King World Productions: Difference between revisions

'''King World Productions, Inc.''' was a television company established in 1964 by Charles '''King''' when they gained the distribution rights to the classic ''Our Gang'' (later re-titled ''The Little Rascals'') shorts. Years later, the company was ran by his children; Roger, Michael, Robert, Diana, Richard, and Karen King after King's death. In 1982, King World joined forces with [[Merv Griffin Enterprises]] to handle all of Griffin's nightly syndicated programming, including when they've launched a syndicated version of ''Wheel of Fortune'' on September 19, 1983, acquired the syndication rights to ''The Merv Griffin Show'' from [[Metromedia Producers Corporation]], and two syndicated pilots of ''Jeopardy!'' until the series officially launched on September 10, 1984. King World later formed an ad-sales barter division "[[Camelot Entertainment Sales]]", which would become "King World Media Sales" (and later "CBS Television Distribution Media Sales") in 1997. In 2000, King World was acquired by CBS and was made part of "[[CBS Enterprises]]" under Viacom, Inc. (now "ViacomCBS"). On September 26, 2006, King World merged with [[CBS Studios|CBS Paramount Domestic Television]], CBS Paramount International Television (later "[[CBS Studios International]]", now "ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group"), and [[CBS Home Entertainment]] to form [[CBS Media Ventures|CBS Television Distribution]]. Today, King World remains as an in-name-only unit of CBS Television Distribution (now "CBS Media Ventures") known as "KWP Studios" on ''Rachael Ray'', a unit of CBS Corporation (now "ViacomCBS"). The name "King World Productions, Inc." is still used as an intellectual property on such of its properties such as ''The Little Rascals'' with a co-ownership by CBS Media Ventures.

*When GSN re-aired ''Wheel of Fortune'' a decade ago, this in-credit text was intact on some episodes. However, this would get plastered by either the 1994 or 1997 CTT logo with Jack Clark announcing "Distributed by" and then would cut to Charlie O'Donnell's voice saying "[[Columbia TriStar Television]]" while the CTT theme is playing. Regardless, the pilot episodes won't be airing on TV anytime soon.

'''Trivia:''' The logo was designed and animated by Pittard Sullivan, who also did the 1995 [[Buena Vista Television]] logo, and the 1998 [[CTV Productions (Canada)|CTV]] logo. The logo was animated in 1999 by SIMEX (in association with Pittard Sullivan) on an SGI computer running Alias|Wavefront PowerAnimator ([http://www.awn.com/news/simex-helps-create-king-world-logo read the press release here]).