One thing held to form – the top teams in the poll did better collectively than the lower-ranked teams. The breakdown:
| Group | Record | Pct. |
| Top 5 | 43-15 | .741 |
| 6-10 | 45-17 | .726 |
| 11-15 | 40-17 | .701 |
| 16-20 | 40-20 | .667 |
| 21-25 | 39-23 | .629 |
| Totals | 207-92 | .692 |
The Driver's Seat A partial Orion mock-up known as the ROC (reconfigurable operational cockpit) allows astronauts to evaluate the craft's control panel by going through simulations of critical stages of a mission. The ROC has already been used to resolve disputes about window design.
Ares I and Ares V. Image Credit: NASA
Discovery Channel and Science Channel president and general manager Jane Root is out at the company, Discovery Communications president and CEO David Zaslav confirmed.
She is being let her out of her contract effective immediately to return to her native United Kingdom, and Discovery veteran John Ford -- who rejoined the company in September after years away at competitor National Geographic Channel -- will assume the head slot at Discovery Channel. The company is recruiting a new chief for Science.
The news came just hours before the Maryland-based cable channels' parent company, Discovery Communications, and most of its senior executives were to hold their annual holiday party for press in New York.
Root weathered a ratings rollercoaster at Discovery Channel since she joined in May 2004 after leaving as controller of the United Kingdom's BBC2, and she helped to bring it out of a trough with big year-to-year gains for the past several months. But she was hired by the previous Discovery regime under former chief Billy Campbell.
Zaslav said bringing in Ford, whose career he said he has followed for years, has been a priority since he joined the company in January 2007.
"No one knows or understands the Discovery business and nonfiction programming better than John Ford," Zaslav told B&C. The two became close when Ford was heading programming at NGC and Zaslav was on its board. "I just felt like he had a ton of horsepower and we had to get him in here from day one," Zaslav added.
Ford spent 14 years at Discovery before leaving to join NGC in 2003. Since returning, he has run The Military Channel and Discovery Times Channel, which the company announced earlier this week would be rebranded as Investigation Discovery.
He left Discovery several months after Campbell was named president of the company -- a role many thought Ford would be tapped for. As executive vice president of programming for NGC, he oversaw originals, acquisitions, production and scheduling through a period of ratings, distribution and ad-sales increases over two few years.
On his watch, NGC grew from an emerging network to a near-fully distributed one, increasing carriage from 45 million homes to more than 63 million, boosting ratings quarter over quarter and tripling ad sales.
Root, meanwhile, had seemed to be a darling at Discovery lately, having overseen a ratings turnaround and driven home a message to the advertising community that the channel had successfully returning to its science and nature-themed programming roots and tapped into a notion in young viewers' minds that knowledge is cool.
Zaslav added Science to her purview in February amid a major shakeup he instituted.
Ford is being tasked with energizing Discovery by continuing to program the mix of science, nature, archeology, adventure and exploration it currently runs, Zaslav said. Discovery has climbed out of a ratings trough over the past two years by programming more shows about science, nature and general knowledge. It averaged 1.2 million viewers in primetime during November, up 20% from last year, according to Nielsen Media Research.
That was after having turned off longtime viewers with over-programmed, off-brand shows like Monster Garage.
Now the network is looking to build upon that by creatively expanding the brand on TV and positioning itself as a top source for knowledge seekers online.
Discovery Communications has invested heavily in Discovery of late, buying online encyclopedia HowStuffWorks for $250 million in October -- its largest purchase to date -- with plans to introduce a daily primetime show based on the site as part of a new programming slate designed to stick to the channel's knowledge-based roots, while tapping new subject matters and formats.
Root had a long career as an independent producer before joining the British Broadcasting Corp., having supplied several programs to commercial broadcaster Channel 4. When the BBC tapped her, she garnered kudos on both sides of the Atlantic for adding such hits as game show The Weakest Link, acclaimed drama The Office and makeover What Not to Wear. All have been adapted and Americanized by U.S. networks, including Discovery's sister channel, TLC.
Meanwhile, Discovery will look for a new president/GM for Science, currently in 52 million homes, with the hope of making it a bigger presence to distributors, advertisers and viewers, Zaslav said.
"We see [Science] as a big horse, and we're going to bring in a big gun to run it," he added.
In truth, the guy with the "Visualize World Peace" bumper sticker is partly right. And so is Toby Keith when he talks about justice raining down with vengeance on the enemies of what's good and true. Both are grasping at something that can only be found in the gospel story of Christ Jesus. War is sometimes necessary, and we as Christians should be willing to support, fight, and die for our country in those times. But every time we see a war-even a just and necessary one-we should be reminded that it means we're still living in a world groaning under the weight of sin.
We shouldn't tie dye our shirts and pretend a United Nations enforced peace can end bloodshed. But neither should we callously cheer the violence of war, as if it were a video game. Yes, we should visualize peace-but only a real peace, when the true Emperor of the universe rules over a world so pacific that we cannot even imagine the violence we once saw on CNN, or on Animal Planet. On that day, and maybe not until that day, there won't be the sound of rattling swords, firing guns, or bombs bursting in air.
Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood - edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem
Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood - edited by Wayne Grudem
Biblical Womanhood in the Home - edited by Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Building Strong Families - edited by Dennis Rainey
Equality in Christ - by Richard Hove
Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth - by Wayne Grudem
The Feminist Gospel - by Mary Kassian
The Feminist Mistake - by Mary Kassian
Women, Creation and the Fall - by Mary Kassian
Fifty Crucial Questions - by John Piper and Wayne Grudem
Man and Woman in Christ - by Stephen B. Clark
Pastoral Leadership for Manhood and Womanhood - edited by Wayne Grudem and Dennis Rainey
