. The theme is based on Korean traditional fairytale and is being filmed in South Korea. The season started on 9 October 2020 (Hangeul Day) and ended on 18 December 2020.


title: New Journey to the West

text: This show reunites four former cast members of the golden age of KBS '2 Days & 1 Night' in Season 1. On 16 July 2015, tvN announced that Na Young Seok PD will show a new form of variety program in fall through internet contents called 'New Journey to The West'. The production crew stated, "We invested [in the show] as a new format that will broadcast on the internet instead of TV. Right now, we are considering recruiting Lee Soo Geun, and Eun Ji Won in addition to Kang Ho Dong and Lee Seung Gi. There will be no more additions after four members are confirmed."


title: New Journey to the West

text: A CJ E&M official told Sports Chosun on 23 July 2015, ‘New Journey to the West’ is holding the first meeting of the members. On 5 August, a source involved in broadcasting said that Lee Seung Gi, Kang Ho Dong, Lee Soo Geun, Eun Ji Won, and Na Young Suk leave for China on 6 August to begin filming. Which later revealed that they heading to Xian, a city in China, for 5 days filming.


title: New Journey to the West

text: tvN announced on 18 August 2015 that "New Journey to the West" will be released exclusively through PC and mobile Naver TVCast in early September. It marked this show as the first South Korean variety show created by a TV network, tvN, to be broadcast exclusively online.


title: New Journey to the West

text: New Journey to the West production crew and members make their first official appearance through a press conference held at 63 Convention Center on the afternoon of 1 September 2015. The press conference go live on Tuesday at 2 p.m. on Naver and V app at the same time.


title: New Journey to the West

text: The show also streamed exclusively on Tencent's QQ.com in China, simultaneously with its run on South Korean portal website Naver. Seo Jang-Ho, the head of international sales and acquisitions at CJ E&M, said, "We are excited to introduce New Journey to the West to Chinese viewers through Tencent, one of the largest online platforms in the country. As the show is CJ E&M's highly anticipated digital content of the year, we hope for its successful reception in China.”


title: New Journey to the West

text: In the show press conference, Director Na said that there was no step-by-step casting process. "It all just happened very naturally when Lee Seung-gi mentioned going on a trip with the old members over a casual dinner," Na explained. “We then talked about filming it, but because it would lack completeness as a TV show, we decided to use the Internet platform.” Na stated that they wanted to make a program that is new in every ways, including genre and format. Providing busy businessmen and students with short break in the midst of their hectic daily routines. The concept about five new clips at once time release, with each clip to be about ten minutes long, make those who can't afford the time to watch all of the clips in order can just randomly pick whatever looks good for them.


title: New Journey to the West

text: Episode 1(Highlights):- The new member Ahn jayeon joins the show and they chose the roles. They added the condition for the role Monk Xuan Zhang That he will have to shave his hair Aka Lee soogeun. After reaching china the crew dumps them after some time and told them to find their lodging with no money given. They mess up the ATM card and it gets blocked. And the crew gives them a second chance they win with the help of local fans who hand guides them to their Guest house.


title: New Journey to the West

text: Season 2.5 consisted of 7 episode internet exclusive clips familiarizing the 2 new cast members, Cho Kyuhyun and Song Minho to the show among other things.


title: New Journey to the West

text: Destinations: South Korea. Theme: Homecoming, Retro Special, Innocence Special, Global Special & Cinema Special


title: New Journey to the West

text: Destinations: South Korea. Theme: Once Upon a Time, Retreat for Team Building, Dragon King and his friends (Once Upon a Time in the Sea)


title: New Journey to the West

text: In a survey done prior to the program's airing, 62.5% of the recipients knew about the new program, while 76.9% indicated that they would watch the program. The first trailer of the show which was revealed on 25 August 2015 via Naver TVCast exceeded more than 1 million view in less than 24 hours and became a hot topic among netizen.


title: New Journey to the West

text: The first five episodes, each spanning between five and ten minutes, were uploaded at 10 a.m. Five hours after it release, more than 50,000 people had subscribed to the channel on Naver's video streaming website TVCast, where the show is broadcast. The first episode has been viewed more than 700,000 times, with the five together recording a combined 2 million views. After 12 hours of its release, the five episodes almost hit 5 million views.


title: New Journey to the West

text: It has received positive response from the public. The show's network tvN revealed that the first five episodes, released through Naver TV Cast recorded 6.1 million hits on the first day of its release. If the trailer and the video unveiled in production presentation are also included, the number adds up to 11.5 million views as of the morning of 5 September 2015. In 3 days after its release, the first five episodes hit 8.7 million views and reach 14.4 million views altogether (including views for press conference and trailer clips).


title: New Journey to the West

text: On 8 September 2015, 'New Journey the West' Season 1 has accumulated 15 million views on Naver TV Cast since its release. In the day of the second five episodes release, 11 September, the show already attracted more than 20 million combined views online with its trailer and first episode. It made "New Journey to the West" as the first online broadcast to reach the break-even point with only advertising revenues in South Korea. Executive of CJ E&M stated, “We are likely to reap the profits earlier-than-expected thanks to a surge in viewers. Online broadcast is emerging as a new cash cow with TV ad revenues declining.”


title: New Journey to the West

text: It also received good responses in China. On 5 September 2015, 'New Journey to the West' first on QQ video real time chart, and fourth in overall QQ videos site. On 7 September, the first 5 episodes of this show already got more than 10 million views on QQ Video in China. The Second 5 episodes (episode 6-10) which released in following week, got 10 million just 2 days after its release.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien is an American late-night talk show that featured Conan O'Brien as host from June 1, 2009, to January 22, 2010, as part of NBC's "Tonight Show" franchise. O'Brien had previously hosted NBC's "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", which followed "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" for 16 years, until his brief succession after Leno.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Many members of the "Late Night" cast and crew made the transition to "The Tonight Show". The Max Weinberg 7, the house band from O'Brien's "Late Night", served as the house band under the new name, Max Weinberg and The Tonight Show Band. Andy Richter returned to the show as announcer, and also began resuming his role as sidekick, after having left "Late Night" in 2000.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: In January 2010, after the show had been on the air for seven months, it was announced that NBC was intending to move Jay Leno from primetime back to his original timeslot at 11:35 pm, with O'Brien's show starting shortly after midnight. In response to the announcement, O'Brien released a press statement saying that he would not continue as host of "The Tonight Show" if it was moved to any time after midnight to accommodate "The Jay Leno Show". He feared it would ruin the long and rich tradition of "The Tonight Show", which had been on after the late local newscasts from the beginning. After two weeks of negotiations, NBC announced that they had paid $45 million to buy out O'Brien's contract, ending both his tenure as host as well as his relationship with NBC after 22 years.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Conan O'Brien's final "Tonight Show" was broadcast on January 22, 2010, with Jay Leno officially resuming his role as host on March 1, 2010, immediately following the conclusion of the 2010 Winter Olympics. It later received four Primetime Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series, the first time "The Tonight Show" received a nomination for this particular award after 2003.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: At only 146 episodes (145 aired) over the course of seven months and three weeks, it is the shortest-running iteration in the sixty-year history of "The Tonight Show".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The show followed the established six-piece format used by previous hosts Jay Leno and Johnny Carson, as well as elements established by O'Brien during his tenure on "Late Night". The first segment included a monologue by O'Brien, sometimes accompanied by altered news clips, or several brief comedy sketches. Most episodes also included a second segment, immediately after the monologue, with a full comedy sketch. An interview with either one or two guests followed, as well as a musical or comedy performance.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: After the last performance segment, O'Brien walked on camera to thank the performers, bid farewell to the audience, and recommend watching "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon". For the first six shows, the credits ran in the right half of a split screen, a former NBC standard that "Late Night" continued to use long after the network abandoned it. After episode seven, NBC's current practice of running credits at the bottom third of the screen was employed. The Conaco and Universal Media Studios production tags were then shown in full-screen.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: New sketches included O'Brien posing for the paparazzi, known as "Conan's Tabloid Moment", and "Twitter Tracker", where an excited announcer reads mundane "tweets" by celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Miley Cyrus, and Dennis Haysbert. Sketches from "Late Night" reintroduced include "In the Year 2000" as "In the Year 3000", with Richter once again assisting Conan on the sketch, and "Celebrity Surveys". "Late Night" character Triumph the Insult Comic Dog appeared on "Tonight" for the first time on June 19, 2009, serving as correspondent for the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee. Another favorite character from Conan's old show, the Masturbating Bear, was also reintroduced on January 20, 2010, on Conan's third-to-last show. O'Brien originally retired the Masturbating Bear at the end of his "Late Night" run due to concerns about its inappropriateness in the 11:30 time slot. "Late Night" character The Interrupter made his first appearance on "The Tonight Show" on September 3, 2009.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: As is the format on other late night talk shows, the last segment typically featured a performance by either a musical guest or a stand-up comedian, preceding the closing credits to the show. An avid guitar player, O'Brien has been given many guitars as gifts from several musical guests and on occasion, featured himself on acoustic guitar in a comedy sketch. He also played electric guitar during the final episode's cover performance of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" originated from Stage 1 at Universal Studios Hollywood in Universal City, California, a stage that was specifically built and constructed for O'Brien's version of "The Tonight Show". The set was designed in art deco style with multi-colored art deco murals along the top of the set. The studio was previously used for Jack Benny's television show. This was the first time since before May 1972, when Johnny Carson served as host, that the show was not shot in Burbank, California.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: As with a majority of television shows produced and broadcast by NBC Universal, the show was shot in 16:9 aspect ratio, with a 4:3 center-cut, and broadcast in 1080i high definition. O'Brien's entire tenure on the show was the first version of "The Tonight Show" to be recorded, taped, and broadcast exclusively in high definition.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The show was shot with 9 cameras and 8 camera operators, using several Sony HDC-1500 cameras with added two Canon DigiSuper 27XS and one Canon DigiSuper 72XS (for guest close-ups) box lenses.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Unlike Leno's "Tonight Show", the studio audience was several feet removed from the stage, in a similar fashion to Carson's original set. Leno retained Carson's original configuration (and set design) until he changed studios in 1995.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The stage layout was opposite of the structure used on "Late Night". Where Studio 6A was arranged with the house band on the far left, followed by the performance area and then the interview set, the house band was moved to the right of the performance stage on "Tonight", with the interview set now on the far left.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: From 2012 until 2014, Stage 1 was the home of "Chelsea Lately", which aired on E!, a channel owned by NBCUniversal.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: In a high-profile announcement by NBC on September 27, 2004, it was officially declared that Conan O'Brien would take over as host of "The Tonight Show" in 2009, replacing Jay Leno, ending a seventeen-year run by Leno. This was accompanied by reports that Jay Leno had told Jeff Zucker, the President of NBC Entertainment, News & Cable Group, of his plans to retire that same year. Leno immediately explained on his show the following night that in having Conan take over the show, and announcing it years before the transition would take place, that he wanted to avoid the hardship that he had experienced in the dispute over retiring Johnny Carson's hosting duties between him and David Letterman in 1992. Further commenting about the announcement, Leno made it clear that Conan was "certainly the most deserving person for the job." However, in 2008, while Leno was beginning to bring his show to a close, it was announced that Leno had changed his mind about retiring and would instead host a new prime-time variety show on NBC. "The Jay Leno Show" aired weeknights at 10:00 pm from September 14, 2009, until the show's cancellation on February 9, 2010.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The guests for Conan O'Brien's first week as host were announced on May 22, 2009, with the first episode of "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" including actor and comedian Will Ferrell, in addition to a musical performance of the song "Got Some" by guest Pearl Jam.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The show's opening began with a nod to "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson", beginning with the classic "" logo used during the 1960s and 1970s, and the announcement that "the following program is brought to you in living color, on NBC", a slogan that would be readopted by NBC soon after.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: In the cold open, O'Brien was shown preparing to host his first episode of "The Tonight Show", going over a list of things that needed to be done, but realizing he was still in New York and had forgotten to move to Los Angeles. After trying, and failing, to catch a taxi cab, Conan ran across the country through such places as Amish Country, Wrigley Field in Chicago, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the Teton Range, Las Vegas and the deserts of Arizona before arriving at Universal Studios Hollywood to host the show.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Upon arrival, Conan realized he left the keys to the new studio in New York and then drove a bulldozer through the door and wall of the studio to get in. The Cheap Trick song "Surrender" was played over this sketch.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Other filmed sketches in the first episode included a trip through the streets of Los Angeles on the Universal Studios tram, a ride through Hollywood with Conan behind the wheel of his 1992 Ford Taurus SHO, and a short gag showing Conan in the back row of a Los Angeles Lakers playoff game at Staples Center.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On June 23, 2009, the show's first segment ended with a tribute to former "Tonight Show" announcer and sidekick Ed McMahon, who had died earlier in the day. Memorable clips from McMahon's tenure as Johnny Carson's sidekick were shown, with O'Brien and Andy Richter also paying tribute to McMahon, and bidding him a final farewell.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On September 23, 2009, during his opening monologue, O'Brien told a very brief joke about Newark, and a supposed health care program for the city's citizens that would involve Newark giving them a bus ticket out of the city. Newark mayor Cory Booker responded in a satirical YouTube video calling for O'Brien to apologize, and that Conan would be banned from ever entering Newark Liberty International Airport until doing so. Conan responded by further making fun of Newark, however, saying the only way he could get to Newark now would be like everyone else, "through a series of poor decisions." He also called out Cory Booker to come on the show to air out their grievances, deciding to then ban Booker from Burbank airport, adding later that he had absolutely no power to do so. Booker subsequently banned Conan from the state of New Jersey as well as all the sister cities of Newark. In response, O'Brien read a letter on air from Elizabeth, New Jersey mayor Chris Bollwage, declaring that he will temporarily rename Terminal A of Newark Liberty (which lies in Elizabeth) the Conan O'Brien Terminal. Conan continued, saying he had created a "geographic toilet seat" around Newark. The mayors of Bayonne, East Orange, Kearny, Jersey City, and Elizabeth have publicly sided with Conan O'Brien. He ended this by saying, "Your move, Mayor Booker." The feud was unofficially ended when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for it to end during a prepared comedy bit, telling Booker to "chalk it up" to Conan. The following week Conan announced that Cory Booker would be a guest on the October 16, 2009, show to mend the feud. That night, O'Brien and his wife donated $50,000 to the Newark Now Organization, and NBC Universal matched Conan's donation to total a $100,000 gift. Booker also admitted that he is a big Conan fan and often tapes shows to watch the next day or watches them on the website Hulu.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On September 25, 2009, O'Brien suffered from a mild concussion after he slipped and hit his head while running a race, as part of a comedy sketch, with guest Teri Hatcher. He was examined at a hospital and released the same day. A rerun was aired that night, but O'Brien returned to work the following Monday and poked fun at the incident, before showing a clip of the occurrence in its entirety. Though the episode never aired due to its incompletion, Hatcher was not asked to return for another interview. Second guest Seth MacFarlane and musical guest Rodrigo y Gabriela returned the next week, however.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Highly promoted prior to its premiere on the late night scene, the debut episode of "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" generated 9.2 million viewers overall and a 3.8 rating in adults 18-49. Ratings for the debut episode were higher than both CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman" and ABC's "Nightline" combined, with a 7.1 rating and a 17 audience share. In comparison, the final show with Leno averaged an 8.8 rating in metered-market households. During the rest of O'Brien's premiere week, ratings dropped each day, from a 5.0 on Tuesday to a 3.5 on Friday, though the latter still exceeded that evening's 2.7 rating for "Late Show".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On June 9, 2009, "Late Show" had rated better than "The Tonight Show" with a 3.4 rating to 2.9 rating. It was the first time in over eight months that Letterman rated better than his NBC counterpart. "Tonight" would end up winning week two, however, with O'Brien garnering 850,000 more viewers than "Late Show with David Letterman" in the 18–49 demographic, plus 650,000 more viewers in the 18–34 demographic and 550,000 more in the 25–54 demographic.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The week before the death of Michael Jackson saw Letterman attract a larger audience than O'Brien, with "The Tonight Show" audience measuring as the smallest in the franchise's history, "3.3 million viewers, about two million fewer than Jay Leno's average as host." The following week, O'Brien's total viewership was even lower, averaging 2.8 million; among viewers 25-to-54, he tied with Letterman, the first time O'Brien failed to win that demographic since he had become host. However, "The New York Times" noted that the coverage of Jackson's death had placed "Nightline" ahead of both Letterman and O'Brien that week. By the week ending August 7, repeats of "The Late Show" were also beating O'Brien, albeit with the thinnest of margins—the repeats got a 2.1/6 household rating and 2.95 million total viewers, vs. "The Tonight Show's" 2.0/5 rating and 2.94 million viewers; both were beaten that week by "Nightline's" 3.25 million.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Although there were suggestions that O'Brien's greatest strength, the "young men" demographic, could be more easily reached "on Web sites and cable channels like Comedy Central and Spike", advertisers and network executives alike pointed out that the first real test would come in September 2009. Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tom Shales also pointed out in August 2009 that O'Brien was "in much better shape than Leno was at the beginning." O'Brien's strength was also strong among low income inner city viewers, and had always beaten Letterman by a large margin among that demographic. O' Brien also received very high ratings over Letterman among African American and Hispanic viewers, which was very unusual for a white host. Prior to Conan's tenure African American and Hispanic viewers were usually split among Leno and Letterman.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: By November 2009, two months after the premiere of "The Jay Leno Show" in September, ratings for "The Tonight Show" were down "roughly two million viewers a night year-to-year" from when Leno hosted the program. Though cheaper to produce than the scripted dramas it replaced, Leno's new prime time talk show generated fewer lead-in viewers for local news programs, causing a domino effect on ratings for "The Tonight Show" and "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On January 12, 2010, in response to the controversy of the late-night schedule change, O'Brien's ratings grew to 1.7 rating/7 share among adults 18–49, up 40 percent from the previous day. On Thursday, January 14, 2010, Conan garnered a 1.9 rating. His last show garnered his best ratings with a 4.8 rating with adults 18–49 and 40 percent better than the 3.4 rating with adults 18–49 Jay Leno got in his last show on May 29, 2009.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On January 7, 2010, multiple media outlets reported that beginning March 1, 2010, Jay Leno would move from his 10 pm weeknight time slot to 11:35 pm, due to a combination of pressure from affiliates and both Leno's and O'Brien's poor ratings. The plan would have Leno's show shortened from an hour to 30 minutes. All NBC late night programming would be preempted by the 2010 Winter Olympics between February 15 and 26; a final decision about the programming changes was made by NBC on January 10. O'Brien's contract stipulated that NBC could move the show back to 12:05 am without penalty (a clause put in primarily to accommodate sports preemptions), leaving him with no apparent recourse other than resignation.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On January 10, NBC confirmed they would move Jay Leno out of primetime on February 12, and intended to move him to late-night as soon as possible. TMZ reported that O'Brien was given no advance notice of the change, and that NBC offered two choices: the hour-long 12:05 am time slot, or the option to leave the network. If O'Brien did choose to leave, Leno would likely regain the "Tonight Show" title as well as the full 11:35 pm to 12:35 am time slot. Another possibility was that NBC could pay O'Brien to refrain from working for another network, remain off-air, then have him resume as host once Leno retires. The day after the change was announced, "The New York Times" spoke with an anonymous FOX executive, who said that the company felt O'Brien "would be a great fit for Fox." ABC had stated they felt no need to add O'Brien to their late night schedule, which already contained "Nightline" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On January 12, O'Brien issued a press release that stated he would not continue with the NBC program if it moves to a 12:05 am time slot, saying, "I believe that delaying "The Tonight Show" into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. "The Tonight Show" at 12:05 simply isn't the "Tonight Show." Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the "Late Night" show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy." In the same statement, O'Brien pointed out the lack of support from the network and lead-in prime time ratings: "It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both."


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On January 15, All Headline News reported that NBC intended to keep Conan off the air completely for three and a half years, without pay, unless he agreed to NBC's terms. Insiders for both NBC and O'Brien reportedly dismissed the notion as "ludicrous": "He has two and a half years left on his deal. How would they even do that?" NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker made the threat with the belief that O'Brien's contract contained a clause that allowed the network to bench him for an additional one year after his contract expires. An insider on O'Brien's side claimed that NBC would be in breach of an addendum to the contract if "The Tonight Show" was moved to a later time slot.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: "The New York Times" reported online support was overwhelmingly in favor of O'Brien; in the days following the switch announcement, 88% of related Twitter posts expressed support for O'Brien. Tens of thousands of Facebook posts were made siding with O'Brien, and thousands joined various "Team Conan" or "I'm with Coco" groups. Dozens of celebrities expressed support for O'Brien, including Roger Ebert, Tom Hanks, Rosie O'Donnell, Jim Gaffigan, Paul F. Tompkins, Doug Benson, Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, Alyssa Milano, Chris Parnell, Jimmy Kimmel, Jeff Garlin, and Ricky Gervais. Actor and comedian Patton Oswalt expressly backed O'Brien, saying, "Comedians who don't like Jay Leno now, and I'm one of them, we're not like, 'Jay Leno sucks'; it's that we're so hurt and disappointed that one of the best comedians of our generation... willfully has shut the switch off."


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: In a 2010 issue of "TV Guide", the timeslot dispute ranked No. 1 on a list of TV's biggest "blunders".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: After two weeks of negotiations, on January 21, 2010, it was officially announced that Conan O'Brien had signed a $45 million deal to leave NBC altogether, ending a partnership that lasted 22 years. "The Wall Street Journal" reported that O'Brien would receive about $32 million, executive producer Jeff Ross $4.5 million, and the rest of the staff around $7.5 million. The deal did not, however, contain a previously rumored "mitigation clause", in which NBC would be able to keep some of the severance pay after O'Brien found a new program. It also stipulated that O'Brien could freely return to television as early as September 1, 2010, on another network.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The network confirmed that Leno would officially resume as host of "The Tonight Show" on March 1, 2010, following the 2010 Winter Olympics coverage on NBC. Reruns of episodes from O'Brien's time continued to air until the beginning of NBC's coverage of the Olympics in February 2010.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Once it was made public that January 22 would likely be O'Brien's last "Tonight Show" episode, a number of big name guests were booked for the final few shows, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Robin Williams and Adam Sandler. Musical guests for the final week included Spoon and Barry Manilow. The guests for the final episode were Tom Hanks, Will Ferrell, and musical guest Neil Young. Ferrell bookended the show by being O'Brien's first and last guest. Tom Hanks was the final interview of both O'Brien's "Tonight Show" and David Letterman's "Late Night".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: In addition, a number of other unannounced celebrities "dropped by" during various segments of the show. On January 13, Jack McBrayer appeared briefly in character as NBC page Kenneth Parcell from "30 Rock". He interrupted O'Brien's monologue while giving a guided tour around the studio, quipping, "NBC spent more time building this studio than using it." On January 19, Norm Macdonald walked onstage with a large congratulatory gift basket he had procrastinated on giving O'Brien since June. He read aloud from the greeting card, "Congratulations Conan on finally securing your place as permanent host of "The Tonight Show". That's something they can never take away from you." Ed Helms appeared on January 20, performing "Stu's Song" from "The Hangover" with altered lyrics that remarked upon O'Brien's current troubles. Ben Stiller and Paul Reubens (in character as Pee-wee Herman) made brief unannounced stops on the January 21 show. On the last show, Steve Carell made a cameo appearance as an NBC employee conducting O'Brien's exit interview.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The January 20 episode included a comedic bit in which O'Brien unveiled a Bugatti Veyron dressed as a mouse, while the song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones played in the background. O'Brien claimed that the car and music licensing fees ("not to mention the rights to re-air this clip on the Internet") would cost NBC $1.5 million. It was later revealed that the car was on loan from the Petersen Automotive Museum. The segment was subsequently cut from Internet versions of the episode that were uploaded to Hulu and NBC.com, presumably so the network could avoid paying the licensing fees required for the Rolling Stones song.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The "expensive" comedy bit continued on January 21, featuring 2009 Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird wearing a mink Snuggie watching restricted Super Bowl footage, which O'Brien claimed cost NBC $4.8 million. The final episode upped the ante further with a purported $65 million sketch, featuring a credit card-purchased fossil skeleton of a ground sloth from the Smithsonian Institution spraying Beluga caviar through a hose onto an original Picasso painting. In response to the Internet community's outcry over the expense of these sketches, O'Brien explained that the segments were a joke.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The televised airing extended into January 23, which coincidentally marked the five-year anniversary of Johnny Carson's death. Before introducing the final segment, a performance of "Free Bird", O'Brien gave a statement to the viewers and audience, which included a personal thank you to NBC (the first time he expressed gratitude to the network since the controversy began) and his devoted fanbase:


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The final episode featured a reel of highlights from the show's short run, ending with the words, "To Be Continued.", indicating that he will be on another network. When introduced, Tom Hanks brought out two glasses of "scotch", later revealed to be cream soda. Neil Young performed an acoustic version of his song "Long May You Run", and the show ended with Will Ferrell dressed as Ronnie Van Zant playing the cowbell in a nod to his famous role in the More cowbell sketch, Ferrell's pregnant wife Viveca Paulin, Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, Beck, O'Brien himself, and Max Weinberg and "The Tonight Show" Band performing "Free Bird".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Roughly two weeks after O'Brien's final episode (repeats of previous shows, however, continued to appear until February 11, just before the network's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics), NBC began removing all videos of "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" from its website, as well as from the streaming video site Hulu. Gather.com reported that NBC intends to scrub all O'Brien-related "Tonight Show" and "Late Night" clips from YouTube making it incredibly difficult to find any videos of Conan's history with "The Tonight Show" other than his farewell speech, among other clips. "Time" magazine criticized the network for pulling the videos, noting that Hulu currently streams many less popular NBC series, such as "Knight Rider", "Kings", "Crusoe", and "Surface".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: In February 2010, NBC took O'Brien's official website offline, and removed all mentions of the former host from NBC.com. Around the same time, HornyManatee.com, a URL launched by O'Brien's "Late Night" show as part of a sketch, began redirecting to NBC.com. In early February 2010, O'Brien's face in the 30 Rockefeller Plaza mural was replaced by Jay Leno's likeness. The NBC "Tonight Show Experience" website which originally featured media on all of the past hosts was also removed of all content. More recently mention of O'Brien has been restored to the site. Every search result in O'Brien's name on NBC.com only produced links to the "30 Rock" episode "Tracy Does Conan" – in which O'Brien guest stars – and the farewells to O'Brien during the episode of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" which aired after O'Brien's last "Tonight Show".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Critics have also called into question promotions broadcast in early March 2010 for an upcoming appearance by former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Leno's "Tonight Show" in which it was claimed that she had never made a late-night talk show appearance before—despite her appearing on the Conan O'Brien "Tonight Show" on December 11, 2009. Nikki Finke, a blogger for the Deadline Hollywood website, cited this as more evidence of NBC attempting to erase any remnants of the O'Brien era.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Sarah Palin also appeared on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", but neither of those appearances was an interview.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: One O'Brien reference that NBC did not filter out was in the April 1, 2010 episode of "The Marriage Ref", with "Late Night" host Jimmy Fallon on the panel. While watching a clip of a married couple arguing about the husband's odd marionette collection, Fallon pointed out two marionettes in the background that resembled him and Conan (to which the mentioning of his name received great applause), saying the husband owned the "NBC Late Night Marionette" collection. O'Brien was also mentioned on the first season finale of the NBC series "Community", when the character Starburns yelled out that NBC should "bring back Conan."


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On the April 6, 2010 episode of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", guitarist Slash performed the song "By the Sword" with Andrew Stockdale, lead singer of Wolfmother, the first single from Slash's self-titled debut solo album. During the performance, there were very few close-ups of Slash. TMZ reported that this was because Slash was wearing a pin depicting Mike Mitchell's "I'm With Coco" poster during the performance, which they illustrated with a closeup still showing the pin.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On the May 5, 2010 episode of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", a gag involving Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad's fictional Facebook page mentioned "Team Coco" under his Favorites section, becoming one of the first jabs at O'Brien (though not mentioned out loud) by Leno.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On the June 8, 2010 episode, comedian Chris Rock made an appearance. During the interview, he made a few subtle references to O'Brien's stint as host and went on to call Leno a "bad, bad man."


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On the June 10, 2010 episode, guest Denis Leary stated that he had created a Twitter account because he heard Conan O'Brien got one. Leno mentioned that he also has a Twitter account. The comment and the question were not present in clips of the interview on the NBC website.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On the July 8, 2010 episode, immediately after the 2010 Emmy nominations were announced, Leno indirectly referred to "The Tonight Show" under O'Brien by quipping that the good news was that "The Tonight Show" had been nominated for four Emmys. The bad news was that none of them were his. On the July 9 episode, Jay showed an altered tape of him interviewing LeBron James. When Leno asked James if he had chosen a team, James held up a poster reading "Team CoCo", to which Leno said, "Well, he did get four nominations."


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: On July 8, 2010, "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series; the comparison was made by most media outlets that neither Jay Leno's version of "Tonight" nor "The Jay Leno Show", both of which were also submitted for consideration, received a nomination in the category.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: Other 2010 Primetime Emmy nominations include Outstanding Art Direction in a Variety, Music, or Nonfiction Programming, Outstanding Directing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Series.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: The writing and directing categories in which O'Brien's "Tonight Show" was nominated have been cut from the Emmy broadcast due to a deal that the Emmys reached with the WGA and DGA last year to alternate between the writing and directing awards for Variety, Music, or Comedy Series and Variety, Music, or Comedy Specials. These have been moved to the Creative Emmys broadcast, however fans have been mounting a campaign to get at least the writing award for series back on the prime time Emmys broadcast.


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: At the Creative Arts Emmys, "The Tonight Show" failed to win any of the three awards they were up for that night. "The Tonight Show" also failed to win the Emmy for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series, losing to "The Daily Show".


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: A short clip (less than one second in length) of O'Brien appeared in an early promo for Fallon's "Tonight Show", which portrayed Fallon as the latest custodian of a 60-year-old franchise and featured all "Tonight" hosts of the past, most prominently Carson and Leno. In interviews, Fallon has included O'Brien when referring to "Tonight" history, noting himself as the sixth host in succession (counting Leno only once, and not counting the hosts during the show's brief incarnation as a newsmagazine in 1957).


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: While alluding to (and joking about) the 2010 controversy many times over his last few weeks on the air, Leno did not directly acknowledge his seven- month absence from the franchise, nor did he acknowledge O'Brien by name as he concluded his tenure as host. During the February 6 episode of "Conan", which aired the same night as Leno's final episode, O'Brien referenced Leno in his monologue by mentioning the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics, saying that "NBC will finally get to show someone who is okay with passing the torch". Following applause from the audience, O'Brien said, "I allowed myself one, but it was a good one."


title: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

text: "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" premiered on February 17, 2014. Fallon told a couple of jokes during his first "Tonight Show" monologue that referred to the Conan/Leno fiasco. He said in his monologue, "Welcome, I'm Jimmy Fallon and I will be your host... "for now!"" – taking a jab at the situation O'Brien went through. Fallon continued his monologue, saying, "Of course I wouldn't be here tonight if it weren't for the previous "Tonight Show" hosts, so I want to say 'thank you' to Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and Jay Leno."


title: Addicted (2014 film)

text: Addicted is a 2014 American erotic thriller drama film directed by Bille Woodruff from a screenplay by Christina Welsh and Ernie Barbarash, based on Zane's novel of the same name. It stars Sharon Leal, Boris Kodjoe, Tasha Smith, Tyson Beckford, Emayatzy Corinealdi, and William Levy. The film was released in the United States on October 10, 2014, by Lionsgate.


title: Addicted (2014 film)

text: Zoe Reynard (Sharon Leal) has the perfect life with her husband Jason (Boris Kodjoe) and two children, and is the CEO of her own company which signs and develops aspiring artists. One evening she attends an art show of Quinton Canosa (William Levy); the two meet and share some flirtation. Zoe later visits his apartment to discuss a contract, and the two end up having sex.


title: Addicted (2014 film)

text: Zoe feels guilty and tries to end it with Quinton; they break up regularly but always inevitably end up getting back together. On one particular occasion, when Zoe goes to get back with Quinton, she finds him having sex with his neighbour.


title: Addicted (2014 film)

text: Throughout the film, Zoe is telling this story as a flashback to her psychotherapist, Dr. Marcella Spencer (Tasha Smith), who after diagnosing her with sex addiction, assumes it might have been something from Zoe's past that keeps coming back to haunt her and pressures her to confess. However, each time her psychotherapist asks, Zoe avoids the question and walks out.


title: Addicted (2014 film)

text: Zoe's addiction begins to take over her life; she soon begins sleeping with a second man, Corey (Tyson Beckford), whom she met at a club. One day, when she comes home from work, she finds Corey at her home talking to her mother. Seeing the danger she had put her family in, Zoe decides that she wants to try to fix her marriage with Jason. She invites both Corey and Quinton to meet her at Quinton's apartment and breaks up with both of them.


title: Addicted (2014 film)

text: Corey becomes angry and lunges at her but Quinton blocks him. As Corey leaves, Quinton knocks him out with a vase. Zoe becomes afraid of Quinton and tries to calm him down; Quinton tells her that she is not going to leave him. Frightened, Zoe shoves glass artwork between them, smashing it to pieces. She then hides from Quinton who is chasing her with a knife. Suddenly Jason appears and smashes a sculpture over Quinton's head. Jason reveals he found out about Zoe cheating via her cellphone.


title: Addicted (2014 film)

text: Zoe runs after Jason, apologizing profusely, but he rejects her. Out of desperation, Zoe walks in front of a car, injuring herself. The two split up and Jason stays in a hotel. Zoe becomes a recluse but soon goes to a sex addiction group-therapy session. It is discovered that the root of Zoe's addiction was because of a rape committed by three boys when she was 10 years old. At the session she speaks of her deep love for her husband, and Jason walks in, kisses her and accepts her back.


title: Addicted (2014 film)

text: "Addicted" received largely negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 7%, based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 3.05/10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 32 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: "Eternal Flame" is a song by American pop rock group the Bangles for their third studio album, "Everything" (1988). The power ballad was written by group member Susanna Hoffs with the established hit songwriting team of Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. Upon its 1989 single release, "Eternal Flame" became a number-one hit in nine countries, including Australia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Since its release, it has been covered by many musical artists, including Australian boy band Human Nature, who reached the Australian top 10 with their version, and British girl group Atomic Kitten, who topped four national charts with their rendition.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: Two of the song's three writers, Tom Kelly and Susanna Hoffs, had met via the Bangles' October 30, 1986, concert at the Avalon Hollywood (then the Palace). Kelly attended the concert and backstage met the group's members. This led to Hoffs writing songs with Kelly and his regular songwriting partner Billy Steinberg, an experience she found interesting contrast to her usual songwriting habits. Hoffs would develop lyrics based on a melody she worked out while playing around with a guitar, while Kelly and Steinberg would start with a lyrical idea and write music to fit it. The trio's first composition to be recorded was "I Need a Disguise", which Belinda Carlisle recorded for her 1986 solo debut album. The Bangles' 1988 album "Everything" would feature two Hoffs/Kelly/Steinberg compositions, both with lead vocals by Hoffs: the upbeat lead single "In Your Room" and "Eternal Flame".


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: The focal metaphor of "Eternal Flame" was suggested by two eternal flames: one at the gravesite of Elvis Presley at Graceland, where the Bangles had been given a private tour. Hoffs said, "we were taken out to the Garden of Memories, and there was this little box which was supposed to have a lit flame in it, an eternal flame. Actually, that day it was raining so the flame was not on"—and one at a local synagogue in Palm Springs which Steinberg attended as a child. Steinberg explained, "Susanna was talking about the Bangles having visited Graceland, and she said there was some type of shrine to Elvis that included some kind of eternal flame. As soon as those words were mentioned, I immediately thought of the synagogue in the town of Palm Springs, California where I grew up. I remember during our Sunday school class they would walk us through the sanctuary. There was one little red light and they told us it was called the eternal flame."


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: After Steinberg suggested writing a song titled "Eternal Flame", he and Hoffs wrote the song's lyrics at Steinberg's house and then according to Hoffs brought the lyrics to Tom Kelly's studio where Kelly completed the music and the demo was cut. Steinberg recalls Kelly also being at Steinberg's house when the lyrics were written, beginning the music's composition there. "'Eternal Flame' was retro in that it has no chorus", Steinberg observed in 2021. Like the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out", it instead has a middle eight, the portion beginning ""Say my name / Sun shines through the rain"", that it repeats twice. And like the Beatles song, both verses end on the song's title. "In the 60s, it wasn't that unusual to have songs structured in that way, but, by the 80s, choruses were much more developed and middle eights had started to disappear", Steinberg recalls. While the final recording is a power ballad, the demo was deliberately guitar-oriented, despite sounding more suitable for a keyboard, as the Bangles had no keyboardist. When Hoffs played the demo at a band meeting where members and producer Davitt Sigerson decided what they would record for the upcoming album, it was rejected. Hoffs was "heartbroken" since she had been very enthusiastic about the song, but accepted her bandmates' decision.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: During the sessions, Sigerson admitted to Hoffs that he could not get the demo out of his mind. He worked out an arrangement evoking a music box, bringing in keyboardist John Philip Shenale to give the track a chiming effect. According to Hoffs, Sigerson's production of the track was inspired by the vintage recordings of Patsy Cline which he knew Hoffs enjoyed singing along to. Hoffs would also recall that the Bangles' manager, Miles Copeland, overhearing the recording session for "Eternal Flame", had been displeased by the lack of drums and that Hoffs had to resist pressure to re-record it with a stronger beat. On the BBC program "I'm in a Girl Group", Hoffs revealed she actually sang the studio recording of the song completely naked after Sigerson pranked her by telling her Olivia Newton-John recorded unclad (a falsehood Sigerson eventually admitted to). "I imagined it would feel like skinny dipping—vulnerable yet freeing – and I decided to try it", she remembered in 2021. Nobody could see me; there was a baffle in front of me and it was dark." She liked the experience enough to sing all her vocals on the album that way.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: Considered by Billy Steinberg to be a stylistic fusion of the Byrds and the Beatles, especially evoking the latter group's "For No One", "Mother Nature's Son" (the bridge part) and "Here There & Everywhere", "Eternal Flame" elicited different points of comparison from contemporary music critics, among them: "a backhanded tribute to every sappy string-drenched ballad—from Lulu's 'To Sir With Love' to Merrilee Rush's 'Angel of the Morning'—that ever overstayed its welcome on the radio"; "[a] fluffy romantic fantasy [that] resembled the Carpenters a lot more than the Beatles"; "a cloying ballad that Andrew Lloyd Webber could have written for Sarah Brightman"; "[On] 'Eternal Flame' Hoffs does her best inspired reading of Kate Bush". Pan-European magazine "Music & Media" commented that "this is a very sweet and conventional gospel-tinged ballad with the emphasis on close harmonies."


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: In 2000, Vicki Peterson of the Bangles would describe "Eternal Flame" as "a beautiful song [which] at the time I didn't think essentially Bangles. Anyone could've taken the song and made it a hit". The retrospective AllMusic critique by Matthew Greenwald assessed "Eternal Flame" as "somewhat removed from the Bangles' sound and vibe...[its] gentle, lilting melody...seems ready-made for an artist such as Anita Baker or Whitney Houston... The song features a dramatic bridge that takes the song to a wonderfully emotional place, and adds to the overall dynamics of the piece. In the end, ['Eternal Flame'] doesn't fit the Bangles' catalog well, but it remains a minor pop standard." In June 2021, Tom Eames of Smooth Radio ranked "Eternal Flame" as the Bangles' best song.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: Given that the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian" had been ranked by "Billboard" as the number one single of 1987 and that the group had reached number two on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in 1986 with "Manic Monday" and in 1987 with "Hazy Shade of Winter", the number-five Hot 100 peak of the lead single from their album "Everything", "In Your Room", was a comparative disappointment with its parent album "Everything"—whose original Billboard 200 peak was number 33—being considered a flop. The January 1989 release of "Eternal Flame" as the new Bangles' single was heralded in the "Chicago Tribune" with the song described as an "old-fashioned killer ballad that is just about as far as one could get from the psychedelic sound of the group's recent Top 5 hit 'In Your Room'." "Eternal Flame" debuted at number 56 on the Hot 100 issue dated February 4, 1989, when "In Your Room" was ranked at number 45, and rose to number one after ten weeks, making the Bangles the third all-female group to top the Hot 100 multiple times, after the Shirelles and the Supremes. In addition "Eternal Flame" set a record for the song's co-writers: Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, as the first songwriting team to score a number-one Hot 100 hit five years in a row. "Eternal Flame" also afforded the Bangles a two-week tenure at number one on the Adult Contemporary chart.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: In the United Kingdom, where "In Your Room" had stalled at number 35, "Eternal Flame" was released on January 23, 1989, and made a rambling eight-week ascent into the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart before vaulting 20 positions to number 13 on the chart dated April 1, 1989. Two weeks later, on April 15, the single reached number one and remained there for three additional weeks. On June 17, 1989, when the song was at number 38 on the UK chart, it was deleted to clear the way for "Be with You", the third single released from "Everything". Overall, "Eternal Flame" would be afforded a UK chart tenure of 20 weeks, ranking as the country's third-biggest hit of 1989. "Eternal Flame" spent three weeks at number one in Sweden and totaled 18 weeks on the Swedish Singles Chart, and it also spent seven weeks at number on the Dutch Top 40. The song was Australia's fourth-biggest-selling single of 1989 and was sent up on the Australian TV show "Fast Forward".


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: Rather than consolidating the Bangles' stardom, the success of "Eternal Flame" would have a negative impact on the group, underscoring the wide public perception of the Bangles as star attraction Hoffs and her backing band. The choice for the third single release from the "Everything" album being "Be with You", the group's first single led by Debbi Peterson since the band's second single release "Going Down to Liverpool" (1984), was an apparent attempt to redress the balance which failed, as "Be with You" would rise no higher than number 30 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1989, when its UK chart peak would be number 23. The Bangles announced their disbanding the second week of October 1989.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: In 1997, a Japanese version of the song was recorded by Tomoya Nagase, the vocalist of the Japanese idol rock group Tokio, featuring 3T. This song was used as the theme song of the Nippon TV drama "DXD", in which Nagase played the main role. He also wrote the Japanese version lyrics. This version was released as a single in Japan under the name of "Tomoya with 3T".


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: In 1999, Australian group Human Nature covered "Eternal Flame" and released it as the fourth single from their second album "Counting Down". It peaked at number eight on the ARIA Singles Chart and was certified gold.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: English girl group Atomic Kitten subsequently recorded the song in 2001 and released it as the lead single from the reissue of their debut studio album, "Right Now", on July 23, 2001. It was the group's first single to feature new band member Jenny Frost. Their version was produced by Andy Wright, and a music video directed by Phil Griffin was made for the song.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: Lars Trillingsgaar, head of music for Danish radio station ANR Hit FM, said that Atomic Kitten's cover of "Eternal Flame" took the original "in a whole new direction", comparing it to another cover of a popular 1980s song that was released in 2001: "Another Day in Paradise" by siblings Brandy and Ray J, originally by Phil Collins. Trillingsgaar also noted that the cover had the ability to touch its listeners, much like the original had done.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: Atomic Kitten's version was released on July 23, 2001; in Australia, it was issued alongside a re-release of the group's debut single, "Right Now" (1999). In the United Kingdom, it entered the UK Singles Chart at number one, selling 150,000 copies during its first week of release to beat out Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious", which debuted at number two with 56,000 copies sold. The Official Charts Company credits this result to "Bootylicious" having already been released on the parent album, "Survivor", whereas the re-release of "Right Now" did not occur until after "Eternal Flame" had reached number one. It stayed at number one for two weeks and has sold 458,000 copies as of July 2022.


title: Eternal Flame (song)

text: Outside the UK, the cover reached number one in the Flanders region of Belgium and in New Zealand, staying one week at the top in both regions. In France, Ireland, and Sweden, it reached number two, and it became a top-ten hit in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Switzerland. It is certified gold in the UK, Belgium, France, New Zealand, and Sweden.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: Ezzard Mack Charles (July 7, 1921 – May 28, 1975), known as the Cincinnati Cobra, was an American professional boxer and World Heavyweight Champion. Known for his slick defense and precision, he is often considered the greatest light heavyweight boxer of all time. Charles defeated numerous Hall of Fame fighters in three different weight classes. Charles retired with a record of 95 wins, 25 losses and 1 draw. He was posthumously inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the inaugural class of 1990.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: Charles was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Charles graduated from Woodward High School in Cincinnati where he was already becoming a well-known fighter. Known as "The Cincinnati Cobra", Charles fought many notable opponents in both the light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions, eventually winning the World Championship in the latter. Although he never won the Light Heavyweight title, "The Ring" has rated him as the greatest light heavyweight of all time.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: Charles started his career as a featherweight in the amateurs, where he had a record of 42–0. In 1938, he won the Diamond Belt Middleweight Championship. He followed this up in 1939 by winning the Chicago Golden Gloves tournament of champions. He won the national AAU Middleweight Championship in 1939. He turned professional in 1940, knocking out Melody Johnson in the fourth round. Charles won all of his first 17 fights before being defeated by veteran Ken Overlin. Victories over future Hall of Famers Teddy Yarosz and the much avoided Charley Burley had started to solidify Charles as a top contender in the middleweight division. However, he served in the U.S. military during World War II and was unable to fight professionally in 1945.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: He returned to boxing after the war as a light heavyweight, picking up many notable wins over leading light heavyweights, as well as heavyweight contenders Archie Moore, Jimmy Bivins, Lloyd Marshall and Elmer Ray. Shortly after his knock-out of Moore in their third and final meeting, tragedy struck. Charles fought a young contender named Sam Baroudi, knocking him out in Round 10. Baroudi died of the injuries he sustained in this bout. Charles was so devastated he almost gave up fighting. Charles was unable to secure a title shot at light heavyweight and moved up to heavyweight. After knocking out Joe Baksi and Johnny Haynes, Charles won the vacant National Boxing Association Heavyweight title when he outpointed Jersey Joe Walcott over 15 rounds on June 22, 1949. The following year, he outpointed his idol and former World Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis to become the recognized Lineal Champion. Successful defenses against Walcott, Lee Oma and Joey Maxim followed.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: In 1951, Charles fought Walcott a third time and lost the title by knockout in the seventh round. Charles lost a controversial decision in their fourth and final bout. If Charles had won this fight, he would have become the first man in history to regain the heavyweight championship. Remaining a top contender with wins over Rex Layne, Tommy Harrison and Coley Wallace, Charles knocked out Bob Satterfield in an eliminator bout for the right to challenge Heavyweight Champion Rocky Marciano. His two stirring battles with Marciano are regarded as ring classics. In the first bout, held in Yankee Stadium on June 17, 1954, he valiantly took Marciano the distance, going down on points in a vintage heavyweight bout. Charles is the only man ever to last the full 15-round distance against Marciano. Marciano won a unanimous decision. Referee Ruby Goldstein scored the bout 8-5-2 in rounds for the champion. Judge Artie Aidala scored the fight 9-5-1 while judge Harold Barnes' tally was 8-6-1. Nevertheless, a number of fans and boxing writers felt that Charles deserved the decision. In their September rematch, Charles landed a severe blow that actually split Marciano's nose in half. Marciano's cornermen were unable to stop the bleeding and the referee almost halted the contest until Marciano rallied with an eighth-round knockout.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: Like many boxers, financial problems forced Charles to continue fighting, losing 13 of his final 23 fights. He retired with a record of 93-25-1 (52 KOs).


title: Ezzard Charles

text: Charles was very close with Rocky Marciano and a neighbor and friend of Muhammad Ali when they both lived on 85th Street in Chicago. Charles also starred in one motion picture: "Mau Mau Drums", an independent (and unreleased) jungle-adventure film shot in and around Cincinnati in 1960 by filmmaker Earl Schwieterman.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: In 1968, Charles was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The disease affected Charles' legs and eventually left him completely disabled. A fund raiser was held to assist Charles and many of his former opponents spoke on his behalf. Rocky Marciano in particular called Charles the bravest man he ever fought. The former boxer spent his last days in a nursing home. A chilling 1973 commercial showed Charles in his wheelchair horribly disabled by ALS. Charles died on May 28, 1975, in Chicago. He was buried at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: In 1976, Cincinnati honored Charles by changing the name of Lincoln Park Drive to Ezzard Charles Drive. This was the street of his residence during the height of his career.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: In 2002, Charles was ranked No. 13 on "The Ring" magazine's list of the 80 Best Fighters of the Last 80 Years.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: In 2006, Ezzard Charles was named the 11th greatest fighter of all time by the IBRO (International Boxing Research Organisation).


title: Ezzard Charles

text: The "Cincinnati Cobra" was a master boxer of extraordinary skill and ability. He had speed, agility, fast hands and excellent footwork. Charles possessed a masterful jab and was a superb combination puncher. He was at his peak as a light-heavyweight. His record is quite impressive. Against top rate opposition like Archie Moore, Charley Burley, Lloyd Marshall, Jimmy Bivins, and Joey Maxim he was an impressive 16-2 combined. Despite being a natural light-heavy he won the heavyweight title and made 9 successful title defenses. Nearly 25% of voters had Charles in the top 10. Half of the voters had him in the top 15. Two thirds of voters had him inside the top 20.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: "Ezzard Charles was a truly great fighter and champion. He was the only heavyweight champion, other than a young Sonny Liston, who I think would have really troubled me at my best."


title: Ezzard Charles

text: In 2007, ESPN online ranks Ezzard Charles as the 27th greatest boxer of all time, ahead of such notable fighters as Mike Tyson, Larry Holmes and Jake LaMotta.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: In 2009, "Boxing" magazine listed Ezzard Charles as the greatest Light Heavyweight fighter ever, ahead of the likes of Archie Moore, Bob Foster, Michael Spinks and Gene Tunney.


title: Ezzard Charles

text: Prominent boxing historian Bert Sugar listed Charles as the seventh greatest Heavyweight of all time.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The Bosporan Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus (, "Vasíleio toú Kimmerikoú Vospórou"), was an ancient Greco-Scythian state located in eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula on the shores of the Cimmerian Bosporus, centered in the present-day Strait of Kerch. It was the first truly 'Hellenistic' state, in the sense that a mixed population adopted the Greek language and civilization, under aristocratic consolidated leadership. Under the Spartocid dynasty, the aristocracy of the kingdom adopted a double nature of presenting themselves as "archons" to Greek subjects and as kings to barbarians, which some historians consider unique in ancient history.The Bosporan Kingdom became the longest surviving Roman client kingdom. The 1st and 2nd centuries AD saw a period of a new golden age of the Bosporan state. It was briefly incorporated as part of the Roman province of Moesia Inferior from 63 to 68 AD under Emperor Nero, before being restored as a Roman client kingdom. At the end of the 2nd century AD, King Sauromates II inflicted a critical defeat on the Scythians and included all the territories of the Crimean Peninsula in the structure of his state.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The prosperity of the Bosporan Kingdom was based on the export of wheat, fish and slaves. As a result, the Kingdom became the economic center of the Black Sea and is often dubbed the ancient Jewel of the Black Sea. The profit of the trade supported a class whose conspicuous wealth is still visible from newly discovered archaeological finds, excavated, often illegally, from numerous burial barrows known as "kurgans". The once-thriving cities of the Bosporus left extensive architectural and sculptural remains, while the kurgans continue to yield spectacular Greco-Sarmatian objects, the best examples of which are now preserved in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. These include gold work, vases imported from Athens, coarse terracottas, textile fragments, and specimens of carpentry and marquetry.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The whole area was dotted with Greek cities: in the west, Panticapaeum (Kerch)—the most significant city in the region, Nymphaeum and Myrmekion; on the east Phanagoria (the second city of the region), Kepoi, Hermonassa, Portus Sindicus and Gorgippia.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: These Greek colonies were originally settled by Milesians in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Phanagoria (c. 540 BC) was a colony of Teos, and the foundation of Nymphaeum may have had a connection with Athens; at least it appears to have been a member of the Delian League in the 5th century.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The Bosporan Kingdom was located between the Crimean and Taman peninsulas centered around the Kerch Strait, known in antiquity as the Cimmerian Bosporus, from where the kingdom's name is derived. To south sat the Black Sea, a crossroads connecting the Balkans to the west, the Eurasian steppes to the north, the Caucasus and Central Asia to the east, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia to the south, and Greece to the southwest. To the north is the Sea of Azov, sometimes considered part of the Black Sea, with shallow waters and abundant rivers flowing toward it.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Most of the kingdom fell in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, a temperate grassland ideal for nomadic pastoralism. The south-eastern Crimean coastline is flanked by the Crimean mountains, with the highest peak being Roman-Kosh at 1,545 meters (5,069 ft.). Towards the west, the mountains drop steeply to the Black Sea, while to the east, they slowly develop into a steppe landscape. The southwestern coast of the Taman peninsula is bound by the Greater Caucasus half of the Caucasus Mountains.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Greek colonization in the Black sea region dates back into the Greek Dark Ages, from which there is ample evidence of cultural and economic exchange as well as hostility between Greek and local populations, such as the Thracians, Dacians, and later Scythians.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Scythian expansion and unification in the fifth century BCE lead to many of these settlements being wiped out or turned into Scythian protectorates, as was the case in the city of Olbia. It has been suggested that this pressure allowed the Archeanactid dynasty to create the first Bosporan state, lasting from 480-438 BCE, at which point it was overthrown by the Spartocid Dynasty, beginning a period of economic expansion.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The Black Sea Greeks before this period had dealt largely in goods like animals, slaves, furs, and fish with grain playing a minor role. Stemming from conditions caused by the Peloponnesian War, the city of Athens had acquired a large demand for grain, and the strain on their empire meant they could do little about Spartocids attacking the city of Nymphaeum, on which they relied on for Black Sea trade. The Spartocids were willing to trade with to Athens their grain in exchange for mainland goods and silver, which presumably furthered Athenian decline.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The Bosporan kingdom under the Spartocid kings was heavily influenced by the mixing of local Scythian and Greeks at all levels of society, particularly in the nobility. In an internal conflict between Satyrus II and his brother Emuelus, the royal Bosporan army was said to contain no more than two thousand Greeks, and an equal number of Thracians fighting as mercenaries. The vast majority of the army was Scythian, with ten thousand cavalry and more than twenty thousand infantry reported. Eumelus, allied with the Sirace king Aripharnes, brought twenty thousand Scythian cavalry and even more infantry.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The northern Black Sea underwent what some historians refer to as a "long Hellenistic Age" due to the institutions typically associated with the era occurring independently from the greater Greek world. Their relatively isolated position, and constant contact/conflict with barbarians along their borders, allowed monarchs with traditions rooted in the region to establish independent kingdoms from those of the successor states.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: According to Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (xii. 31) the region was governed between 480 and 438 BC by a line of kings called the "Archaeanactidae", probably a ruling family, usurped by a tyrant called Spartocus (438–431 BC).While Spartocus was traditionally considered to be a Thracian due to the family name, more recent historians have posited he was likely of Greco-Scythian descent, as was typical of the region.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Spartocus founded a dynasty which seems to have endured until c. 110 BC, known as the Spartocids. The Spartocids left many inscriptions, indicating that the earliest members of the house ruled under the titles of archons of the Greek cities and kings of various minor native tribes, notably the Sindi (from central Crimea) and other branches of the Maeotae. Surviving material (texts, inscriptions and coins) do not supply enough information to reconstruct a complete chronology of kings of the region.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Satyrus (431–387 BC), successor to Spartocus, established his rule over the whole region, adding Nymphaeum to his kingdom and besieging Theodosia, which was wealthy because, unlike other cities in the region, it had a port which was free of ice throughout the year, allowing it to trade grain with the rest of the Greek world, even in winter. Satyrus' son Leucon (387–347 BC) eventually took the city. He was succeeded jointly by his two sons, Spartocus II, and Paerisades; Spartocus died in 342 BC, allowing Paerisades to reign alone until 310 BC. After Paerisades' death, a war of succession between his sons Satyrus and Eumelus was fought. Satyrus defeated his younger brother Eumelus at the Battle of the River Thatis in 310 BC but was then killed in battle, giving Eumelus the throne.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Eumelus' successor was Spartocus III (303–283 BC) and after him Paerisades II. Succeeding princes repeated the family names, so it is impossible to assign them a definite order. The last of them, however, Paerisades V, unable to make headway against increasingly violent attacks from nomadic tribes in the area, called in the help of Diophantus, general of King Mithridates VI of Pontus, leaving him his kingdom. Paerisades was killed by a Scythian named Saumacus who led a rebellion against him.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The Spartocids were well known as a line of enlightened and wise princes; although Greek opinion could not deny that they were, strictly speaking, tyrants, they are always described as dynasts. They maintained close relations with Athens, their best customer for the Bosporan grain exports: Leucon I of Bosporus created privileges for Athenian ships at Bosporan ports. The Attic orators make numerous references to this. In return the Athenians granted Leucon Athenian citizenship and made decrees in honour of him and his sons.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: After his defeat by Roman General Pompey in 66 BC, King Mithridates VI of Pontus fled with a small army from Colchis (modern Georgia) over the Caucasus Mountains to Crimea and made plans to raise yet another army to take on the Romans. His eldest living son, Machares, regent of Cimmerian Bosporus, was unwilling to aid his father, so Mithridates had Machares killed, acquiring the throne for himself. Mithridates then ordered the conscriptions and preparations for war. In 63 BC, Pharnaces, the youngest son of Mithridates, led a rebellion against his father, joined by Roman exiles in the core of Mithridates's Pontic army. Mithridates VI withdrew to the citadel in Panticapaeum, where he committed suicide. Pompey buried Mithridates VI in a rock-cut tomb in either Sinope or Amasia, the capital of the Kingdom of Pontus.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: After the death of Mithridates VI (63 BC), Pharnaces II (63–47 BC) supplicated to Pompey, and then tried to regain his dominion during Julius Caesar's Civil War, but was defeated by Caesar at Zela and was later killed by his former governor and son-in-law Asander.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Before the death of Pharnaces II, Asander had married Pharnaces II's daughter Dynamis. Asander and Dynamis were the ruling monarchs until Caesar commanded a paternal uncle of Dynamis, Mithridates II to declare war on the Bosporan Kingdom and claimed the kingship for himself. Asander and Dynamis were defeated by Caesar's ally and went into political exile. However, after Caesar's death in 44 BC, the Bosporan Kingdom was restored to Asander and Dynamis by Caesar's great nephew and heir Octavian. Asander ruled as an archon and later as king until his death in 17 BC. After the death of Asander, Dynamis was compelled to marry a Roman usurper called Scribonius, but the Romans under Agrippa intervened and established Polemon I of Pontus (16–8 BC) in his place. Polemon married Dynamis in 16 BC and she died in 14 BC. Polemon ruled as king until his death in 8 BC. After the death of Polemon, Aspurgus, the son of Dynamis and Asander, succeeded Polemon.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The Bosporan Kingdom of Aspurgus was a client state of the Roman Empire, protected by Roman garrisons. Aspurgus (8 BC – 38 AD) founded a dynasty of kings which endured with a couple of interruptions until 341 AD. Aspurgus adopted the Roman name "Tiberius Julius" when he received Roman citizenship and enjoyed the patronage of the first two Roman Emperors, Augustus and Tiberius. All of the following kings adopted these two Roman names followed by a third name, of Thracian (Kotys, Rhescuporis or Rhoemetalces) or local origin (such as Sauromates, Eupator, Ininthimeus, Pharsanzes, Synges, Terianes, Theothorses or Rhadamsades).


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The Roman client kings of the dynasty had descended from King Mithridates VI of Pontus and his first wife, his sister Laodice, through Aspurgus. The kings adopted a new calendar (the "Pontic era") introduced by Mithridates VI, starting with 297 BC to date their coins. Bosporan kings struck coinage throughout its period as a client state, which included gold staters bearing portraits of both the Roman emperor and Bosporan king. Like Roman coinage, Bosporan coinage became increasingly debased during the 3rd century. The coinage makes their lineages fairly clear to historians, though scarcely any events from their reigns are recorded.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The Bosporan Kingdom covered the eastern half of Crimea and the Taman peninsula, and extended along the east coast of the Maeotian marshes to Tanais at the mouth of the Don in the north-east, a great market for trade with the interior. Throughout the period there was perpetual war with the native tribes of Scythians and Sarmatians, and in this the Bosporan Kingdom was supported by its Roman suzerains, who lent the assistance of garrisons and fleets.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: In 62 AD for reasons unknown, Roman emperor Nero deposed the Bosporan king Cotys I. It is possible that Nero wanted to minimize the power of local client rulers and wanted the Bosporans to be subsumed into the Roman empire. The Bosporan Kingdom was incorporated as part of the Roman province of Moesia Inferior from 63 to 68. In 68, the new Roman emperor Galba restored the Bosporan Kingdom to Rhescuporis I, the son of Cotys I.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Following the Jewish diaspora, Judaism emerged in the region, and Jewish communities developed in some of the cities of the region (especially Tanais). The Jewish or Thracian influence on the region may have inspired the foundation of a cult to the "Most High God", a distinct regional cult which emerged in the 1st century AD, which professed monotheism without being distinctively Jewish or Christian.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The balance of power among the local tribes was severely disturbed by westward migration in the 3rd–4th centuries. In the 250s AD, the Goths and Borani were able to seize Bosporan shipping and even raid the shores of Anatolia.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: There are no known coins from the Bosporan Kingdom after the last ones minted by Rhescuporis VI in 341, which makes constructing a chronology very difficult. Though the kingdom is traditionally believed to have been destroyed at the end of his reign by the Goths and the Huns, there is no concrete evidence for this. There is an inscription by a Bosporan ruler named Douptounos from 483, nearly a century and a half after Rhescuporis VI, which makes it unlikely that the kingdom and its line of kings came to an end in the mid-4th-century. Additionally, archaeological data from the time indicate a period with a growing economy rather than societal collapse.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Because of evidence of their increasing prominence in the Crimea, it is possible that Rhescuporis was overthrown by a Sarmatian or Alan tribal leader, who established his own dynasty on the Bosporan throne. It is known that the Goths later held power in the Crimea, from 380 onwards, since a 404 letter to John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople, refers to the local ruler as a "rex Gothiorum" ("king of the Goths"). The Gothic Bosporan realm was likely a vassal of the Hunnic Empire for some time, though became independent again following its collapse in the 450s and 460s. The writings of the Byzantine historian Procopius indicates that the Goths retained power for some time after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire since he describes the Goths of Crimea fighting against and then allying with the Utigurs. Despite the waves of barbarian domination, the late Bosporus remained an ancient Hellenistic state in language, culture and traditions; the local material culture from the third to sixth centuries is distinguished both by its great complexity and by syncretism, intertwining both ancient and new barbarian elements.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Through some means, the Goths appear to have left or been driven away, leading to the resumption of local self-rule in the late 5th century under rulers such as Douptounos, who re-oriented the kingdom towards the Byzantine Empire as a client state. Such a re-orientation is also evidenced by the presence of Byzantine coins in the Crimea, including coinage of emperors Justin I () and Justinian I (). By Justinian's time, the Bosporus was under a barbarian ruler once more: the Hunnic ruler Gordas. Though Gordas maintained good relations with Justinian, he was killed in a revolt in 527, which led the emperor to send armies to the Bosporus, conquering the lands of the kingdom and establishing imperial control there.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: The Bosporan cities enjoyed a revival, under Byzantine and Bulgarian protection. The ancient Greek city of Phanagoria became the capital of Old Great Bulgaria between 632 and 665. From time to time Byzantine Greek officers built fortresses and exercised authority at Bosporus, which constituted an archbishopric. A relevant Byzantine usage of the term is found in a newly discovered seal of a general of the early 11th century as of "", i.e., of the Cimmerian Bosporos. The town of Tmutarakan, on the eastern side of the strait, became the seat of the Kievan Rus principality of Tmutarakan in the 10th and 11th centuries, which in turn gave way to Tatar domination.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: Although considered rare among collectors prior to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Bosporan coins are now well known on the international coin markets, hinting at the quantities produced. Several large series were produced by Bosporan cities from the 5th century BC, particularly in Panticapaeum. Gold staters of Panticapaeum bearing Pan's head and a griffin are especially remarkable for their weight and fine workmanship.


title: Bosporan Kingdom

text: There are coins with the names of the later Spartocids and a complete series of dated solidi issued by the later or Achaemenian dynasty. In them may be noticed the swift degeneration of the gold solidus through silver and potin to bronze.


title: Ergodicity

text: In mathematics, ergodicity expresses the idea that a point of a moving system, either a dynamical system or a stochastic process, will eventually visit all parts of the space that the system moves in, in a uniform and random sense. This implies that the average behavior of the system can be deduced from the trajectory of a "typical" point. Equivalently, a sufficiently large collection of random samples from a process can represent the average statistical properties of the entire process. Ergodicity is a property of the system; it is a statement that the system cannot be reduced or factored into smaller components. Ergodic theory is the study of systems possessing ergodicity.


title: Ergodicity

text: Ergodic systems occur in a broad range of systems in physics and in geometry. This can be roughly understood to be due to a common phenomenon: the motion of particles, that is, geodesics on a hyperbolic manifold are divergent; when that manifold is compact, that is, of finite size, those orbits return to the same general area, eventually filling the entire space.


title: Ergodicity

text: Ergodic systems capture the common-sense, every-day notions of randomness, such that smoke might come to fill all of a smoke-filled room, or that a block of metal might eventually come to have the same temperature throughout, or that flips of a fair coin may come up heads and tails half the time. A stronger concept than ergodicity is that of mixing, which aims to mathematically describe the common-sense notions of mixing, such as mixing drinks or mixing cooking ingredients.


title: Ergodicity

text: The proper mathematical formulation of ergodicity is founded on the formal definitions of measure theory and dynamical systems, and rather specifically on the notion of a measure-preserving dynamical system. The origins of ergodicity lie in statistical physics, where Ludwig Boltzmann formulated the ergodic hypothesis.


title: Ergodicity

text: Ergodicity occurs in broad settings in physics and mathematics. All of these settings are unified by a common mathematical description, that of the measure-preserving dynamical system. An informal description of this, and a definition of ergodicity with respect to it, is given immediately below. This is followed by a description of ergodicity in stochastic processes. They are one and the same, despite using dramatically different notation and language.


title: Ergodicity

text: The mathematical definition of ergodicity aims to capture ordinary every-day ideas about randomness. This includes ideas about systems that move in such a way as to (eventually) fill up all of space, such as diffusion and Brownian motion, as well as common-sense notions of mixing, such as mixing paints, drinks, cooking ingredients, industrial process mixing, smoke in a smoke-filled room, the dust in Saturn's rings and so on. To provide a solid mathematical footing, descriptions of ergodic systems begin with the definition of a measure-preserving dynamical system. This is written as formula_1


title: Ergodicity

text: The set formula_2 is understood to be the total space to be filled: the mixing bowl, the smoke-filled room, "etc." The measure formula_3 is understood to define the natural volume of the space formula_2 and of its subspaces. The collection of subspaces is denoted by formula_5, and the size of any given subset formula_6 is formula_7; the size is its volume. Naively, one could imagine formula_5 to be the power set of formula_2; this doesn't quite work, as not all subsets of a space have a volume (famously, the Banach-Tarski paradox). Thus, conventionally, formula_5 consists of the measurable subsets—the subsets that do have a volume. It is always taken to be a Borel set—the collection of subsets that can be constructed by taking intersections, unions and set complements of open sets; these can always be taken to be measurable.


title: Ergodicity

text: The time evolution of the system is described by a map formula_11. Given some subset formula_6, its map formula_13 will in general be a deformed version of formula_14 – it is squashed or stretched, folded or cut into pieces. Mathematical examples include the baker's map and the horseshoe map, both inspired by bread-making. The set formula_13 must have the same volume as formula_14; the squashing/stretching does not alter the volume of the space, only its distribution. Such a system is "measure-preserving" (area-preserving, volume-preserving).


title: Ergodicity

text: A formal difficulty arises when one tries to reconcile the volume of sets with the need to preserve their size under a map. The problem arises because, in general, several different points in the domain of a function can map to the same point in its range; that is, there may be formula_17 with formula_18. Worse, a single point formula_19 has no size. These difficulties can be avoided by working with the inverse map formula_20; it will map any given subset formula_21 to the parts that were assembled to make it: these parts are formula_22. It has the important property of not losing track of where things came from. More strongly, it has the important property that "any" (measure-preserving) map formula_23 is the inverse of some map formula_24. The proper definition of a volume-preserving map is one for which formula_25 because formula_26 describes all the pieces-parts that formula_14 came from.


title: Ergodicity

text: One is now interested in studying the time evolution of the system. If a set formula_28 eventually comes to fill all of formula_2 over a long period of time (that is, if formula_30 approaches all of formula_2 for large formula_32), the system is said to be ergodic. If every set formula_14 behaves in this way, the system is a conservative system, placed in contrast to a dissipative system, where some subsets formula_14 wander away, never to be returned to. An example would be water running downhill: once it's run down, it will never come back up again. The lake that forms at the bottom of this river can, however, become well-mixed. The ergodic decomposition theorem states that every ergodic system can be split into two parts: the conservative part, and the dissipative part.


title: Ergodicity

text: Mixing is a stronger statement than ergodicity. Mixing asks for this ergodic property to hold between any two sets formula_35, and not just between some set formula_14 and formula_2. That is, given any two sets formula_38, a system is said to be (topologically) mixing if there is an integer formula_39 such that, for all formula_35 and formula_41, one has that formula_42. Here, formula_43 denotes set intersection and formula_44 is the empty set. Other notions of mixing include strong and weak mixing, which describe the notion that the mixed substances intermingle everywhere, in equal proportion. This can be non-trivial, as practical experience of trying to mix sticky, gooey substances shows.


title: Ergodicity

text: The above discussion appeals to a physical sense of a volume. The volume does not have to literally be some portion of 3D space; it can be some abstract volume. This is generally the case in statistical systems, where the volume (the measure) is given by the probability. The total volume corresponds to probability one. This correspondence works because the axioms of probability theory are identical to those of measure theory; these are the Kolmogorov axioms.


title: Ergodicity

text: The idea of a volume can be very abstract. Consider, for example, the set of all possible coin-flips: the set of infinite sequences of heads and tails. Assigning the volume of 1 to this space, it is clear that half of all such sequences start with heads, and half start with tails. One can slice up this volume in other ways: one can say "I don't care about the first formula_45 coin-flips; but I want the formula_32'th of them to be heads, and then I don't care about what comes after that". This can be written as the set formula_47 where formula_48 is "don't care" and formula_49 is "heads". The volume of this space is again (obviously!) one-half.


title: Ergodicity

text: The above is enough to build up a measure-preserving dynamical system, in its entirety. The sets of formula_49 or formula_51 occurring in the formula_32'th place are called cylinder sets. The set of all possible intersections, unions and complements of the cylinder sets then form the Borel set formula_5 defined above. In formal terms, the cylinder sets form the base for a topology on the space formula_2 of all possible infinite-length coin-flips. The measure formula_3 has all of the common-sense properties one might hope for: the measure of a cylinder set with formula_49 in the formula_57'th position, and formula_51 in the formula_59'th position is obviously 1/4, and so on. These common-sense properties persist for set-complement and set-union: everything except for formula_49 and formula_51 in locations formula_57 and formula_59 obviously has the volume of 3/4. All together, these form the axioms of a sigma-additive measure; measure-preserving dynamical systems always use sigma-additive measures. For coin flips, this measure is called the Bernoulli measure.