title: Ion Television

text: Most programs broadcast by Ion Television are distributed by either NBCUniversal Television Distribution (now NBCUniversal Syndication Studios), 20th Century Fox Television (now 20th Television), CBS Television Distribution (now CBS Media Ventures), or Warner Bros. Television (now Warner Bros. Television Studios). Ion Television also maintains film distribution deals with Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures. Series broadcast by Ion Television () are mostly dramas such as "Castle", "Criminal Minds", "Law & Order", "", "", "Numb3rs", "Bones", "Blue Bloods", and "The Listener". As of 2014, the network's format is predominantly devoted to marathon blocks of hour-long drama series, with consecutive episodes of a given series airing between two and 16 hours a day (depending on the day's schedule, with fewer hours in the morning and late fringe).


title: Ion Television

text: The network broadcasts feature films released between the 1980s and the 2000s under the banner "Ion Television at the Movies", which fill the majority of the network's Sunday afternoon and evening schedule (holiday-themed made-for-TV films are also broadcast under the banner throughout the entertainment programming day on weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day regardless of where either holiday falls during the calendar week). Ion Television occasionally airs short hosted segments during its prime time lineup – particularly during film presentations – known as the "Ion Lounge", a lifestyle segment used mainly to advertise a company's product within the featured program's commercial breaks.


title: Ion Television

text: In the recent past, Ion Television has aired a limited number of comedy or comedy-drama series that were cycled on-and-off the schedule such as "Monk", "Psych" and "Married... with Children", with half-hour sitcoms used on certain occasions to fill scheduling gaps prior to the telecast of its late-morning film presentations (usually in the 10:00 a.m. Central Time half-hour, if the succeeding film ran for at least 2 hours) because of their erratic scheduling; the network shifted to a more exclusive focus on dramas as part of its series content in January 2015, although the network continues to carry comedic programming in the form of select feature films aired within the "Ion Television at the Movies" block.


title: Ion Television

text: Ion's method of running predominantly syndicated programming is very similar to the international model of broadcasting used in Europe, Canada, Latin America, Asia and Australia, which mixes imported and syndicated shows with original programming – a model used only in United States broadcast television by digital multicast services (particularly those that specialize in acquired programs such as MeTV and MeTV+), smaller English language entertainment-based networks (such as America One), PBS member stations, and networks broadcasting in languages other than English (such as Univision, UniMás, and Telemundo). The major commercial broadcast networks in the U.S. – ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox – carry first-run programs produced for the network, while leaving the responsibility of acquiring shows from the syndication market to their owned-and-operated stations and affiliates to fill time not allotted to network and, where applicable, locally produced programs (The CW and MyNetworkTV, which are somewhat similar to Ion Television in their formats, mixes elements of both models as acquired programs are supplied both during prime time by the services and by their stations at all other times). A limited number of non-Ion-owned stations that are merely affiliated with the network (such as Louisville outlet WBNA) do carry additional local or syndicated programming that, in some instances, pre-empts certain programs within the Ion master schedule.


title: Ion Television

text: As of late 2017, Ion Television began purchasing syndication rights introducing "Major Crimes" and both joining the lineup, component as the ABC series "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." (only ran from 2017 to 2019) and the Canadian series "Private Eyes" to both start the Ion Television lineup, replacing "Falling Skies", "Flashpoint", "Numb3rs", and "The Closer".


title: Ion Television

text: In 2006, Ion Media Networks reached several programming deals, two with major programming suppliers that were announced within a week of each other, and another that among other things would bring original programming to Ion Television's lineup. On June 27, 2006, Ion Media announced a comprehensive programming deal with Warner Bros. Television Distribution, which gave it the broadcast rights to movies and television series owned by the company. One week later on July 5, 2006, Ion announced a similar deal that resulted in the acquisition of broadcast rights to films and series distributed by Sony Pictures Television (now Sony Pictures Television Studios). Starting in September of that year, series and feature films from both libraries were incorporated onto the network's prime time schedule (including "Who's the Boss?", "Designing Women", "Mama's Family", "Growing Pains", "Green Acres", and "The Wonder Years"). However, these older series were later dropped when the network shifted towards more recent series. Ion also struck a library content deal with NBCUniversal, which gave it access to shows such as "Law & Order".


title: Ion Television

text: In September 2008, Ion Television reached a multi-year film rights agreement with Warner Bros. Television Distribution to broadcast more recent movies from Warner Bros. and its related studios. Meanwhile, three series from CBS Television Distribution (now CBS Media Ventures) were added to the schedule: "NCIS" joined the lineup in September 2008, while "Criminal Minds" and "Ghost Whisperer" were added to the Ion Television lineup in 2009. In January 2009, the network announced that it had acquired the broadcast rights to the Canadian television drama series "Durham County"; that show aired on the network for less than a year.


title: Ion Television

text: On January 21, 2011, Ion Television acquired the U.S. television rights to the Canadian drama series "Flashpoint", which gave it first-run rights to the fourth season's final 11 episodes, after CBS aired that season's first eight episodes, as well as rights to air reruns of all episodes produced to date and thereafter; Ion (along with the show's originating Canadian broadcaster, CTV) also renewed the series for a fifth and final season that aired during the fall of 2012.


title: Ion Television

text: In July 2011, Ion Television acquired the broadcast television rights to six films produced by Starz Media (now Lionsgate) as part of its weekend film block (then branded as the "Big Movie Weekend"); the films started airing on the network in November of that year. Ion also acquired the syndication rights to the USA Network series "Psych" and "Monk" from NBCUniversal; the two series respectively began airing in late 2011 and early 2012. "House", also from NBCUniversal, joined the network in September 2012. In September 2011, Ion Television acquired the syndication rights to "George Lopez" and "Leverage". "George Lopez" began airing on September 29, while "Leverage" debuted in July 2012, the former has since been dropped from the network, while the latter has been cycled on-and-off the schedule.


title: Ion Television

text: On October 4, 2011, Ion Television acquired the rights to the first two seasons of the Canadian drama "The Listener" for broadcast in 2012, with an option for future seasons through an agreement with Shaw Media (parent of the show's originating broadcaster, Global); the series would not join Ion's schedule until March 2014, by which time Ion Television had entered into a co-production arrangement for the program. A similar deal reached in September 2014 with Entertainment One gave Ion the U.S. rights to the medical drama "Saving Hope" (which made its U.S. debut on NBC in the summer of 2012); Ion began airing first-run episodes and repeats of the series in October 2015.


title: Ion Television

text: In December 2011, Ion Television acquired the syndication rights to "Cold Case", which debuted in 2012. On June 25, 2012, Ion Television entered into a deal with WWE to air a new hour-long series titled "WWE Main Event" on Wednesday nights; the series debuted on October 3, 2012 and ran until April 2, 2014.


title: Ion Television

text: Prior to Ion Television's original launch as Pax TV in 1998, the network had reached an agreement with DIC Entertainment to produce a five-hour children's programming block called "Freddy's Firehouse", to air on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The block of animated series was instead launched on September 5, 1998, as "Cloud Nine", featuring a trio of winged teenage angels that hosted the wraparound segments that bridged breaks during the block's shows, which were mostly sourced from the DIC library. "Cloud Nine" was discontinued in the spring of 1999, and was replaced by a new block under the title "Pax Kids." Pax TV discontinued the "Pax Kids" block in September 2001, as a result, it became the first major commercial broadcast network in the U.S. that did not supply children's programming, and later one of only two until it restored a children's block in 2006 (UPN eventually joined it in this distinction after it dropped its Disney's One Too block in August 2003, following the termination of a programming agreement with Buena Vista Television).


title: Ion Television

text: On September 15, 2006, Ion Television debuted a weekly children's program block called "Qubo on Ion Television", through a partnership between Ion Media Networks, NBC Universal, the Nelvana unit of Corus Entertainment, Scholastic Media, Classic Media, and its subsidiary Big Idea Productions. The Qubo block originally debuted on NBC and Telemundo on September 9, 2006, with NBC's Qubo block initially being rebroadcast on Ion Television on Friday afternoons (making it the last weekday afternoon children's block to be carried by a major commercial broadcast network until 2010). On January 4, 2015, the Qubo block on Ion was relaunched as the "Qubo Kids Corner", concurrent with the block's move to Sunday mornings. As mentioned above, Scripps will purchase other syndicated programming to meet Ion Television's E/I requirements in the future after the closedown of the Qubo channel.


title: Ion Television

text: The network has previously broadcast certain sporting events, including Conference USA college football games (produced by College Sports Television), soccer matches from the Women's United Soccer Association, Real Pro Wrestling (which more resembles the amateur form than the theatrically-based ring sport), the Champions Tour of golf, the Paralympic Games and a weekly mixed martial arts program from "BodogFight". In its home state of Florida, the network's stations had served as a statewide chain to carry play-by-play coverage of a number of games for Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays and Florida Marlins (demarcated by each team's territories) until the late 2000s, when cable's Fox Sports Florida and Sun (now Bally Sports Florida and Sun) acquired the exclusive rights to both teams.


title: Ion Television

text: Ion Television aired NFL Films' weekly highlight program, the "NFL Films Game of the Week" on Saturday evenings from September 16, 2007, to January 5, 2008, with its initial broadcast focusing on the September 9, 2007 game between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys. The series was not renewed for the fall 2008 season. Ion also obtained rights to televise games from the American Indoor Football Association, which were slated to begin airing in March 2008. However, the game's producers did not provide a live broadcast and the agreement was terminated.


title: Ion Television

text: On December 28, 2010, Ion Television signed a deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship to air the preliminary fights to the January 1 pay-per-view event UFC 125. Ion also aired the preliminary fights for UFC 127 and UFC 140 later in 2011, before the organization signed an exclusive programming agreement with Fox.


title: Ion Television

text: , Ion has 64 owned-and-operated stations, and current and pending affiliation agreements with nine additional television stations encompassing 36 states and the District of Columbia. The network has an estimated national reach of 60.63% of all households in the United States (or 189,453,097 Americans with at least one television set). Ion Television has the most owned-and-operated stations of any commercial broadcast network in the United States, reaching 65.1% of the United States (well above the Federal Communications Commission's coverage-based national ownership limit of 39%); it is also the only American commercial broadcast network whose stations almost exclusively consist of network-owned stations, similar to the ownership model of many commercial broadcast networks in Europe, Canada, Latin America, Asia and Australia, and to a somewhat more expansive extent, many U.S.-based religious broadcast networks.


title: Ion Television

text: Ion's programming is available by default via a national feed that is distributed directly to pay television providers in markets without a local Ion station (this contrasts with the major networks, which under FCC regulations, allow providers to import an owned-and-operated or affiliate station from a nearby market if no local over-the-air affiliate exists). In some markets, DirecTV carries a "placeholder" simulcast of the national modified feed of the network (for example, Los Angeles area viewers can watch Ion on both channels 30, via local O&O KPXN-TV, and 306; New York City on channel 31 WPXN besides 305).


title: Ion Television

text: In most markets with a Scripps or Inyo-owned Ion station outside early mornings, the only sign of the network being carried on a broadcast television station is a small automatically generated station identification on the bottom of the screen at the top of each hour containing the call letters, city of license and state abbreviation, which is repeated across its subchannels.


title: Ion Television

text: Two major factors that have limited the network's national broadcast coverage are that unlike the major commercial broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox), Ion did not actively seek over-the-air distribution on the digital subchannels of other network-affiliated stations in the five years following the digital television transition (with limited exceptions in Las Vegas, Nevada, Tucson, Arizona and Fresno, California through agreements with Telemundo owned-and- operated stations in those markets), until it reached a multi-station agreement with Media General in November 2015; prior to that deal, it long had very few stations that contractually carry the network's programming (with limited exceptions in markets such as Louisville, Kentucky and Anchorage, Alaska). As a result, Ion Media Networks owns the vast majority of the stations within Ion Television's affiliate body, as well as those of co-owned multicast services Qubo Channel and Ion Life.


title: Ion Television

text: In Pittsburgh, a deal by Paxson to buy WPCB-TV and trade it for secondary PBS member station WQEX was approved by the Federal Communications Commission, but rejected by WPCB-TV owner Cornerstone Television in a 2000 controversy; it would not be until November 2010 that Paxson's successor, Ion Media Networks, would successfully buy WQEX, which has since been converted into a commercially licensed outlet as Ion O&O WINP-TV. In Charlotte, independent station WAXN-TV carried some programming aired by the network during its original iteration as Pax TV from 1998 to 2000, but never maintained a formal affiliation. Under an agreement with Fox Television Stations, Ion was added to the fourth digital subcarrier of then owned-and-operated station WJZY on September 29, 2016. Ion in Charlotte later moved to the DT6 feed of WJZY-TV.


title: Ion Television

text: St. Louis, at one time, received the network by way of a low-power repeater of O&O WPXS in nearby Mount Vernon, Illinois; in December 2013, the United States bankruptcy court approved a plan by creditors of Roberts Broadcasting to transfer East St. Louis-based MyNetworkTV affiliate WRBU and its sister stations, CW affiliate WZRB in Columbia, South Carolina and former CW affiliate WAZE-LP in Evansville, Indiana, to a trust with Ion Media Networks – a creditor in Roberts' Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, for which it filed in 2011 – that would serve as its beneficiary. Roberts' attorney subsequently stated that Ion would purchase the three stations. WZRB and WRBU switched to Ion in February 2014 (although WZRB retained a secondary affiliation with The CW until MyNetworkTV affiliate WKTC joined the programming service in March); WRBU dropped MyNetworkTV upon becoming an Ion O&O (MyNetworkTV would not return to St. Louis until November 2014, when CBS affiliate KMOV launched a third digital subchannel to serve as an affiliate). WAZE-LP was silent at the time of acquisition, having gone dark the previous year after failing to construct its digital transmitter facilities, and Ion eventually decided on an affiliation deal with Nexstar Media Group's cluster in the area instead, using a subchannel of CW affiliate WTVW.


title: Ion Television

text: Buffalo and Rochester, New York, normally treated as separate markets, share Ion affiliate WPXJ-TV, which is centrally located between the two cities and is licensed to Batavia. An equivalent case exists involving Battle Creek, Michigan-licensed WZPX-TV, which serves both the Grand Rapids and Lansing markets (it also unusually served as a secondary WB affiliate due to a lack of stations in both markets until the digital age); additionally, Ann Arbor-licensed WPXD-TV also once provided an equivalent over-the-air signal for Lansing before moving their signal to a new transmitter in the Detroit suburb of Southfield in 2012.


title: Ion Television

text: In addition, in several other markets, Ion's predecessor was sold to another television station group to affiliate with a different English or Spanish language network, and through either a lack of channel space or interest in the network, Ion would not reappear in most of those markets until reaching deals to air on digital subchannels of other stations. These include:


title: Ion Television

text: In November 2015, Media General and Ion came to terms on an affiliation deal to add Ion's main feed as a standard definition digital subchannel in non-Ion O&O markets with Media General stations to replace the programming of the long-defunct Live Well Network, the first of its kind for Ion. Ion subchannels were added in markets such as Austin, Texas; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Lafayette, Indiana; Davenport, Iowa; Lafayette, Louisiana; Lansing, Michigan; Richmond, Virginia; Springfield, Massachusetts; and Wichita, Kansas. These deals would carry over after the Media General stations were integrated into the Nexstar Media Group in January 2017, with WBAY-TV continuing to carry Ion under Gray Television ownership. Morgan Murphy Media's two Wisconsin stations (WISC-TV in Madison and WKBT-DT in La Crosse–Eau Claire) began to carry the network as a third subchannel at the beginning of February 2017. The network further expanded its affiliate reach into small and lower-ranked mid-sized markets during late 2016 and 2017, with Ion Media striking additional deals with companies such as Gray Television, Hubbard Broadcasting, Block Communications, Forum Communications, Heartland Media and the Meredith Corporation to carry Ion Television on digital subchannels of stations owned and/or operated by those groups.


title: Ion Television

text: In the fall of 2021, with the purchase of Ion Media by Scripps, it began to end outside contracts in markets with a Scripps station where Ion Television was on a subchannel rather than an Ion station, with the network being activated on Scripps-owned stations as a subchannel on WGBA-TV in Green Bay, Wisconsin (ending the subchannel deal with WBAY), KGUN-TV in Tucson, Arizona (from KOLD-TV), Richmond, Virginia's WTVR-TV (taking over from WRIC-TV), KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi, Texas (from KIII), and WFTX-TV in the Fort Myers, Florida market (rectifying the network's longest absence, as the market previously had no Ion station at all).


title: Ion Television

text: In several markets, the station's city of license is considered outside the main portion of a market's metropolitan area. Such cases include Minneapolis–Saint Paul, where that area's Ion owned-and-operated station, KPXM-TV, is licensed to St. Cloud ( northwest of the Twin Cities); Detroit, where O&O WPXD-TV is licensed to Ann Arbor, Michigan ( west of Detroit), though its digital transmitter is located in Southfield, where the bulk of Detroit's television stations base their studios and transmitter facilities; Hartford, where O&O WHPX-TV is licensed to New London, Connecticut (located to the southeast), which moved its transmitter to the Farmington Rattlesnake Mountain site in the digital age; and Milwaukee, where O&O WPXE-TV is licensed to Kenosha, with its digital transmitter located at a tower farm on Milwaukee's north side (its former analog transmitter was located south of the city in Racine County). In the Cleveland market, Ion airs on Akron-based WVPX-TV, which had formerly targeted Akron, Canton and nearby areas as an ABC affiliate (then competing with the market's existing ABC station WEWS) prior to 1998.


title: Ion Television

text: Ion Television's stations have made notable use of "multiplexing" or splitting a digital broadcast television signal into separate subchannels. The network's stations usually carry up to six of these digital subchannels (in contrast with most other full-power stations, which usually carry a maximum of four channels over the same signal), each of which broadcast separate networks. Due to the bandwidth limitations caused by its carriage of multiple subchannels over a single broadcast signal, only the primary Ion network feed is transmitted in high definition, a mode of operation that remains under Scripps ownership. A small number of Ion stations have channel sharing agreements with other broadcasters after the FCC's 2017 spectrum re-allocation auction, while others such as Atlanta-area station WPXA-TV contract with other lower-power stations in a market to provide a full-power signal, such as Telemundo affiliate WKTB-CD.


title: Ion Television

text: Qubo was a children's television network that launched on January 8, 2007, and is carried on the second digital subchannel of Ion Television's stations. Its launch was announced on May 8, 2006, when Ion Media Networks, NBCUniversal, Nelvana, Scholastic Media, Classic Media (now DreamWorks Classics which would later be owned by NBCUniversal) and its Big Idea Productions unit announced plans to create Qubo as a multi-platform children's entertainment endeavor that would extend to a weekly programming block on Ion Television as well as NBC and Telemundo, and a video-on-demand service for digital cable providers. Qubo features content from the programming libraries of each of the partners, though there was an early promise of each company producing a new series for the network each year; most of its programs are targeted at children ages 2 to 11, though its late night programming block "Qubo Night Owl" (which originally featured animated series from Qubo's partners and the Filmation library, but after August 2013 features a mix of animated and live-action series sourced solely from the distribution partners) is aimed at older teenagers and adults.


title: Ion Television

text: The network debuted on January 8, 2007. Its initial format was composed of a four-hour block of shows that repeated six times a day, all featuring programming exclusive to the new channel; by 2010, the channel adopted a more traditional schedule featuring a larger array of programs. As a consequence to the pending launch of Qubo, the "i" secondary feed was replaced on "i" O&Os with a repeating promo loop in late September 2006. NBCUniversal dropped out of the venture in 2012, with NBC and sister network Telemundo replacing their Qubo blocks with their own E/I-compliant children's lineups programmed by PBS Kids Sprout (now Universal Kids, which is part-owned by NBCUniversal's corporate parent Comcast) that July, relegating Qubo's companion programming block exclusively to Ion Television and Ion Plus; Ion Media Networks acquired the stakes of the remaining partners in the channel, which all retained distribution partnerships with Qubo, in 2013.


title: Ion Television

text: Programming on Qubo Channel and its companion block on Ion Television and Ion Plus accounted for all educational programming content on Ion's owned-and-operated stations, thus relieving the network from the responsibility of carrying programs compliant with Children's Television Act guidelines on its other subchannel services.


title: Ion Television

text: Ion Plus (originally named "iHealth" prior to its launch and "Ion Life" until July 1, 2019) launched on February 19, 2007, and was carried on the third digital subchannel of Ion Television's stations. Under its former format, the network mainly featured health and lifestyle programs, as well as feature films on Sunday mornings and select weeknights (which consist mainly of those its parent network is scheduled to air during the given month as part of the "Ion Television at the Movies" block); some extreme sports programming previously aired on weekend evenings until July 2014. Much of Ion Life's programming consists of Canadian-imported programs, with some limited U.S.-produced programming. The network originally maintained a 24-hour entertainment schedule until 2013, when Ion Life added a limited number of infomercials in mid-morning and midday timeslots. As of July 1, 2019, it was rebranded to Ion Plus, acting as a "de facto" extension of the main Ion service, featuring all-day marathon scheduling of one series, along with the same scheduling of paid programming.


title: Ion Television

text: Ion Plus (along with Qubo and Ion Shop) ceased broadcast operations on February 28, 2021. Some Ion Plus stations converted into normal Ion Television stations continuing the all day marathon format. Others converted into Katz Broadcasting networks or shut down entirely. Unlike Qubo and Ion Shop, which ceased operations entirely, Ion Plus's national feed continues to run on the WatchFree channels portal offered on Vizio smart televisions and the Samsung TV Plus service on Samsung smart TVs, and streaming services Xumo, Tubi, Freevee, TCL Channel, and The Roku Channel.


title: Ion Television

text: In April 2012, Ion Media Networks launched a new service known as "Ion Shop" (originally "iShop" prior to November 2012, and "ShopTV" thereafter, both are names used only by the PSIP identifiers on digital television tuners and converter boxes; there was never explicit on-air branding used by the channel itself); some Ion owned-and-operated stations, however, did not begin carrying the network until as late as that November. Carried as a fourth digital subchannel on Ion Television's owned-and-operated stations, it primarily carried informercials; until June 2013, Ion Shop also aired blocks of programming from Ion Life in some morning and late night timeslots.


title: Ion Television

text: On February 24, 2022, the Court TV Mystery network was rebranded as Ion Mystery, with the "Ion" brand now more established regarding procedural dramas in general, including Ion Mystery's overall programming, whereas Court TV is more associated with its news division.


title: Ion Television

text: On August 5, 2013, as part of a partnership between QVC and Ion Media Networks to expand the channel's broadcast television coverage, Ion Television began carrying the cable and satellite home shopping network via a fifth digital subchannel on most of its owned-and-operated stations. Although the network maintains a high-definition simulcast feed, QVC is transmitted in standard definition in order to preserve channel bandwidth to allow the primary Ion network feed to transmit in HD, with the normally letterboxed SD feed squeezed to full-screen in order to fit television sets (preventing windowboxing of the subchannel on 16:9 sets). QVC is also broadcast on digital subchannels of low-powered television stations (mainly those not owned by Ion Media Networks) in selected areas, including in some areas where an Ion station also carries it. The channel's broadcast service is branded as "QVC Over the Air", with an accompanying on-screen bug appearing on the lower right corner of the screen during the network's programming. Some Ion-affiliated stations decline to carry QVC's programming, and some Ion Media-owned stations are unable to carry that network due to affiliation agreements between QVC and other broadcasters that existed prior to the Ion deal. The partnership remains in effect in many markets under Scripps ownership and Inyo affiliations, though some stations ended distribution of the network after February 2021 in favor of the Katz networks.


title: Ion Television

text: On November 18, 2013, Ion Television began carrying the Home Shopping Network via a sixth digital subchannel on most of its owned-and-operated stations, as part of a partnership with Ion Media Networks (both once controlled by Lowell "Bud" Paxson) to expand the channel's broadcast coverage. Although it has a high definition simulcast feed, HSN is transmitted by Ion stations in standard definition, due to the same digital multiplexing limitations that prevent QVC from being carried in 16:9 SD or HD. HSN has been widely available over-the-air throughout the United States since its inception – through stations that the network had owned prior to the 1998 reorganization of its Silver King Broadcasting group into USA Broadcasting (some of which were converted into general entertainment independent outlets, and were later sold to Univision Communications to form the charter stations of the present-day UniMás network), and had been mainly available on low-power television stations immediately prior to its subchannel-leasing agreement with Ion; HSN is carried on low-power stations in some markets where an Ion station also carries the network, though HSN's programming is exclusive to an existing affiliate in a few areas where both networks are present (such as Atlanta, where WPXA-TV simulcasts Telemundo affiliate WKTB-CD on its DT6 subchannel under a time-leasing arrangement, and W13DQ-D carries HSN). Some Ion-affiliated stations decline to carry HSN's programming, and some Ion Media-owned stations are unable to carry that network due to affiliation agreements between HSN and other broadcasters that existed prior to the Ion deal. The partnership remains in effect in many markets under Scripps ownership and Inyo affiliations, though some stations ended distribution of the network after February 2021 in favor of the Katz networks.


title: Ion Television

text: Separate national feeds (formerly known as "i Plus" or "Ion Plus") have been made available to pay television providers, including Dish Network, DirecTV, Comcast and Charter Communications. A separate advertising-supported video-on-demand feed is also available through several AVOD streaming services, including Samsung TV Plus, Vizio WatchFree, Xumo, Tubi, Freevee, The Roku Channel, and TCL Channel, which features programming sourced from Ion Life in place of paid programming that airs on the main network. Prior to the launch of Ion Life, the Ion Plus feeds carried reruns of cancelled Pax original programs (such as "Miracle Pets" and "Beat the Clock"), as well as public domain movies and sitcom episodes (such as "I Married Joan" and "The Beverly Hillbillies"). The feeds used the Pax name and bug after the network's rebrand as "i", until about September 2005. As Ion has refocused towards its current schedule however, along with a de-emphasis on local advertising, the national pay-TV feed effectively repeats Ion's main feed outside a lack of station identification.


title: Ion Television

text: Ion follows a programming strategy similar to major cable networks, with majority of its schedule being filled by acquired broadcast and cable drama series, few original programs, holiday films and other original movies, and theatrically released movies sourced mainly from major film studios, with its entertainment programming schedule occupying 18 hours of its daily broadcast schedule. Ion Television, unlike other broadcast networks, does not necessarily allow its owned-and-operated stations and affiliates to air syndicated programming during the daytime and late night hours.


title: Ion Television

text: In the United States, syndicated programming accounts for a majority of the revenue of local network-affiliated and independent stations. Network programming (on stations that have a network affiliation), newscasts or other locally produced programs (if a station carries any), and infomercials make up the rest. Since paid programming once made up a relatively sizable portion of Ion's schedule (prior to 2008), the benefit is that it provides the main source of revenue. However, this is also a drawback as, in the past, Ion had relied more on infomercials rather than sitcoms and dramas; sponsors of television series often have qualms about their message being lost on stations whose primary content is infomercials and other paid programming. Ion Television's reliance on mostly paid programming has decreased since the late 2000s, as a result of the network's expansion of entertainment programming to additional daytime and late night timeslots, and in particular, the later creation of the infomercial-dedicated subchannel service Ion Shop. Ion Television stations also lack locally produced programming; most of its stations had aired newscasts from other local network-affiliated stations until the rebrand as "i", and have even produced their own community affairs shows; however, local programming has since become virtually non-existent on most of Ion's O&Os and affiliates, and was entirely discontinued with the 2019 repeal of the Main Studio rule by the FCC.


title: Ion Television

text: In effect, the repeal also freed Ion Media from the responsibility of maintaining 'studios' in any manner, which for most stations were merely a low-cost office suite containing the station's public file, a telephone manned by a general manager with only the responsibility of responding to viewers and local pay-TV providers as a local representative of the network, along with a broadcast engineer who often is responsible for multiple Ion stations (the rule required two employees, an engineer and general manager, at minimum to staff a television station).


title: Ion Television

text: As a result, there are a small number of stations (such as former affiliate WKFK-LD in Pascagoula, Mississippi) that maintain dual affiliations with both Ion and another smaller network, such as America One. In early 2006, it was announced that the "i" stations in Memphis, Tennessee (WPXX-TV), Rapid City, South Dakota (KKRA-LP) and Greenville, North Carolina (WEPX-TV, as well as its satellite WPXU-TV in Jacksonville, North Carolina) would add programming from MyNetworkTV in September 2006, causing preemptions of "i" programming during prime time due to the stations' programming commitments to carrying the MyNetworkTV schedule. This blow came after "i" lost some affiliates in New Mexico, New York and Illinois entirely (although the New York station, WWBI-LP in Plattsburgh, subsequently rejoined the network after a sale that resulted in the affiliation change fell through).


title: Ion Television

text: In late September 2009, a year after Ion Media Networks purchased WPXX and WEPX/WPXU from Flinn Broadcasting, those stations resumed carrying Ion Television full-time, having disaffiliated from MyNetworkTV as a result of the network terminating its existing affiliation agreements due to its conversion into a programming service. NBC affiliate WITN-TV took over the MyNetworkTV affiliation for the Greenville, North Carolina market, placing it on a digital subchannel; Memphis CW affiliate WLMT, meanwhile, picked up only "WWE SmackDown" in place of WPXX (that station would also add MyNetworkTV on a digital subchannel in a dual affiliation with MeTV from 2011, but eventually dropped the affiliation in 2016, leaving it on KPMF-LD until 2021, which is licensed to the nearby Jonesboro, Arkansas market but transmits from the same tower as WLMT does north of Memphis).


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The British Aircraft Corporation TSR-2 is a cancelled Cold War strike and reconnaissance aircraft developed by the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC), for the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The TSR-2 was designed around both conventional and nuclear weapons delivery: it was to penetrate well-defended frontline areas at low altitudes and very high speeds, and then attack high-value targets in rear areas. Another intended combat role was to provide high-altitude, high-speed stand-off, side-looking radar and photographic imagery and signals intelligence, aerial reconnaissance. Only one airframe flew and test flights and weight-rise during design indicated that the aircraft would be unable to meet its original stringent design specifications. The design specifications were reduced as the result of flight testing.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The TSR-2 was the victim of ever-rising costs and inter-service squabbling over Britain's future defence needs, which together led to the controversial decision in 1965 to scrap the programme. It was decided to order an adapted version of the General Dynamics F-111 instead, but that decision was later rescinded as costs and development times increased. The replacements included the Blackburn Buccaneer and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, both of which had previously been considered and rejected early in the TSR-2 procurement process. Eventually, the smaller swing-wing Panavia Tornado was developed and adopted by a European consortium to fulfil broadly similar requirements to the TSR-2.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The introduction of the first jet engines in the late-World War II period led to calls for new jet-powered versions of practically every aircraft then flying. Among these was the design of a replacement for the de Havilland Mosquito, at that time among the world's leading medium bombers. The Mosquito had been designed with the express intent of reducing the weight of the aircraft in order to improve its speed as much as possible. This process led to the removal of all defensive armament, improving performance to the point where it was unnecessary anyway. This high-speed approach was extremely successful, and a jet-powered version would be even more difficult to intercept.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: This led to Air Ministry specification E.3/45. The winning design, the English Electric Canberra, also dispensed with defensive armament, producing a design with the speed and altitude that allowed it to fly past most defences. The design's large wings gave it the lift needed to operate at very high altitudes, placing it above the range where even jet powered fighters were able to intercept it. The Canberra could simply fly over its enemy with relative impunity, a quality that made it naturally suited to aerial reconnaissance missions. The design was so successful that it was licensed for production in the United States, one of very few such cases. The Martin RB-57D and RB-57F American-built reconnaissance subtypes further extended the wings up to a span for extremely high altitude capabilities.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: This high-speed, high-altitude approach was effective until the late 1950s, when the Soviet Union began to introduce its first surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). SAMs had speed and altitude performance much greater than any contemporary aircraft. The Canberra, and other high-altitude aircraft like the British V bombers or United States' Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, were extremely vulnerable to these weapons. The first aircraft to fall victim to the Soviet S-75 "Dvina" (NATO name "SA-2 Guideline") SAM was a Taiwanese RB-57, a US reconnaissance version of the Canberra, shot down in 1959.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The solution was to fly lower: since radar operates in line-of-sight, the curvature of the Earth renders low-flying aircraft invisible beyond a certain range, the radar horizon. In practice, trees, hills, valleys and any other obstructions reduce this range even more, making a ground-based interception extremely difficult. The Canberra was designed for medium- to high-altitude flight and was not suitable for continuous terrain-hugging flight; this would require a completely different aircraft. Low-level strike aircraft, or "interdictors", grew into a new class of their own during the late 1950s. They generally featured high wing loading to reduce the effects of turbulence and cross-wind, some form of high-performance navigational radar to allow very low flight at high speeds, and large fuel loads to offset the higher fuel use at low altitudes.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Aware of the changing operational environment, the Ministry of Supply started work with English Electric in 1955, attempting to define a new light bomber to replace the Canberra. These early studies eventually settled on an aircraft with a ferry range, Mach 1.5 speed "at altitude" and low-level range. A crew of two was required, one being the operator of the advanced navigational and attack equipment. The bombload was to be four bombs.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The requirements were eventually made official in November 1956 with General Operational Requirement 339 (GOR.339), which was issued to various aircraft manufacturers in March 1957. This requirement was exceptionally ambitious for the technology of the day, requiring a supersonic all-weather aircraft that could deliver nuclear weapons over a long range, operate at high level at Mach 2+ or low level at Mach 1.2, with STOL or possible VTOL performance. The latter requirement was a side-effect of common battle plans from the 1950s, which suggested that nuclear strikes in the opening stages of war would damage most runways and airfields, meaning that aircraft would need to take off from "rough fields" such as disused Second World War airfields, or even sufficiently flat and open areas of land.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Low level was stated to be under with an expected attack speed at sea level of Mach 0.95. The operational range was to be operating off runways of no more than . The TSR-2 was able to operate at above the ground at speeds of Mach 1.1; its range allowed it to operate strategically in addition to tactical scenarios.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: As this specification was being studied by various manufacturers, the first of the political storms that were to dog the project reared its head, when Defence Minister Duncan Sandys stated in the 1957 Defence White Paper that the era of manned combat was at an end and ballistic missiles were the weapons of the future. This viewpoint was vigorously debated by the aviation industry and within the Ministry of Defence for years. Senior RAF officers argued against the White Paper's premise, stating the importance of mobility, and that the TSR-2 could not only replace the Canberra, but potentially the entire V bomber force.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: In addition to the argument over the need for manned aircraft, additional political machinations had the effect of complicating the project. In September 1957 the Ministry of Supply informed the heads of the aviation companies that the only acceptable proposals would be those issued from teams consisting of more than one company. There was a large number of competing aircraft manufacturing companies in the UK, while orders were decreasing; thus the government intended to foster cooperation between certain companies and encourage mergers.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Another political matter, that did not help, was the mutual distrust between the various services. At the time that GOR.339 was being defined, the Royal Navy was in the midst of its NA.39 project, which would eventually become the Blackburn Buccaneer. This was a low-altitude subsonic attack aircraft, designed for over-water as opposed to overland use. The savings involved in both forces using a common aircraft would be considerable, and Blackburn offered the RAF a version of the NA.39 to fit some of the GOR.339 requirements. The Chief of the Defence Staff, and former First Sea Lord, Lord Mountbatten was a loyal proponent of the Buccaneer, later claiming that five of the type could be purchased for the same price as one TSR-2. However, the RAF rebuffed the proposal, stating that it was unsuitable due to poor takeoff performance and the avionics not being capable of the desired role. As one RAF official put it, "If we show the slightest interest in NA.39 we might not get the GOR.339 aircraft."


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Another political opponent of the TSR-2 project was Sir Solly Zuckerman, at the time the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defence. Zuckerman had a low opinion of British technological achievements and was in favour of procuring military hardware from the United States.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Work on GOR.339 continued, with a deadline for submissions on 31 January 1958. Many proposals were entered; English Electric teamed up with Short Brothers and submitted its P.17A along with the Shorts' P.17D, a vertical-lift platform that would give the P.17 a VTOL capability; designs were also received from Avro, Blackburn (the NA.39), de Havilland, Fairey, Hawker and Vickers-Armstrongs. The Air Ministry eventually selected the EE P.17A and the Vickers-Armstrongs Type 571 for further consideration. The Ministry was particularly impressed with the Vickers submission, which included not only the aircraft design, but a "total systems concept" outlining all the avionics, support facilities and logistics needed to maintain the aircraft in the field. Official opinions of English Electric's management found it decidedly lacking in comparison to Vickers, but the combination of the two was felt by officialdom to be a useful marriage and accordingly the development contract was awarded to Vickers, with English Electric as sub-contractor.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The existence of GOR.339 was revealed to the public in December 1958 in a statement to the House of Commons. Under pressure by the recommendations of the Committee on Estimates, the Air Ministry examined ways that the various project proposals could be combined, and in January 1959 the Minister of Supply announced that the TSR-2 would be built by Vickers-Armstrongs working with English Electric; the initials coming from "Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance, Mach 2", the 'Strike' part of the designation specifically referring in RAF terminology to a nuclear weapons role.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: On 1 January 1959, the project was given an official go-ahead; in February, it came under the new designation Operational Requirement 343. OR.343 was more specific and built upon work from the various submissions to GOR.339 specifically stating that the low-level operations would be at or less, and that Mach 2 should be attained at altitude.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The envisioned "standard mission" for the TSR-2 was to carry a weapon internally for a combat radius of . Of that mission was to be flown at higher altitudes at Mach 1.7 and the into and out of the target area was to be flown as low as 200 ft at a speed of Mach 0.95. The remainder of the mission was to be flown at Mach 0.92. If the entire mission were to be flown at the low 200 ft altitude, the mission radius was reduced to . Heavier weapons loads could be carried with further reductions in range. Plans for increasing the TSR-2's range included fitting external tanks: one tank under each wing or one tank carried centrally below the fuselage. If no internal weapons were carried, a further could be carried in a tank in the weapons bay. Later variants would have been fitted with variable-geometry wings.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The TSR-2 was also to be equipped with a reconnaissance pack in the weapons bay which included an optical linescan unit built by EMI, three cameras and a sideways-looking radar (SLR) in order to carry out the majority of its reconnaissance tasks. Unlike modern linescan units that use infrared imaging, the TSR-2's linescan would use daylight imaging or an artificial light source to illuminate the ground for night reconnaissance.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Carriage of the existing Red Beard tactical nuclear bomb had been specified at the beginning of the TSR-2 project, but it was quickly realised that Red Beard was unsuited to external carriage at supersonic speeds, had safety and handling limitations, and its 15 kt yield was considered inadequate for the targets assigned. Instead, in 1959, a successor to Red Beard, an "Improved Kiloton Bomb" to a specification known as Operational Requirement 1177 (OR.1177), was specified for the TSR-2. In the tactical strike role, the TSR-2 was expected to attack targets beyond the forward edge of the battlefield assigned to the RAF by NATO, during day or night and in all weathers. These targets comprised missile sites, both hardened and soft, aircraft on airfields, runways, airfield buildings, airfield fuel installations and bomb stores, tank concentrations, ammunition and supply dumps, railways and railway tunnels, and bridges.<ref name="air77/654">"AIR 77/654: The Limitations of 10 kt Free-Fall Tactical Weapon As A Replacement for Red Beard". London: Public Record Office, 2010.</ref> OR.1177 specified 50, 100, 200 and 300 kt yields, assuming a circular error probable of and a damage probability of 0.8, and laydown delivery capability, with burst heights for targets from 0 to above sea level. Other requirements were a weight of up to , a length of up to , and a diameter up to (the same as Red Beard).<ref name="air2/17322">"AIR 2/17322: Draft Air Staff Requirement No. O.R.1177 An Improved Kiloton Bomb". London: Public Record Office, 2010.</ref>


title: BAC TSR-2

text: However, a ministerial ruling on 9 July 1962 decreed that all future tactical nuclear weapons should be limited to a yield of 10 kt.<ref name="air2/17325">"AIR 2/17325 E31B: Joint Naval/Air Staff Requirement G.D.A.15/O.R.1177 (Issue 3): An Improved Kiloton Bomb pp. 1–2". London: Public Record Office, 2010.</ref> The RAF issued a new version of the OR.1177 specification, accepting the lower yield, while making provision in the design for it to be capable of adaptation later for a higher yield, in the event of the political restriction being lifted. Meanwhile, the RAF explored ways of compensating for the lower yield by including, in the specifications for both the bomb and TSR-2, provision for releasing the smaller weapons in salvos, dropping sticks of four of the revised OR.1177, later named WE.177A, at intervals to prevent the detonation of the first weapon destroying the succeeding ones before they could, in turn, detonate. This led to the requirement that the TSR-2 must be able to carry four WE.177As, two internally and two on external underwing stores pylons—the width of the TSR-2 bomb bay (originally designed to accommodate a single Red Beard weapon) necessitating the reduction in diameter of the WE.177A to , the bomb's width and fin span being constrained by the need to fit two WE.177 bombs side-by-side in the aircraft's bomb bay. The requirement for stick bombing using nuclear weapons was soon dropped as larger yield bombs came back into favour.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: A drawback of carrying WE.177 on external pylons was a limitation due to aerodynamic heating of the bomb's casing. WE.177A was limited to a maximum carriage time of five minutes at Mach 1.15 at low level on TSR-2, otherwise the bomb's temperature would rise above its permitted maximum. This would impose a severe operational restriction on TSR-2, as the aircraft was designed for Mach 1+ cruise at this height.<ref name="air2/17330">"AIR 2/17330 E9A p1". London: Public Record Office, 2010.</ref>


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Nuclear stand-off missiles were also proposed for the TSR-2 early in development but not proceeded with. These included an air-launched development of the Blue Water missile, carried underwing, or semi-recessed in the bomb bay, and an air-launched ballistic missile, referred to as "Grand Slam", with a warhead derived from that intended for the Skybolt missile, and a range of . Conventional missiles were catered for instead, with the design originally centring on use of the AGM-12 Bullpup, then moving on to favour the French AS-30 before settling on the new OR.1168 missile (which would become the TV-guided AJ-168 Martel).


title: BAC TSR-2

text: After the cancellation of the TSR-2, the RAF eventually filled the tactical strike requirement using McDonnell F-4 Phantom IIs with US dual-key nuclear weapons, but continued their attempts to get the 10 kt limit lifted. Development of WE.177A was delayed by several years due to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) at Aldermaston being inundated with work on other warhead developments. AWRE workload eased after completion of the Polaris missile warheads and work was able to resume on the WE.177A, deliveries to the RAF beginning in late 1971 for deployment on Buccaneers of RAF Germany, a year after WE.177A deliveries to the Royal Navy. Approval for high-yield tactical weapons was eventually gained in 1970 and, by 1975, the RAF had WE.177C, which at almost 200 kt was a weapon very similar to what they had planned for the TSR-2 in 1959.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Throughout 1959, English Electric (EE) and Vickers worked on combining the best of both designs in order to put forward a joint design with a view to having an aircraft flying by 1963, while also working on merging the companies under the umbrella of the British Aircraft Corporation. EE had put forward a delta winged design and Vickers, a swept wing on a long fuselage. The EE wing, born of their greater supersonic experience, was judged superior to Vickers, while the Vickers fuselage was preferred. In effect, the aircraft would be built 50/50: Vickers the front half, EE the rear.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The TSR-2 was to be powered by two Bristol-Siddeley Olympus reheated turbojets, advanced variants of those used in the Avro Vulcan. The Olympus would be further developed and would power the supersonic Concorde. The design featured a small shoulder-mounted delta wing with down-turned tips, an all-moving swept tailplane and a large all-moving fin. Blown flaps were fitted across the entire trailing edge of the wing to achieve the short takeoff and landing requirement, something that later designs would achieve with the technically more complex swing-wing approach. No ailerons were fitted, control in roll instead being implemented by differential movement of the slab tailplanes. The wing loading was high for its time, enabling the aircraft to fly at very high speed and low level with great stability without being constantly upset by thermals and other ground-related weather phenomena. The EE Chief Test Pilot, Wing Commander Roland Beamont, favourably compared the TSR-2's supersonic flying characteristics to the Canberra's own subsonic flight characteristics, stating that the Canberra was more troublesome.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: According to the Flight Envelope diagram, TSR2 was capable of sustained cruise at Mach 2.05 at altitudes between and and had a dash speed of Mach 2.35 (with a limiting leading edge temperature of 140 °C). Its theoretical maximum speed was Mach 3 in level flight at .


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The aircraft featured some extremely sophisticated avionics for navigation and mission delivery, which would also prove to be one of the reasons for the spiralling costs of the project. Some features, such as forward looking radar (FLR) and side-looking radar for navigational fixing, only became commonplace on military aircraft years later. These features allowed for an innovative autopilot system which, in turn, enabled long distance terrain-following sorties as crew workload and pilot input had been greatly reduced.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: There were considerable problems with realising the design. Some contributing manufacturers were employed directly by the Ministry rather than through BAC, leading to communication difficulties and further cost overruns. Equipment, an area in which BAC had autonomy, would be supplied by the Ministry from "associate contractors", although the equipment would be designed and provided by BAC, subject to ministry approval. The overall outlay of funds made it the largest aircraft project in Britain to date.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Unlike most previous projects, there were to be no prototypes. Under the "development batch" procedure pioneered by the Americans (and also used by English Electric for the Lightning), there would instead be a development batch of nine airframes, to be built using production jigs. The choice of proceeding to production tooling turned out to be another source of delay, with the first aircraft having to adhere to strict production standards or deal with the bureaucracy of attaining concessions to allow them to exhibit differences from later airframes. Four years into the project, the first few airframes had effectively become prototypes in all but name, exhibiting a succession of omissions from the specification and differences from the intended pre-production and production batches.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Despite the increasing costs the first two of the development batch aircraft were completed. Engine development and undercarriage problems led to delays for the first flight which meant that the TSR-2 missed the opportunity to be displayed to the public at 1964's Farnborough Airshow. In the days leading up to the testing, Denis Healey, the Opposition shadow secretary for defence, had criticised the aircraft saying that by the time it was introduced it would face "new anti-aircraft" missiles that would shoot it down making it prohibitively expensive at £16 million per aircraft (on the basis of only 30 ordered).


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Test pilot Roland Beamont finally made the first flight from the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE) at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, on 27 September 1964. Initial flight tests were all performed with the undercarriage down and engine power strictly controlled—with limits of and on the first (15-minute) flight. Shortly after takeoff on "XR219's" second flight, vibration from a fuel pump at the resonant frequency of the human eyeball caused the pilot to throttle back one engine to avoid momentary loss of vision.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Only on the 10th test flight was the landing gear successfully retracted—problems preventing this on previous occasions, but serious vibration problems on landing persisted throughout the flight testing programme. The first supersonic test flight (Flight 14) was achieved on the transfer from A&AEE, Boscombe Down, to BAC Warton. During the flight, the aircraft achieved Mach 1 on dry power only (supercruise). Following this, Beamont lit a single reheat unit as the other engine's reheat fuel pump was unserviceable, with the result that the aircraft accelerated away from the chase English Electric Lightning (a high speed interceptor) flown by Wing Commander James "Jimmy" Dell, who had to catch up using reheat on both engines. On flying the TSR-2 himself, Dell described the prototype as handling "like a big Lightning".


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Over a period of six months, a total of 24 test flights were conducted. Most of the complex electronics were not fitted to the first aircraft, so these flights were all concerned with the basic flying qualities of the aircraft which, according to the test pilots involved, were outstanding. Speeds of Mach 1.12 and sustained low-level flights down to 200 ft were achieved above the Pennines. Undercarriage vibration problems continued, however, and only in the final few flights, when XR219 was fitted with additional tie-struts on the already complex landing gear, was there a significant reduction in them. The last test flight took place on 31 March 1965.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Although the test flying programme was not completed and the TSR-2 was undergoing typical design and systems modifications reflective of its sophisticated configuration, "[T]here was no doubt that the airframe would be capable of accomplishing the tasks set for it and that it represented a major advance on any other type."


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Costs continued to rise, which led to concerns at both company and government upper management levels, and the aircraft was also falling short of many of the requirements laid out in OR.343, such as takeoff distance and combat radius. As a cost-saving measure, a reduced specification was agreed upon, notably reductions in combat radius to , the top speed to Mach 1.75 and takeoff run up increased from .


title: BAC TSR-2

text: By the 1960s, the United States military was developing the swing-wing F-111 project as a follow-on to the Republic F-105 Thunderchief, a fast low-level fighter-bomber designed in the 1950s with an internal bay for a nuclear weapon. There had been some interest in the TSR-2 from Australia for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), but in 1963, the RAAF chose to buy the F-111 instead, having been offered a better price and delivery schedule by the American manufacturer. Nonetheless, the RAAF had to wait 10 years before the F-111 was ready to enter service, by which time the anticipated programme cost had tripled. The RAF was also asked to consider the F-111 as an alternative cost-saving measure. In response to suggestions of cancellation, BAC employees held a protest march, and the new Labour government, which had come to power in 1964, issued strong denials. However, at two Cabinet meetings held on 1 April 1965, it was decided to cancel the TSR-2 on the grounds of projected cost, and instead to obtain an option agreement to acquire up to 110 F-111 aircraft with no immediate commitment to buy. This decision was announced in the budget speech of 6 April 1965. The maiden flight of the second development batch aircraft, "XR220", was due on the day of the announcement, but following an accident in conveying the airframe to Boscombe Down, coupled with the announcement of the project cancellation, it never happened. Ultimately, only the first prototype, "XR219", ever took to the air. A week later, the Chancellor defended the decision in a debate in the House of Commons, saying that the F-111 would prove cheaper.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Aeronautical engineer and designer of the Hawker Hurricane Sir Sydney Camm said of the TSR-2: "All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right."


title: BAC TSR-2

text: To replace the TSR-2, the Air Ministry initially placed an option for the F-111K (a modified F-111A with F-111C enhancements) but also considered two other choices: a Rolls-Royce Spey (RB.168 Spey 25R) conversion of a Dassault Mirage IV (the Dassault/BAC Spey-Mirage IV) and an enhanced Blackburn Buccaneer S.2 with a new nav-attack system and reconnaissance capability, referred to as the "Buccaneer 2-Double-Star". Neither proposal was pursued as a TSR-2 replacement although a final decision was reserved until the 1966 Defence Review. Defence Minister Healey's memo about the F-111 and the Cabinet minutes regarding the final cancellation of the TSR-2 indicate that the F-111 was preferred.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: Following the 1966 Defence White Paper, the Air Ministry decided on two aircraft: the F-111K, with a longer-term replacement being a joint Anglo-French project for a variable geometry strike aircraft – the Anglo French Variable Geometry Aircraft (AFVG). A censure debate followed on 1 May 1967, in which Healey claimed the cost of the TSR-2 would have been £1,700 million over 15 years including running costs, compared with £1,000 million for the F-111K/AFVG combination. Although 10 F-111Ks were ordered in April 1966 with an additional order for 40 in April 1967, the F-111 programme suffered enormous cost escalation coupled with the devaluation of the pound, far exceeding that of the TSR-2 projection. Many technical problems were still unresolved before successful operational deployment and, faced with poorer-than-projected performance estimates, the order for 50 F-111Ks for the RAF was eventually cancelled in January 1968.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: To provide a suitable alternative to the TSR-2, the RAF settled on a combination of the F-4 Phantom II and the Blackburn Buccaneer, some of which were transferred from the Royal Navy. These were the same aircraft that the RAF had derided in order to get the TSR-2 go-ahead, but the Buccaneer proved capable and remained in service until 1994. The RN and RAF versions of the Phantom II were given the designation F-4K and F-4M respectively, and entered service as the Phantom FG.1 (fighter/ground attack) and Phantom FGR.2 (fighter/ground attack/reconnaissance), remaining in service (in the air-to-air role) until 1992.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The RAF's Phantoms were replaced in the strike/reconnaissance role by the SEPECAT Jaguar in the mid-1970s. In the 1980s, both the Jaguar and Buccaneer were eventually replaced in this role by the variable-geometry Panavia Tornado, a much smaller design than either the F-111 or the TSR-2. Experience in the design and development of the avionics, particularly the terrain-following capabilities, were used on the later Tornado programme. In the late 1970s, as the Tornado was nearing full production, an aviation businessman, Christopher de Vere, initiated a highly speculative feasibility study into resurrecting and updating the TSR-2 project. However, despite persistent lobbying of the UK government of the time, his proposal was not taken seriously and came to nothing.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The TSR-2 tooling, jigs and many of the part completed aircraft were all scrapped at Brooklands within six months of the cancellation. Two airframes eventually survived: the complete "XR220" at the RAF Museum, Cosford, and the much less complete "XR222" at the Imperial War Museum Duxford. The only airframe ever to fly, "XR219", along with the completed "XR221" and part completed "XR223" were taken to Shoeburyness and used as targets to test the vulnerability of a modern airframe and systems to gunfire and shrapnel. Four additional completed airframes, "XR224", "XR225", "XR226" and one incomplete airframe "XR227" (X-06,07,08 and 09) were scrapped by R. J. Coley and Son, Hounslow Middlesex. Four further airframe serials "XR228" to "XR231" were allocated but these aircraft were allegedly not built. Construction of a further 10 aircraft (X-10 to 19) allocated serials XS660 to 669 was started but all partly built airframes were again scrapped by R. J. Coley. The last serial of that batch, XS670 is listed as "cancelled", as are those of another batch of 50 projected aircraft, XS944 to 995.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: By coincidence, the projected batch of 46 General Dynamics F-111Ks (of which the first four were the trainer variant TF-111K) were allocated RAF serials XV884-887 and 902–947, but these again were cancelled when the first two were still incomplete.


title: BAC TSR-2

text: The haste with which the project was scrapped has been the source of much argument and bitterness since and is comparable to the cancellation and destruction of the American Northrop Flying Wing bombers, and the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow interceptor that was scrapped in Canada in 1959.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar the Great (, lit. "King Tamar") ( 1160 – 18 January 1213) reigned as the Queen of Georgia from 1184 to 1213, presiding over the apex of the Georgian Golden Age. A member of the Bagrationi dynasty, her position as the first woman to rule Georgia in her own right was emphasized by the title "mepe" ("king"), afforded to Tamar in the medieval Georgian sources.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar was proclaimed heir and co-ruler by her reigning father George III in 1178, but she faced significant opposition from the aristocracy upon her ascension to full ruling powers after George's death. Tamar was successful in neutralizing this opposition and embarked on an energetic foreign policy aided by the decline of the hostile Seljuq Turks. Relying on a powerful military elite, Tamar was able to build on the successes of her predecessors to consolidate an empire which dominated the Caucasus until its collapse under the Mongol attacks within two decades after Tamar's death.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar was married twice, her first union being, from 1185 to 1187, to the Rus' prince Yuri, whom she divorced and expelled from the country, defeating his subsequent coup attempts. For her second husband Tamar chose, in 1191, the Alan prince David Soslan, by whom she had two children, George and Rusudan, the two successive monarchs on the throne of Georgia.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar's reign is associated with a period of marked political and military successes and cultural achievements. This, combined with her role as a female ruler, has contributed to her status as an idealized and romanticized figure in Georgian arts and historical memory. She remains an important symbol in Georgian popular culture.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar was born in circa 1160 to George III, King of Georgia, and his consort Burdukhan, a daughter of the king of Alania. While it is possible that Tamar had a younger sister, Rusudan, she is only mentioned once in all contemporary accounts of Tamar's reign. The name Tamar is of Hebrew origin and, like other biblical names, was favored by the Georgian Bagrationi dynasty because of their claim to be descended from David, the second king of Israel.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar's youth coincided with a major upheaval in Georgia; in 1177, her father, George III, was confronted by a rebellious faction of nobles. The rebels intended to dethrone George in favor of the king's fraternal nephew, Demna, who was considered by many to be a legitimate royal heir of his murdered father, David V. Demna's cause was little but a pretext for the nobles, led by the pretender's father-in-law, the "amirspasalar" ("high constable") Ivane Orbeli, to weaken the crown. George III was able to crush the revolt and embarked on a crackdown campaign on the defiant aristocratic clans; Ivane Orbeli was put to death and the surviving members of his family were driven out of Georgia. Demna, castrated and blinded on his uncle's order, did not survive the mutilation and soon died in prison. Once the rebellion was suppressed and the pretender eliminated, George went ahead to co-opt Tamar into government with him and crowned her as co-ruler in 1178. By doing so, the king attempted to preempt any dispute after his death and legitimize his line on the throne of Georgia. At the same time, he raised men from the Kipchaks as well as from the gentry and unranked classes to keep the dynastic aristocracy away from the center of power.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: For six years, Tamar was a co-ruler with her father upon whose death, in 1184, Tamar continued as the sole monarch and was crowned a second time at the Gelati cathedral near Kutaisi, western Georgia. She inherited a relatively strong kingdom, but the centrifugal tendencies fostered by the great nobles were far from being quelled. There was considerable opposition to Tamar's succession; this was sparked by a reaction against the repressive policies of her father and encouraged by the new sovereign's other perceived weakness, her sex. As Georgia had never previously had a female ruler, a part of the aristocracy questioned Tamar's legitimacy, while others tried to exploit her youth and supposed weakness to assert greater autonomy for themselves. The energetic involvement of Tamar's influential aunt Rusudan and the Catholicos-Patriarch Michael IV was crucial for legitimizing Tamar's succession to the throne. However, the young queen was forced into making significant concessions to the aristocracy. She had to reward the Catholicos-Patriarch Michael's support by making him a chancellor, thus placing him at the top of both the clerical and secular hierarchies.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar was also pressured into dismissing her father's appointees, among them the constable Kubasar, a Georgian Kipchak of ignoble birth, who had helped George III in his crackdown on the defiant nobility. One of the few untitled servitors of George III to escape this fate was the treasurer Qutlu Arslan who now led a group of nobles and wealthy citizens in a struggle to limit the royal authority by creating a new council, "karavi", whose members would alone deliberate and decide policy. This attempt at "feudal constitutionalism" was rendered abortive when Tamar had Qutlu Arslan arrested and his supporters were inveigled into submission. Yet, Tamar's first moves to reduce the power of the aristocratic élite were unsuccessful. She failed in her attempt to use a church synod to dismiss the Catholicos-Patriarch Michael, and the noble council, Darbazi, asserted the right to approve royal decrees.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Queen Tamar's marriage was a question of state-importance. Pursuant to dynastic imperatives and the ethos of the time, the nobles required Tamar to marry in order to have a leader for the army and to provide an heir to the throne. Every group strove to select and secure the acceptance of its candidate in order to strengthen its position and influence at court. Two main factions fought for the influence in Tamar's court: clan of Mkhargrdzeli and Abulasan. The faction of the Abulasan won, the choice was approved by Tamar's aunt Rusudan and council of feudal lords. Their choice fell on Yuri, son of the murdered prince Andrei I Bogolyubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal, who later lived as a refugee among the Kipchaks of the North Caucasus. They called an influential person in the kingdom, the great merchant Zankan Zorababeli. He was given the mission of bringing the bridegroom to Tbilisi. He fulfilled his mission with zeal, the prince was brought to Georgia to marry the queen in 1185.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: The young man – valiant, perfect of body and pleasant to behold – Yuri proved to be an able soldier, but a difficult person and he soon ran afoul of his wife. The strained spousal relations paralleled a factional struggle at the royal court in which Tamar was becoming more and more assertive of her rights as a queen regnant. The turning point in Tamar's fortunes came with the death of the powerful Catholicos-Patriarch Michael whom the queen replaced, as a chancellor, with her supporter, Anton Gnolistavisdze. Tamar gradually expanded her own power-base and elevated her loyal nobles to high positions at the court, most notably the Mkhargrdzeli.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: In 1187, Tamar persuaded the noble council to approve her to divorce Yuri, who was accused of addiction to drunkenness and "sodomy" and was sent off to Constantinople. Assisted by several Georgian aristocrats anxious to check Tamar's growing power, Yuri made two coup attempts, but failed and went off to obscurity after 1191. The queen chose her second husband herself. He was David Soslan, an Alan prince, to whom the 18th-century Georgian scholar Prince Vakhushti ascribes descent from the early 11th-century Georgian king George I. David, a capable military commander, became Tamar's major supporter and was instrumental in defeating the rebellious nobles who rallied behind Yuri.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar and David had two children. In 1192 or 1194, the queen gave birth to a son, George-Lasha, the future king George IV. The daughter, Rusudan, was born 1195 and would succeed her brother as a sovereign of Georgia.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: David Soslan's status of a king consort, as well as his presence in art, on charters, and on coins, was dictated by the necessity of male aspects of kingship, but he remained a subordinate ruler who shared the throne with and derived his power from Tamar. Tamar continued to be styled as "mep’et’a mep’e" – "king of kings". In Georgian, a language with no grammatical genders, "mep'e" ("king") does not necessarily imply a masculine connotation and can be rendered as a "sovereign". The female equivalent of "mep'e" is "dedop'ali" ("queen"), which was applied to wives or other senior female relatives of kings. Tamar is occasionally called "dedop'ali" and "dedop'alt’a dedop'ali" in the Georgian chronicles and on some charters. Thus, the title of "mep'e" might have been applied to Tamar to mark out her unique position among women.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Once Tamar succeeded in consolidating her power and found a reliable support in David Soslan, the Mkhargrdzeli, Toreli, and other noble families, she revived the expansionist foreign policy of her predecessors. Repeated occasions of dynastic strife in Georgia combined with the efforts of regional successors of the Great Seljuq Empire, such as the Eldiguzids, Shirvanshahs, and the Ahlatshahs, had slowed down the dynamic of the Georgians achieved during the reigns of Tamar's great-grandfather, David IV, and her father, George III. However, the Georgians became again active under Tamar, more prominently in the second decade of her rule.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Early in the 1190s, the Georgian government began to interfere in the affairs of the Eldiguzids and of the Shirvanshahs, aiding rivaling local princes and reducing Shirvan to a tributary state. The Eldiguzid atabeg Abu Bakr attempted to stem the Georgian advance, but suffered a defeat at the hands of David Soslan at the Battle of Shamkor and lost his capital to a Georgian protégé in 1195. Although Abu Bakr was able to resume his reign a year later, the Eldiguzids were only barely able to contain further Georgian forays.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: The question of liberation of Armenia remained of prime importance in Georgia's foreign policy. Tamar's armies led by two Christianised Kurdish generals, Zakare and Ivane Mkhargrdzeli (Zakarian) overran fortresses and cities towards the Ararat Plain, reclaiming one after another fortresses and districts from local Muslim rulers.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Alarmed by the Georgian successes, Süleymanshah II, the resurgent Seljuqid sultan of Rûm, rallied his vassal emirs and marched against Georgia, but his camp was attacked and destroyed by David Soslan at the Battle of Basian in 1203 or 1204. The chronicler of Tamar describes how the army was assembled at the rock-hewn town of Vardzia before marching on to Basian and how the queen addressed the troops from the balcony of the church. Exploiting her success in this battle, between 1203 and 1205 Georgians seized the town of Dvin and entered Ahlatshah possessions twice and subdued the emir of Kars (vassal of the Saltukids in Erzurum), Ahlatshahs, the emirs of Erzurum and Erzincan.In 1206 the Georgian army, under the command of David Soslan, captured Kars and other fortresses and strongholds along the Araxes. This campaign was evidently started because the ruler of Erzerum refused to submit to Georgia. The emir of Kars requested aid from the Ahlatshahs, but the latter was unable to respond, it was soon taken over by the Ayyubid Sultanate In 1207. By 1209 Georgia challenged Ayyubid rule in eastern Anatolia and led liberational war for south Armenia. The Georgian army besieged Ahlat. In response Ayyubid Sultan al-Adil I assembled and personally led a large Muslim army that included the "emirs" of Homs, Hama and Baalbek as well as contingents from other Ayyubid principalities to support al-Awhad, emir of Jazira. During the siege, Georgian general Ivane Mkhargrdzeli accidentally fell into the hands of the al-Awhad on the outskirts of Ahlat. Using Ivane as a bargaining chip, al-Awhad agreed to release him in return for a thirty year truce with Georgia, thus ending the immediate Georgian threat to the Ayyubids. This brought the struggle for the Armenian lands to a stall, leaving the Lake Van region to the Ayyubids of Damascus.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: In 1209, the brothers Mkhargrzeli laid waste to Ardabil – according to the Georgian and Armenian annals – as a revenge for the local Muslim ruler's attack on Ani and his massacre of the city's Christian population. In a great final burst, the brothers led an army marshaled throughout Tamar's possessions and vassal territories in a march, through Nakhchivan and Julfa, to Marand, Tabriz, and Qazvin in northwest Iran, pillaging several settlements on their way. Georgians reached countries where nobody had heard of either their name or existence. These victories brought Georgia to the summit of its power and glory, establishing a pan-Caucasian Empire that extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian and from the Caucasus Mountains to Lake Van.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Among the remarkable events of Tamar's reign was the foundation of the Empire of Trebizond on the Black Sea coast in 1204. This state was established by Alexios I Megas Komnenos (r. 1204–1222) and his brother, David, in the northeastern Pontic provinces of the crumbling Byzantine Empire with the aid of Georgian troops. Alexios and David, Tamar's relatives, were fugitive Byzantine princes raised at the Georgian court. According to Tamar's historian, the aim of the Georgian expedition to Trebizond was to punish the Byzantine emperor Alexios IV Angelos (r. 1203–1204) for his confiscation of a shipment of money from the Georgian queen to the monasteries of Antioch and Mount Athos. However, Tamar's Pontic endeavor can better be explained by her desire to take advantage of the Western European Fourth Crusade against Constantinople to set up a friendly state in Georgia's immediate southwestern neighborhood, as well as by the dynastic solidarity to the dispossessed Komnenoi.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar sought to make use of the weakness of the Byzantine Empire and the Crusaders' defeat at the hands of the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in order to gain Georgia's position on the international stage and to assume the traditional role of the Byzantine crown as a protector of the Christians of the Middle East. Christian Georgian missionaries were active in the North Caucasus and the expatriate monastic communities were scattered throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Tamar's chronicle praises her universal protection of Christianity and her support of churches and monasteries from Egypt to Bulgaria and Cyprus.The Georgian court was primarily concerned with the protection of the Georgian monastic centers in the Holy Land. By the 12th century, eight Georgian monasteries were listed in Jerusalem. Saladin's biographer, Bahā' ad-Dīn ibn Šaddād, reports that after the Ayyubid conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, Tamar sent envoys to the sultan to request that the confiscated possessions of the Georgian monasteries in Jerusalem be returned. Saladin's response is not recorded, but the queen's efforts seem to have been successful: Jacques de Vitry, who attained to the bishopric of Acre shortly after Tamar's death, gives further evidence of the Georgians’ presence in Jerusalem. He writes that the Georgians were – in contrast to the other Christian pilgrims – allowed a free passage into the city, with their banners unfurled. Ibn Šaddād furthermore claims that Tamar outbid the Byzantine emperor in her efforts to obtain the relics of the True Cross, offering 200,000 gold pieces to Saladin who had taken the relics as booty at the Battle of Hattin – to no avail, however.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Georgia's political and cultural exploits of Tamar's epoch were rooted in a long and complex past. Tamar owed her accomplishments most immediately to the reforms of her great-grandfather David IV (r. 1089–1125) and, more remotely, to the unifying efforts of David III and Bagrat III who became architects of a political unity of Georgian kingdoms and principalities in the opening decade of the 11th century. Tamar was able to build upon their successes. By the last years of Tamar's reign, the Georgian state had reached the zenith of its power and prestige in the Middle Ages. Tamar's realm stretched from the Greater Caucasus crest in the north to Erzurum in the south, and from the Zygii in the northwest to the vicinity of Ganja in the southeast, forming a pan-Caucasian empire, with the loyal Zachariad regime in northern and central Armenia, Shirvan as a vassal and Trebizond as an ally. A contemporary Georgian historian extols Tamar as the master of the lands "from the Sea of Pontus [i.e., the Black Sea] to the Sea of Gurgan [i.e., the Caspian Sea], from Speri to Derbend, and all the Hither and the Thither Caucasus up to Khazaria and Scythia."


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: The royal title was correspondingly aggrandized. It now reflected not only Tamar's sway over the traditional subdivisions of the Georgian realm, but also included new components, emphasizing the Georgian crown's hegemony over the neighboring lands. Thus, on the coins and charters issued in her name, Tamar is identified as:


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: The queen never achieved autocratic powers and the noble council continued to function. However, Tamar's own prestige and the expansion of "patronq'moba" – a Georgian version of feudalism – kept the more powerful dynastic princes from fragmenting the kingdom. This was a classical period in the history of Georgian feudalism. Attempts at transplanting feudal practices in the areas where they had previously been almost unknown did not pass without resistance. There was a revolt among the mountainers of Pkhovi and Dido on Georgia's northeastern frontier in 1212, which was put down by Ivane Mkhargrzeli after three months of heavy fighting.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: With flourishing commercial centers now under Georgia's control, industry and commerce brought new wealth to the country and the court. Tribute extracted from the neighbors and war booty added to the royal treasury, giving rise to the saying that "the peasants were like nobles, the nobles like princes, and the princes like kings."


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: With this prosperity came an outburst of the distinct Georgian culture, emerging from the amalgam of Christian, secular, as well as Byzantine and Iranian influences. Despite this, the Georgians continued to identify with the Byzantine West, rather than Islamic East, with the Georgian monarchy seeking to underscore its association with Christianity and present its position as God-given. It was in that period that the canon of Georgian Orthodox architecture was redesigned and a series of large-scale domed cathedrals were built. The Byzantine-derived expression of royal power was modified in various ways to bolster Tamar's unprecedented position as a woman ruling in her own right. The five extant monumental church portraits of the queen are clearly modeled on Byzantine imagery, but also highlight specifically Georgian themes and Persian-type ideals of female beauty. Despite Georgia's Byzantine-leaning culture, the country's intimate trade connections with the Middle East is evidenced on contemporary Georgian coinage, whose legends were composed in Georgian and Arabic. A series of coins minted in circa 1200 in the name of Queen Tamar depicted a local variant of the Byzantine obverse and an Arabic inscription on the reverse proclaiming Tamar as the "Champion of the Messiah".


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: The contemporary Georgian chronicles enshrined Christian morality and patristic literature continued to flourish, but it had, by that time, lost its earlier dominant position to secular literature, which was highly original, even though it developed close contact with neighboring cultures. The trend culminated in Shota Rustaveli's epic poem "The Knight in the Panther's Skin" ("Vepkhistq'aosani"), which celebrates the ideals of an "Age of Chivalry" and is revered in Georgia as the greatest achievement of native literature.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar outlived her consort, David Soslan, and died of a "devastating disease" not far from her capital Tbilisi, having previously crowned her son, Lasha-Giorgi, coregent. Tamar's historian relates that the queen suddenly fell ill when discussing state affairs with her ministers at the Nacharmagevi castle near the town of Gori. She was transported to Tbilisi and later to the nearby castle of Agarani where Tamar died and was mourned by her subjects. Her remains were transferred to the cathedral of Mtskheta and later to the Gelati monastery, a family burial ground of the Georgian royal dynasty. The traditional scholarly opinion is that Tamar died in 1213, although there are several indications that she might have died earlier, in 1207 or 1210.In later times, a number of legends emerged about Tamar's place of burial. One of them has it that Tamar was buried in a secret niche at the Gelati monastery so as to prevent the grave from being profaned by her enemies. Another version suggests that Tamar's remains were reburied in a remote location, possibly in the Holy Land. The French knight Guillaume de Bois, in a letter dated from the early 13th century, written in Palestine and addressed to the bishop of Besançon, claimed that he had heard that the king of the Georgians was heading towards Jerusalem with a huge army and had already conquered many cities of the Saracens. He was carrying, the report said, the remains of his mother, the "powerful queen Tamar" ("regina potentissima Thamar"), who had been unable to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in her lifetime and had bequeathed her body to be buried near the Holy Sepulchre.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: In the 20th century, the quest for Tamar's grave became a subject of scholarly research, as well as the focus of broader public interest. The Georgian writer Grigol Robakidze wrote in his 1918 essay on Tamar: "Thus far, nobody knows where Tamar's grave is. She belongs to everyone and to no one: her grave is in the heart of the Georgian. And in the Georgians' perception, this is not a grave, but a beautiful vase in which an unfading flower, the great Tamar, flourishes." An orthodox academic view still places Tamar's grave at Gelati, but a series of archaeological studies, beginning with Taqaishvili in 1920, has failed to locate it at the monastery.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Over the centuries, Queen Tamar has emerged as a dominant figure in the Georgian historical pantheon. The construction of her reign as a "Golden age" began in the reign itself and Tamar became the focus of the era. Several medieval Georgian poets, including Shota Rustaveli, claimed Tamar as the inspiration for their works. A legend has it that Rustaveli was even consumed with love for the queen and ended his days in a monastery. A dramatic scene from Rustaveli's poem where the seasoned King Rostevan crowns his daughter Tinatin is an allegory to George III's co-option of Tamar. Rustaveli comments on this: "A lion cub is just as good, be it female or male".


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: The queen became a subject of several contemporary panegyrics, such as Chakhrukhadze's "Tamariani" and Ioane Shavteli's "Abdul-Mesia". She was eulogized in the chronicles, most notably in the two accounts centered on her reign – "The Life of Tamar, Queen of Queens" and "The Histories and Eulogies of the Sovereigns" – which became the primary sources of Tamar's sanctification in Georgian literature. The chroniclers exalt her as a "protector of the widowed" and "the thrice blessed", and place a particular emphasis on Tamar's virtues as a woman: beauty, humility, love of mercy, fidelity, and purity. Although Tamar was canonized by the Georgian church much later, she was even named as a saint in her lifetime in a bilingual Greco-Georgian colophon attached to the manuscript of the Vani Gospels.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: The idealization of Tamar was further accentuated by the events that took place under her immediate successors; within two decades of Tamar's death, the Khwarezmian and Mongol invasions brought Georgian ascendancy to an abrupt end. Later periods of national revival were too ephemeral to match the achievements of Tamar's reign. All of these contributed to the cult of Tamar which blurred the distinction between the idealized queen and the real personality.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: In popular memory, Tamar's image has acquired a legendary and romantic façade. A diverse set of folk songs, poems and tales illustrate her as an ideal ruler, a holy woman onto whom certain attributes of pagan deities and Christian saints were sometimes projected. For example, in an old Ossetian legend, Queen Tamar conceives her son of a sunbeam which shines through the window. Another myth, from the Georgian mountains, equates Tamar with the pagan deity of weather, Pirimze, who controls winter. Similarly, in the highland district of Pshavi, Tamar's image fused with a pagan goddess of healing and female fertility.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: While Tamar occasionally accompanied her army and is described as planning some campaigns, she was never directly involved in the fighting. Yet, the memory of the military victories of her reign contributed to Tamar's other popular image, that of a model warrior-queen. It also echoed in the "Tale of Queen Dinara", a popular 16th-century Russian story about a fictional Georgian queen fighting against the Persians. Tsar of All the Russias Ivan the Terrible before the seizure of Kazan encouraged his army by the examples of Tamar's battles by describing her as "the most wise Queen of Iberia, endowed with the intelligence and courage of a man".


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Much of the modern perception of Queen Tamar was shaped under the influence of 19th-century Romanticism and growing nationalism among Georgian intellectuals of that time. In the Russian and Western literatures of the 19th century, the image of Queen Tamar reflected the European conceptions of the Orient – of which Georgia was perceived as a part – and the position and characteristics of women in it. The Tyrolean writer Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer described Tamar as a "Caucasian Semiramis". Fascinated by the "exotic" Caucasus, the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov wrote the romantic poem "Tamara" (; 1841) in which he utilized the old Georgian legend about a siren-like mountainous princess whom the poet gave the name of Queen Tamar. Although Lermontov's depiction of the Georgian queen as a destructive seductress had no apparent historical background, it has been influential enough to raise the issue of Tamar's sexuality, a question that was given some prominence by the 19th-century European authors. Knut Hamsun's 1903 play "Queen Tamara" was less successful; the theatre critics saw in it "a modern woman dressed in a medieval costume" and read the play as "a commentary on the new woman of the 1890s." Russian conductor Mily Balakirev composed a symphonic poem named "Tamara".


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: In Georgian literature, Tamar was also romanticized, but very differently from the Russian and Western European view. The Georgian romanticists followed a medieval tradition in Tamar's portrayal as a gentle, saintly woman who ruled a country permanently at war. This sentiment was further inspired by the rediscovery of a contemporary, 13th-century wall painting of Tamar in the then-ruined Betania monastery, which was uncovered and restored by Prince Grigory Gagarin in the 1840s. The fresco became a source of numerous engravings circulating in Georgia at that time and inspired the poet Grigol Orbeliani to dedicate a romantic poem to it. Furthermore, the Georgian literati, reacting to Russian rule in Georgia and the suppression of national institutions, contrasted Tamar's era to their contemporary situation, lamenting the irretrievably lost past in their writings. Hence, Tamar became a personification of the heyday of Georgia, a perception that has persisted down to the present time.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar's marriage to the Rus' prince Yuri has become a subject of two resonant prose works in modern Georgia. Shalva Dadiani's play, originally entitled "The Unfortunate Russian" (უბედური რუსი; 1916–1926), was attacked by Soviet critics for distorting the "centuries-long friendship of the Russian and Georgian peoples." Under Communist Party pressure, Dadiani had to revise both the title and plot in accordance with the official ideology of the Soviet state. In 2002, a satirical short-story "The First Russian" (პირველი რუსი) penned by the young Georgian writer Lasha Bughadze and focused on a frustrated wedding night of Tamar and Yuri outraged many conservatives and triggered a nationwide controversy, including heated discussions in the media, the Parliament of Georgia and the Patriarchate of the Georgian Orthodox Church.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: Tamar has been canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church as the Holy Righteous Queen Tamar (წმიდა კეთილმსახური მეფე თამარი, "ts'mida k'etilmsakhuri mepe tamari"; also venerated as "Right-believing Tamara"), with her feast day commemorated on 1 May (of the Julian Calendar , which equates to 14 May on the Gregorian Calendar) and on Sunday of the Holy Myrrhbearing Women. The Antiochian Orthodox observe the feast of St Tamara on 22 April.


title: Tamar of Georgia

text: The chart below shows the abbreviated genealogy of Tamar and her family, tracing it from Tamar's grandfather to her grandchildren.


title: Ferdinand III of Castile

text: Ferdinand III (; 1199/120130 May 1252), called the Saint ("el Santo"), was King of Castile from 1217 and King of León from 1230 as well as King of Galicia from 1231. He was the son of Alfonso IX of León and Berenguela of Castile. Through his second marriage he was also Count of Aumale. Ferdinand III was one of the most successful kings of Castile, securing not only the permanent union of the crowns of Castile and León, but also masterminding the most expansive southward territorial expansion campaign yet in the Guadalquivir Valley, in which Islamic rule was in disarray in the wake of the decline of the Almohad presence in the Iberian Peninsula.