Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones (/nɑːˈsɪər/; born September 14, 1973), known professionally as Nas (/nɑːz/), is an American rapper and entrepreneur. Rooted in East Coast hip hop, he is regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time.[2][3][4] The son of jazz musician Olu Dara, Nas began his musical career in 1989 under the moniker "Nasty Nas", and recorded demos under the wing of fellow East Coast rapper Large Professor. Nas made his recording debut on Professor's group, Main Source's 1991 song "Live at the Barbeque".

Nas's debut album, Illmatic (1994) is considered to be one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time;[5][6] in 2021, the album was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.[7] His second album, It Was Written (1996) debuted atop the Billboard 200 and sold over a quarter-million units in its first week; the album, along with its single "If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)" (featuring Lauryn Hill), propelled Nas into mainstream success.[8] Both released in 1999, Nas's third and fourth albums I Am and Nastradamus were criticized as inconsistent and too commercially oriented, with critics and audiences fearing a decline in the quality of his output.

From 2001 to 2005, Nas was involved in a highly publicized feud with Jay-Z, popularized by the diss track "Ether". The feud, along with Nas's subsequent releases Stillmatic (2001), God's Son (2002), and the double album Street's Disciple (2004) helped him restore his critical standing. Nas then reconciled with Jay-Z prior to signing with his then-spearheaded label, Def Jam Recordings in 2006; he adopted a more provocative, politicized direction with the albums Hip Hop Is Dead (2006) and his untitled ninth studio album (2008). In 2010, Nas released Distant Relatives, a collaborative album with Damian Marley that donated its royalties to active African charities. His tenth studio album, Life Is Good (2012) was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards. After thirteen nominations, his thirteenth studio album, King's Disease (2020) won his first Grammy for Best Rap Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards. His five subsequent albums—King's Disease II, Magic (2021), King's Disease III (2022), Magic 2, and Magic 3 (2023)—each received positive reception and were produced entirely by producer Hit-Boy.

Nas has been second ranked by The Source on their "Top 50 Lyricists of All Time" list in 2012, fourth on MTV's Annual Hottest MCs in the Game list in 2013, and was named the "Greatest MC of All Time" by About.com in 2014. The following year, Nas was featured on the "10 Best Rappers of All Time" list by Billboard. Outside of recording, he serves as associate publisher of Mass Appeal magazine, and co-founded its spin-off division Mass Appeal Records, a record label which has signed artists including Dave East, N.O.R.E., Run the Jewels, and Swizz Beatz, among others.[9] Nas has released seventeen studio albums since 1994, ten of which are certified gold, platinum or multi-platinum in the U.S.

WFTY-DT (channel 67) is a television station licensed to Smithtown, New York, United States, serving Long Island and owned by TelevisaUnivision. Its main channel broadcasts the True Crime Network; it also rebroadcasts the main channels of its New York City–area Univision and UniMás stations, WXTV-DT (channel 41) and WFUT-DT (channel 68), from its transmitter in Middle Island, New York.

Channel 67 was originally assigned to Patchogue, New York, where television producer Theodore Granik obtained the construction permit for a new TV station in September 1968. Granik envisioned a group of ultra high frequency (UHF) stations carrying public affairs programming, but he died in 1970 with channel 67 unbuilt. The permit was acquired by the Suburban Broadcasting Corporation, which believed it could fill a void in providing news, sports, and entertainment programming from and for Long Island. On this basis, WSNL-TV began broadcasting on November 18, 1973. As much as 70 percent of its lineup consisted of live, local programming—a level far ahead of most stations—ranging from local news and sports to children's and cooking shows and a Long Island–set soap opera. The station struggled to build a viewer and advertiser base owing to reception difficulties—lampooned so frequently by Newsday writer Marvin Kitman that he was sued—and economic troubles. It left the air on June 20, 1975, and filed for bankruptcy the next year.

In 1978, Canwest Capital Corporation, a Canadian company whose U.S. subsidiary Universal Subscription Television was in the subscription television (STV) business, paid off all of Suburban's debts in exchange for the rights to broadcast STV programming on channel 67. Canwest then entered into a joint venture with Wometco Enterprises, majority owner of channel 68 and operator of the Wometco Home Theater (WHT) STV service that served the New York City area and northern New Jersey. Beginning in June 1980, WSNL-TV began providing WHT on Long Island. Wometco terminated the joint venture in 1981 and became the sole owner of channel 67. At its peak, WHT served more than 111,000 subscribers and was the fourth-largest STV system in the nation.

The death of Wometco majority owner Mitchell Wolfson in 1983 triggered a leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR). As subscriptions declined due to rising cable penetration, Wometco sold off the WHT business but kept channels 68 and 67, which began broadcasting a music video service known as U68 on June 1, 1985. U68 was a locally programmed competitor to MTV with a more eclectic mix of music. The stations were put on the market in December 1985 because KKR executed a second leveraged buyout, this time of Storer Communications, and chose to retain Storer's cable systems in northern New Jersey and Connecticut over WWHT and WSNL-TV. The two stations were sold to the Home Shopping Network (HSN) as part of its foray into broadcasting; renamed WHSE and WHSI, they broadcast home shopping programming for the next 15 years. While an attempt by company owner Barry Diller to convert the stations to general-entertainment independents was slated as late as 2000, Diller ultimately sold WHSE and WHSI and other USA Broadcasting stations to Univision in 2001. Many of these stations formed the backbone of Telefutura (now UniMás), which launched in January 2002.

WLNY-TV (channel 55), branded as New York 55, is an independent television station licensed to Riverhead, New York, United States, serving the New York City television market. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS flagship WCBS-TV (channel 2). The two stations share studios within the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan; WLNY-TV's transmitter is located in Ridge, New York. The station's over-the-air broadcast covers most of Long Island, but WLNY-TV is available on cable and satellite systems throughout the New York City market.

Channel 55 went on air on April 28, 1985, as WLIG. For its first 26 years of existence, it was owned by Long Island businessman Michael Pascucci; it primarily offered older movies and syndicated shows, though it also featured a 10 p.m. newscast. It spent seven years fighting with Cablevision of Long Island for a channel on the cable system, a battle which sapped the station of potential viewers and was only resolved with the reinstatement of must-carry regulations. Those rules allowed WLNY to gain access to cable systems throughout the New York area, even while its location at some distance from New York City enabled it to carry popular syndicated shows also sold to the New York stations. In 1993, the station reinstated its local news department, which by 2011 was airing one Long Island–focused newscast each night.

CBS agreed to purchase WLNY in 2011 and took control in 2012, dissolving its existing news division for newscasts from the Broadcast Center which vary between WCBS newscast extensions and shows which air nationwide on fellow CBS-owned independents, but have no Long Island-specific focus. In 2021, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the purchase came with a membership to the exclusive Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, built by Pascucci, which CBS Television Stations president Peter Dunn treated as his own; another executive joked in a call that the acquisition of WLNY represented the purchase of a golf membership, not a TV station. This was among several allegations against Dunn that led to his termination from the company. WLNY currently offers morning and 8 p.m. newscasts from WCBS-TV.

WNJU (channel 47) is a television station licensed to Linden, New Jersey, United States, serving as the Telemundo outlet for the New York City area. It is one of two flagship stations of the Spanish-language network (the other being WSCV in Miami–Fort Lauderdale). WNJU is owned and operated by NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group alongside NBC flagship WNBC (channel 4). WNJU's studios (doubling as WNBC's New Jersey news bureau) are located on Fletcher Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Through a channel sharing agreement with WNBC, the two stations transmit using WNJU's spectrum from an antenna atop One World Trade Center.

Conceived to replace WNTA-TV as northern New Jersey's commercial station and to provide specialty ethnic programming in the tri-state area, WNJU began broadcasting on May 16, 1965. It was the first new commercial TV station for the New York City area in 16 years. Within months, 60 percent of its programming was in Spanish. The station was acquired by Screen Gems in 1970; Screen Gems also owned WAPA-TV in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with which channel 47 shared programming. WNJU's program lineup, which catered to the tastes of the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the tri-state area, often outperformed the Spanish International Network and its mostly Mexican shows in the local ratings. The studio sold the station in 1979 to a consortium headlined by Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio, but plans to convert to subscription television operation were scrapped.

In 1984, WNJU became a part of a second Spanish-language television network, NetSpan. After Reliance Capital, which had bought Spanish-language TV stations in Los Angeles and Miami, acquired the station, it became a charter owned-and-operated station of Telemundo upon its launch on January 12, 1987. At the same time, channel 47 began producing local Spanish-language newscasts. NBC bought Telemundo in 2002 and relocated WNJU to its present facility in Fort Lee.

James Todd Smith (born January 14, 1968), known professionally as LL Cool J (short for Ladies Love Cool James),[3] is an American rapper, songwriter, record producer, and actor.[4] He is one of the earliest rappers to achieve commercial success, alongside fellow new school hip hop acts Beastie Boys and Run-DMC.

Signed to Def Jam Recordings in 1984, LL Cool J's breakthrough came with his single "I Need a Beat" and his landmark debut album, Radio (1985). He achieved further commercial and critical success with the albums Bigger and Deffer (1987), Walking with a Panther (1989), Mama Said Knock You Out (1990), Mr. Smith (1995), and Phenomenon (1997). His twelfth album, Exit 13 (2008), was his last in his long-tenured deal with Def Jam.

LL Cool J has appeared in numerous films, including Halloween H20, In Too Deep, Any Given Sunday, Deep Blue Sea, S.W.A.T., Mindhunters, Last Holiday, and Edison. He played NCIS Special Agent Sam Hanna in the CBS crime drama television series NCIS: Los Angeles. LL Cool J was also the host of Lip Sync Battle on Paramount Network.[5][6]

A two-time Grammy Award winner, LL Cool J is known for hip hop songs such as "Going Back to Cali", "I'm Bad", "The Boomin' System", "Rock the Bells", and "Mama Said Knock You Out", as well as R&B hits such as "Doin' It", "I Need Love", "Around the Way Girl" and "Hey Lover". In 2010, VH1 placed him on their "100 Greatest Artists Of All Time" list.[7] In 2017, LL Cool J became the first rapper to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.[8] In 2021, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with an award for Musical Excellence.[9]

PICTURE: By PBA - PBA web site with permission from the PBA, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115262137

Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, racing driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Silver Bear, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.[1]

Born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, Newman showed an interest in theater as a child and at age 10 performed in a stage production of Saint George and the Dragon at the Cleveland Play House. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and economics from Kenyon College in 1949. After touring with several summer stock companies including the Belfry Players, Newman attended the Yale School of Drama for a year before studying at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. His first starring Broadway role was in William Inge's Picnic in 1953.

Newman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Color of Money (1986). His other Oscar-nominated performances were in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982), Nobody's Fool (1994), and Road to Perdition (2002). He also starred in such films as Harper (1966), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), and Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981). He also voiced Doc Hudson in Cars (2006).

Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing. He was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which he donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity.[2] As of 2020, these donations have totaled over US$570 million.[3] Newman continued to found such charitable organizations such as the SeriousFun Children's Network in 1988 and the Safe Water Network in 2006. Newman was married twice and fathered six children. He was the husband of the actress Joanne Woodward until his death.

WMBQ-CD (channel 46) is a class A television station in New York City, affiliated with First Nations Experience. Owned by The WNET Group, it is sister to the city's two PBS member stations, Newark, New Jersey–licensed WNET (channel 13) and Garden City, New York–licensed WLIW (channel 21), as well as WNDT-CD (channel 14).

Under a channel sharing arrangement, WMBQ-CD shares transmitter facilities with WLIW at One World Trade Center. Despite WMBQ-CD legally holding a low-power class A license, it transmits using WLIW's full-power spectrum. This ensures complete reception across the New York City television market.

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