History
The company was brought on to revive the Screen Gems line, used for obscure and vintage never-before-seen Columbia Pictures Television programming, and assisted in colorization of black-and-white television shows, such as the 1950s programs The Real McCoys and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp , and bought a minority interest in Color Systems Technology. [3]
In 1987, Coca-Cola acquired assets of The Television Program Source outright, which included its programs and personnel, and Bob King would be president of the Coca-Cola Telecommunications division. The company was responsible for the production and distribution of first-run syndicated, basic cable, pay TV, and home shopping programming, as well as home video distribution. [4] Also that year, Coca-Cola Telecommunications and colorizing company CST Entertainment had set up a joint venture, Screen Gems/CST Entertainment, in order to share profits from sales to TV, basic cable and home video, in order to distribute the libraries of vintage films and TV series. [5]
Following the success of the program The New Gidget , Coca-Cola Telecommunications set out to produce pilots for weekly series, such as one based on the Ben Casey character, and partnered with different companies on several projects such as Gunfighter, in partnership with Tribune Entertainment, which was produced by Sonny Grosso and Larry Jacobson of Grosso-Jacobson Productions, which was pitched for the Tribune Broadcasting stations, and one with DIC Entertainment on a 90-minute block of three-animated half-hour programs, which went by two different names, Funday Sunday, if it ran on Sunday, or Funtastic Saturday, if they wanted to go head to head with the Kidvid blocks on Saturday mornings. [6]
In March 1987, a new company partnered with Paramount Domestic Television to set up international advertising sales and hold the barter spots for all programs that were produced by Coca-Cola Telecommunications, which included future projects from Merv Griffin Enterprises and Paramount Domestic Television, and Orbis Communications would be the third part of the venture, in order to sell national ad time for the company, and sell not only Coke and Paramount's barter sales, but also its own. [7]
In late March 1987, Screen Gems/CST Entertainment was renamed Screen Gems Classicolor, with the CST venture available in excess of $100 million, and featured Color Systems' library of 101 feature films and a catalog of TV series, which included The Abbott & Costello Show . Color Systems Technology was paid by Screen Gems to colorize the B&W titles from the joint venture library, and Screen Gems Classicolor's revenue was paid from distribution of the combined Screen Gems and CST libraries in the short-term, and color-converted versions of the titles would go into the pipeline by 1988. There were also plans to acquire additional features and TV shows for distribution and color conversion, and included many series from the Columbia Pictures Television library that were available for colorization, which included library series, as well as feature films that were originally released in the black-and-white format. [8]
In May 1987, Coca-Cola Telecommunications partnered with Grosso-Jacobson Productions in order to develop productions in a non-exclusive pact, namely four made-for-television movies, which included The Gunfighters, Hounds of Hell, Nightfighters and Partington, which were offered to first-run syndication. [9] In June 1987, Coca-Cola Telecommunications and HBO signed an agreement to co-produce and distribute 15 made-for-cable films that would be licensed for a foreign release, and commit as much as $70 million to the venture. The agreement stipulated that HBO was to produce the projects in-house, or by third-party producers under the HBO Pictures banner, and five of them would be produced by Coca-Cola Telecommunications. Production costs would be shared on all films, and under the terms of the deal, HBO would premiere the films and retain the domestic home video rights to the ten films, while CCT received domestic home video rights to the five films, as well as foreign rights of all 15 films in the agreement. [10]
On December 31, 1987, CCT was shut down and was folded into the reorganized Columbia Pictures Television Distribution (now Sony Pictures Television). This change came when Columbia/Embassy Television was merged with Tri-Star Television, resulting in the loss of two key executives who had run CCT, namely Herman Rush and Peter Seale, as well as Columbia/Embassy Television president Barbara Corday. As a result, CCT had merged with the distribution division of Columbia/Embassy Television to create Columbia Pictures Television Distribution. It included most of the original Columbia/Embassy distribution team who had survived the merger, including Barry Thurston, who had headed Columbia/Embassy's syndication business and took over all of the responsibilities for CCT. [11] [12] Shortly after Coca-Cola Telecommunications shut down, two of the company's top executives, namely Herman Rush and Peter Seale, had to launch a brand new company in order to allow them and other executives of the CCT unit to form a new company that would be a successor of CCT, distributing some of the unit's properties that were formerly handled by Coca-Cola Telecommunications. However, such negotiations fell through. [13]
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate Sony.
DIC Entertainment Corporation, branded as the Incredible World of DIC, was an international film and television production company that was mostly associated as an animation studio. As a now former division of The Walt Disney Company, DIC produced live-action feature films and licensed countless anime series.
TriStar Pictures, Inc. is an American film studio and production company that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, part of the multinational conglomerate Sony. It is a corporate sibling of Sony studio Columbia Pictures.
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, acquires, and distributes filmed entertainment through multiple platforms.
Columbia TriStar Television, Inc. was an American television production and distribution company that was active from 1994 to 2002. It was operated as the third name of the early television studio Screen Gems and the fourth name of Pioneer Telefilms, both part of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the third company to use the Columbia and TriStar names together.
Columbia Pictures Television, Inc. was launched on May 6, 1974, by Columbia Pictures as an American television production and distribution studio. It is the second name of the Columbia Pictures television division Screen Gems (SG) and the third name of Pioneer Telefilms. For 26 years, the company was active from 1974 until New Year's Day 2001, when it was folded into Columbia TriStar Television, a merger between Columbia Pictures Television and TriStar Television. A separate entity of CPT continues to exist on paper as an intellectual property holder, and under the moniker CPT Holdings to hold the copyright for the TV show The Young and the Restless, as well as old incarnations from the company's television library such as What's Happening!!
TriStar Television, Inc. is an American television production studio that is a division of Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures Television. TriStar Television was launched in March 1986 by TriStar Pictures, and remained a joint-venture between Columbia Pictures, CBS, and HBO until it was acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment, the parent of both Columbia and TriStar. After a purchase by Sony Pictures Entertainment, both companies Columbia Pictures Television and TriStar Television merged and formed Columbia TriStar Television on February 21, 1994. The television studio was relaunched twice and is currently a specialty label for Sony Pictures Television. The entity was originally a sister company of Columbia Pictures Television which was shut down in 2001.
Tandem Productions, Inc. was a film and television production company that was founded in 1958 by television director Bud Yorkin and television writer/producer Norman Lear.
ELP Communications was an American television production company that originally began in 1974.
The Lexington Broadcast Services Company was a television production and syndication company founded on November 15, 1976, by advertising pioneer Henry Siegel, who, according to Advertising Age, was "the man who built Lexington Broadcast Services into the nation's largest barter syndicator, and thus defined that segment of the TV ad business."
Spelling-Goldberg Productions was an American television production company established on May 1, 1972 by Aaron Spelling and Screen Gems' top TV executive Leonard Goldberg. They produced series during the 1970s like Family, Starsky & Hutch, T. J. Hooker, S.W.A.T., Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island, and Hart to Hart. Spelling's other companies, Aaron Spelling Productions and Thomas-Spelling Productions, co-existed at the same time period and produced other well-known shows. A majority of the series produced by Spelling-Goldberg originally aired on ABC.
Colex Enterprises was a joint venture company between Columbia Pictures Television and LBS Communications, Inc., active from January 30, 1984, to November 24, 1986. The name of the joint venture is a portmanteau of the two companies' names. It came after Columbia and LBS agreed to distribute the TV show Family, which LBS distributed under license from Columbia Pictures Television. Family was then added to Colex's roster when the company formed, and the first new show added to Colex's roster was the show Gidget. It was designed to handle syndication of barter series on an advertised-supported basis, mostly of obscure TV shows that never made it into syndication before. It was also responsible for syndicating What's Happening!!, which led to the revival series as mentioned below.
Screen Gems is an American film production company owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Japanese multinational conglomerate, Sony Group Corporation. It has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation, initially as a cartoon studio, then a television studio, and later on as a film studio. The label currently serves as a film production that specializes in genre films, mainly horror.
Saban Entertainment, Inc. was a worldwide-served independent US-Israeli television production company formed in 1980 by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy, which was originally founded as a music production company under the name, Saban Productions. The first TV show produced by Saban is the live action/animated show Kidd Video.
Tribune Entertainment was a television production and broadcast syndication company owned and operated by Tribune Broadcasting. It was started in 1964 as a subsidiary of WGN-TV in Chicago. Many programs offered from Tribune Entertainment have been broadcast on the company's television stations.
Rysher Entertainment, Inc. was an American film and television production company and distributor. It was founded in 1991. In 1993, Rysher was acquired by Cox Enterprises, and was closed in 1999.
Charles William Fries was an American film and television producer who worked on many TV series, made-for-TV movies, and theatrical films.
Disney Platform Distribution, Inc. is a business unit within Disney Entertainment that manages all third-party media sales efforts for distribution, affiliate marketing and affiliate-related business operations for all of the company's direct-to-consumer services and linear media networks; content sales agreements for Disney Entertainment and ESPN.
Paramount Domestic Television (PDT) was the television distribution arm of American television production company Paramount Television, once the TV arm of Paramount Pictures. It was formed in 1982 originally as Paramount Domestic Television and Video Programming, the successor to Paramount Television Domestic Distribution, Paramount Television Sales, and Desilu Sales.
EUE/Screen Gems Ltd. is an American film and television studio that owns and operates facilities in Miami, Florida. The company collaborates with other studios and producers for the development, production, marketing, and distribution of entertainment for feature film, television, and digital content.
