Network Ten

An Australian Broadcast television network formed in 1965.

History:
The network, formed in 1965, was initially dubbed the Independent Television Network or ITN but in 1972 adopted the name the 0-10 Network which reflected the channel 0 and 10 frequencies that it broadcast at the time. In the early 1990s TEN also referred to itself by the acronym "The Entertainment Network" in network promotions.

In 1980, the 0-10 Network became known as Network Ten to reflect ATV-0's transition to ATV-10 - although the Brisbane station continued to broadcast as TVQ-0 until 1988.

In 1987, Adelaide's SAS-10 gave ADS-7 the hands of the Ten Network (as ADS-10).

It was nearly folded into the Seven Network in the early 1990s, but due to the lobbying power of billionaire Kerry Packer, owner of the Nine Network, this was successfully resisted.

In 2005, it was revealed CanWest was in discussions with newspaper publisher John Fairfax Holdings about a possible sale of the network, after the federal government had indicated it may consider relaxing Australia's media cross-ownership laws. Currently, newspaper owners cannot own television stations in the same city. Fairfax owned the Seven Network until the mid 1980s, and has been looking for a way back into television for a long time.

The Ten Network is Australia's most profitable station, mostly due to tight spending habits. Its main focus is on viewers under 40 and for the last four ratings years has won this demographic, in spite of being the lowest rating of the 3 commercial Australian television stations overall.

The Ten Network has headquarters in the Sydney suburb of Pyrmont, which is where all national news programming and the network feed are broadcast from.

Network Ten
1965-
Australia
Slogan: Seriously TEN

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John Lennon

A great musician, member of the 1960-1970 band The Beatles, assassinated outside his New York apartment in 1980 by Mark Chapman in front of his spouse Yoko Ono, a truly influential great man with an untimely death will be forever remembered.

RIP John Lennon 1940-1980
The Beatles

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Coronation Street

The UK's longest-running soap opera, premiered in 1960, entertaining quality television from Britain

Coronation Street
1960-
ITV1
UK

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Biggie Smalls

A truly great late rapper, alias name of The Notorious BIG, shot dead while riding in a car similar and very suspicious to the death of Tupac Shakur.

RIP The Notorious BIG 1972-1997
AKA Biggie Smalls, Christopher Walllace

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Darth Vader

Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, was the scourge of the Jedi, a master of the dark side of the Force, and one of the Emperor's most trusted servants. He wasn't always a fearsome enforcer, however.
He began life as Anakin Skywalker, a young slave from Tatooine skilled in piloting and strong in the Force. Anakin's very origins are mysterious. His mother, Shmi, revealed that there was no biological father. Inexplicably, she became pregnant with the Force-prodigy and carried him to term. Some among the Jedi believed this to be part of an ancient prophecy of a Chosen One, willed into life by the midi-chlorians, who would bring balance to an increasingly darkening Force. There was another possibility, though. The child could have been the creation of sinister Sith manipulations, as the Dark Lords Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious conspired to bring about the perfect apprentice by coaxing life from lifelessness.

Once discovered by maverick Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, Anakin was taken before the Jedi Council to be trained. There was some controversy on the subject -- despite Jinn's adamant assurances that Skywalker was one spoken of in the prophecy, the council was hesitant to allow his training at the age of nine.

Finally, the Council agreed that Anakin should be trained, and he was assigned to Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kenobi recklessly thought that he could be as skillful a master as Yoda. His mistakes had dire consequences for the galaxy.

Skywalker was seduced by the dark side of the Force. His boundless abilities fueled a sense of pride that hastened his fall. He chafed under the rigid strictures of the Jedi Code, and would discreetly transgress from the Jedi teachings to suit his wants. Despite it being forbidden, Skywalker secretly married his love Padmé Amidala. It was his deep-rooted concern for her safety that became his greatest weakness, one that the Sith Lord Darth Sidious was able to exploit.

Skywalker was plagued with prophetic visions of his wife dying in childbirth. His friend and confidant, Chancellor Palpatine, revealed to the troubled young Jedi that a pathway to immortality lay among the teachings of the Sith. Palpatine revealed himself to be the shadowy Sith Lord Darth Sidious, and poisoned Anakin's faculties with well-crafted words of praise and conspiracy. Anakin, who had reason to doubt the Jedi's capabilities and intentions, began to lean more and more to the dark side. When it came time to make the fateful decision, he agreed to follow Sidious' teachings and knelt before the dark master.

Anakin was renamed Darth Vader. The Sith conspiracy, which had been festering in the shadows of the Republic for a thousand years, sprang into action. Palpatine elevated himself to the position of Emperor, and dispatched Vader as his ultimate enforcer. With his unparalled Force abilities, Vader swept through the Jedi Temple. He led his elite clone trooper forces through the polished corridors, cutting a swath of death and destruction through the remaining Jedi on Coruscant.

Vader brought an end to the Clone Wars by slaughtering all the masterminds of the Confederacy of Independent Systems on Mustafar. In his twisted perception, he was bringing peace and order to the new Empire, wiping away the corruption and chaos of the Republic's twilight.

His wife, Padmé Amidala, followed Anakin to Mustafar, to plead for him to return from the dark side. When Obi-Wan Kenobi emerged from Amidala's ship, Vader was consumed with rage. He saw betrayal at every corner. Distraught, he reached out with his hand and began to telekinetically throttle Padmé. She gasped for air before collapsing, unconscious, on the Mustafar landing platform. Shocked at how far his apprentice had fallen, Kenobi vowed to stop Vader and the two entered into a fierce lightsaber duel that traversed the burning Mustafar landscape.

Despite his newfound power bestowed by the dark side of the Force, Anakin was grievously wounded in the fight. Kenobi's blade sheared from him his lower legs and his left arm, and his crippled body tumbled onto the searing black sands of Mustafar. He caught fire, and Vader was severely burned all over his body. His burning anger kept him alive, and he was forever scarred not only by his wounds but also by betrayal. He abandoned his former identity. Sidious took Vader from Mustafar to an Imperial rehabilitation center where he was rebuilt. When metal coupled with flesh in the form of cyborg implants and enhancements required to sustain him, Skywalker's transformation was complete. He was no longer Anakin. He was Darth Vader.

At the time of his transformation, Vader never knew that Padmé had given birth to twins. Obi-Wan Kenobi hid the children from the Dark Lord and his master, Emperor Palpatine. Vader somehow discovered that he had a son, Luke Skywalker, but never suspected he had a daughter, Leia, who was secretly taken to be raised by Bail Organa, Viceroy and First Chairman of Alderaan.

In the chaos that accompanied Palpatine's rise to power, Vader became one of the Emperor's most loyal servants. The Emperor entrusted him with the elimination of the Jedi Knights. During these dark times, Vader and his agents destroyed the remnants of Jedi order.

When the Galactic Civil War raged across the Empire, Darth Vader was tasked with discovering the location of the Rebel Alliance's secret base. Vader captured Rebel operative Princess Leia Organa and had her tortured to reveal the location of the hidden fortress. Vader also sought technical plans stolen by the Rebels. These plans carried the complete schematics of the Empire's most powerful weapon, the Death Star battle station. When a rescue team successfully liberated the princess, Vader found himself face to face with his former master, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Vader defeated the aged Jedi Knight in a lightsaber duel.

Using the stolen plans to pinpoint the Death Star's weakness, Rebel forces launched a starfighter attack on the station. Entering the battle, Vader piloted his own specially modified fighter. He managed to destroy the most Rebel pilots in the battle, but was forced out of the conflict when his own vessel was crippled by the Millennium Falcon.

Three years after the destruction of the Death Star, Vader led an elite squadron of Star Destroyers headed by his flagship, the Super Star Destroyer Executor. He was to seek out and capture the Rebels responsible for the Death Star's demise. Eventually, Vader tracked the Rebels down to the ice-world of Hoth. There, he launched a ground attack destroying the base. His quarry, the Millennium Falcon, escaped.

During the Hoth campaign, the Emperor commanded Vader to track down the "son of Skywalker," and have Vader turn him to the dark side of the Force. Vader planned to use Skywalker's friends as bait to lure him into a trap. He hired a motley gang of bounty hunters to track down the Falcon, and drew Luke to Bespin's Cloud City. He and Luke clashed in a lightsaber duel that Vader won by ruthlessly severing Luke's sword-hand. Vader then revealed to the broken young Jedi that he was his father, and that they would rule the galaxy as father and son. Luke refused to succumb to the dark side, and escaped his father. Vader was left empty-handed.

After these incidents, Palpatine reassigned Vader from the Imperial fleet, and instead put him in charge of overseeing the new Death Star operation. The Emperor began to distrust his once loyal servant. Vader's contact with his son sparked something within him, something the Emperor did not like.

Palpatine was scheduled to arrive at the second Death Star. The Emperor foresaw that Skywalker would come before the two, and then they would seduce young Luke to the dark side, just as Anakin had been drawn to its power decades earlier.

When Luke surrendered, and was taken before the Emperor, Palpatine pitted father and son in a lightsaber duel. Skywalker refused to fight and give into the temptation of the dark side. Vader, probing his mind, learned of his daughter, Leia Organa. He threatened to turn her to the dark side. At this threat, Luke gave into his hatred and attacked his father. In the ferocious assault that followed, young Skywalker nearly killed Vader.

Horrified by what he had become, Luke abandoned his new found dark side rage, and refused Palpatine's offers of power. "I am a Jedi, like my father before me," Skywalker proudly claimed.

Palpatine unleashed a deadly barrage of dark side energy on the young Jedi. Lightning bolts spawned from pure evil tore into Luke's body with searing pain. Vader stood helplessly, watching his son writhe in agony from torture delivered by his master. Unable to watch anymore, Vader turned against his master. He grabbed a surprised Palpatine from behind, hoisted him above his head, and tossed his evil master down a bottomless reactor shaft. Vader was bombarded by the Emperor's Force lightning, mortally wounding him.

As he lay dying, Vader ceased to be. Anakin Skywalker returned. He asked his son to remove the cumbersome, fearsome mask that had concealed his face for decades. His mask and life support removed, Anakin looked upon Luke for the first and last time. He then died, his body disappearing into the light side of the Force. Luke burned the dark armor that had encased Anakin's crippled body in a quiet funeral pyre on the forest moon of Endor that night.

Darth Vader see also Anakin Skywalker

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Darth Sidious

Behind a curtain of secrecy lurked Darth Sidious, a mysterious Sith Lord and puppet-master of the tumultuous events that brought an end to the Republic. The Sith order had been extinct for a millennium, yet somehow, two survived -- the Master Darth Plagueis and his apprentice, Darth Sidious. Plagueis, the wise, was an adept of some of the most arcane and unnatural applications of the Force. As Sidious described, Plagueis had uncovered a path to immortality through the manipulation of the dark side of the Force. Plagueis could, it was said, coax the midi-chlorians present in all living cells to create life from nothingness.
But for a Sith, immortality was a futile pursuit. The secretive Sith order counted upon the death of a master and the rise of an apprentice to further itself. True to tradition, Sidious killed Plagueis upon learning his Master's secrets. It was then that Sidious took an apprentice, who would eventually become Darth Maul. Maul would be Sidious' blunt instrument, his deadly weapon to carry out his plans while he remained in the shadows, conspiring to take over the Republic in its waning years.

Sidious arranged for the cowardly Neimoidians to brazenly blockade and invade the peaceful planet of Naboo in protest over increased taxation from the senate. Sidious never contacted the Neimoidians directly. Instead, he relied on holographic communication. Such long distance transmissions coupled with obscuring dark robes kept his identity and location a secret to all of his accomplices. The Neimoidians never suspected Sidious's public persona -- a highly placed Republic official who would benefit handsomely from the Naboo invasion.

Sidious ordered the Neimoidians to kill the Jedi ambassadors sent to negotiate a settlement. When they failed, Sidious dispatched Darth Maul. Throughout the invasion, Sidious was manipulating both ends, egging on the normally non-confrontational Neimoidians into combat, and somehow stalling procedures in the Senate to keep the Republic from interfering.

Eventually, though, Naboo's young monarch Queen Amidala returned and led a resistance movement that defeated the mechanized Trade Federation army. Darth Maul was killed by Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Though on the surface it would appear the Sith agenda was defeated, the invasion had long-lasting implications for the Republic. In the resulting political upheaval, Supreme Chancellor Valorum was voted out of office, to be replaced by the ambitious Senator Palpatine. And despite the death of his prized apprentice, none of the Jedi knew for sure of Sidious' existence, or of his true identity.

Having lost his apprentice, Sidious' next gambit centered not on the raising of a new apprentice, but the converting a suitable Jedi candidate. His selection was the legendary yet disillusioned Jedi Master Count Dooku. Sidious lured Dooku to the dark side, granting him the Sith title of Darth Tyranus. Unlike Maul, Tyranus possessed more guile and craft in meeting Sidious' aims.

Darth Tyranus led a Separatist movement that split the Republic and created a tense era of political upheaval. He also saw to the creation of a secret clone army that would figure in Sidious' plan to destroy the Republic. When the time was right, Count Dooku emerged as the leader of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, a militarized force of dissidents challenging the Republic for autonomy. The Republic responded with their newly discovered army, and the Clone Wars erupted.

During the Clone Wars, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine seized further political power in the name of galactic security. Sidious was pleased -- for in truth, he was Palpatine, a secret he had kept from the galaxy for decades.

His identity was exposed during his quest for the ultimate Sith apprentice. Having closely monitored Anakin Skywalker for years, Sidious felt he was the ideal Sith to make true his vision of new society built upon Sith principals. As Palpatine, he befriended Skywalker, becoming a close friend and a fatherly authority to a youthful warrior often confused by the seemingly boundless power and abilities he had at his disposal. Sidious's silken words of advice would steer Anakin away from the guiding tenets of the Jedi Code. Skywalker grew to trust Palpatine, believing that the friendly politician had his best interests at heart.

Sidious carefully engineered Anakin's fall. To test Skywalker's mettle, Sidious' ruse involved the "kidnapping" of Chancellor Palpatine by his Confederacy underlings. During the mission to rescue the Chancellor, Anakin confronted Darth Tyranus. The two dueled, and at Palpatine's goading, Anakin killed the Sith Lord. Anakin had the power and was ready to use it, Sidious grinned. Anakin would be his.

While the leading Jedi Masters concentrated on tracking down the military commander of the Confederacy, Sidious further ensnared Anakin. Skywalker was torn by prophetic visions of his wife dying in childbirth. Knowing of these premonitions, Palpatine revealed to Anakin he was the gateway to arcane Sith knowledge, including the ability to prevent others from dying.

The Jedi eventually discovered Palpatine's Sith leanings and confronted the Chancellor. Sidious lashed out with blinding speed, brandishing a previously hidden lightsaber blade in a sudden strike that killed all of the Jedi Masters Mace Windu had assembled to arrest the Chancellor. With Anakin Skywalker's help, Sidious was able to defeat Mace, though he was severely scarred by the reflected power of his dark side lightning. To conceal his disfigured visage, Sidious returned to his simple Sith robes.

With Anakin committed to the dark side, Sidious took him as his apprentice. He renamed him Darth Vader and dispatched him to destroy the Jedi Temple. Then, using his authority as Chancellor Palpatine, he contacted the clone commanders scattered throughout the galaxy to enact Order 66 -- a secret, executive decree that identified every Jedi as a traitor to the Republic. The loyal clone troopers executed their treasonous Jedi generals in cold blood.

Sidious then concocted a tale of his disfigurement at the hands of rebellious Jedi, and went before the Senate. By the end of his rousing speech, supported by the thunderous applause of fervent patriots, the Republic was no more. Sidious had declared his new order as the first Galactic Empire. He was now known as Emperor Palpatine, supreme ruler of the galaxy.

Darth Sidious aka Palpatine

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Neighbours

Neighbours is a long-running Australian soap opera, running daily episodes of 22 minutes (excluding commercials). It originally aired on the Seven Network in Australia in 1985; however, they cancelled the series later that year. The series was immediately picked up by rival Network Ten. It began screening on that channel in early 1986 and has remained popular with its core teenage audience ever since. The show was created by Reg Watson and is produced by the Reg Grundy Organisation.

The series follows the daily lives of several families who live in the fictional Ramsay Street, Erinsborough – although in fact it is restricted to the small cul-de-sac of six houses at the end of the street – and includes the usual soap staples of births, deaths, and marriages. The show features a regular turnover of attractive young actors mixed in with the more stable cast of older people. Though it is not commonly mentioned so as to not alienate viewers in other Australian cities, Erinsborough (nearly an anagram of 'Our Neighbours') is undoubtedly supposed to be a suburb of Melbourne. The show is filmed in Melbourne, and for street scenes uses Pin Oak Court in Vermont South, a suburb in eastern Melbourne. Erinsborough is often contrasted with the neighbouring, and equally fictitious, suburb of Eden Hills. Other locations often mentioned (and sometimes seen) in the show include West Waratah, Waratah Heights and Anson's Corner.

Many successful Australian actors and singers had some of their earliest work on Neighbours, including Kylie Minogue, Jesse Spencer, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe (brief guest appearance), Natalie Imbruglia, Jason Donovan, Holly Valance, Mark Little, Radha Mitchell, Delta Goodrem and Natalie Bassingthwaighte. Actor Alan Dale who had previously starred in The Young Doctors, played the central character of Jim Robinson for the show's first seven years and is now a recognisable star in US series such as 24 and The O.C.. One of the most enduring characters currently on the show is Harold Bishop, played by actor Ian Smith who has also written many of the scripts for the show.

Neighbours celebrated its 20th Anniversary in 2005 with a special episode which featured appearances from several former members of the cast.

Neighbours internationally
The show is also popular in the United Kingdom where it quickly gained a cult following after it began to be broadcast there in 1986. BBC One began by screening it at lunchtime, but it was soon given an early evening repeat slot by controller Michael Grade on the advice of his daughter. In the late 1980s it regularly had a UK audience in the tens of millions and was sometimes watched by more people than the population of Australia at that time. The episodes in the UK are now generally shown between one and three months after they are seen in Australia, as the BBC often removes the show from its schedule during major sports tournaments such as Wimbledon and bank holidays in order to take into account the fact that the show usually takes a four week break over the Christmas/New Year in Australia for the Southern Hemisphere summer. Accounting for the duplication of viewers across its two UK showings a day, the show rates on average over five million viewers a day, making it arguably the highest rated commonwealth import on British television.

It also airs every evening on Irish TV station RTÉ Two at 5.30. These episodes are also about three months behind the Australian network.

The show has also been sold to networks in many other countries. Episodes from 1999 were aired for a six-week trial basis on the American channel Oxygen in March of 2004. At first, it was shown in the afternoon opposite higher-rated American soaps such as The Young and the Restless and All My Children, which gave the show anemic ratings from the first airing; the people who would be most interested in the show were watching other, more established serials. After a couple of weeks, the show moved to a late-night time slot and eventually left the air entirely. It was the sixth Australian soap opera to be aired in the United States (The Sullivans, Prisoner, Home and Away, Paradise Beach and Pacific Drive are the other five).

It has been long aired by Television New Zealand and screens twice daily at 5:05am and 5:00pm.

Neighbours
1985-
The Seven Network (1985)
Network Ten, Australia (1986-)
BBC One, UK
TVNZ, New Zealand
My Credits: en.wikipedia.org

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