King World Productions, Inc. is a production company and a syndicator of television programming in the United States independently established in 1964 until acquired by CBS in 2000, with its eventual 2007 incorporation into CBS Television Distribution. The company continues to exist on paper as an intellectual property holder and under the moniker of KWP Studios to hold the copyright for TV shows like the Rachael Ray show.
History
Founding with ''The Little Rascals''
The division was started in 1964 by Charles King. It was a company that expressly handled television distribution of the Hal Roach-produced Our Gang short comedy films from the 1930s. When Roach lost the rights to the name Our Gang, the shorts were retitled as The Little Rascals. It was through this acquisition that the comedy shorts made from 1929 through 1938 have been made available to audiences for the past fifty years. King World later co-produced an animated version of the shorts as a TV series with Hanna-Barbera. King died in 1972 and the company was taken over by King's children: Roger M. King, Michael, Robert, Diana, Richard, and Karen.
In 1984, King World formed an ad-sales barter division called Camelot Entertainment Sales. A year later, company chairmen / brothers Roger M. King, a producer; and together with brothers: Michael, and Robert acquired the syndication rights to Merv Griffin's famous game show, Wheel of Fortune when no other studio would step in. The acquisition paid off, and Wheel of Fortune became the most popular show in the history of TV syndication, and has continued to be for over a quarter of a century since. At one point, the program was generating a 21% of the audience national rating. The same year, the KWP company acquired the syndication rights of The Merv Griffin Show from Metromedia Producers Corporation. A year later, King World bought the syndication rights to another Griffin show, Jeopardy!, and the latest version of the series, which has since become the number-two show in syndication. The company co-produced two pilots of the game show; one in September 1983 and the other on January 9, 1984. Robert King, and the president of King World Productions left the company to form The Television Program Source; a television syndication company that was founded on October 15 as a joint venture between King, Alan Bennett, and Columbia Pictures Television. On August 6, 1984, King World Productions acquired Leo A. Gutman, Inc. which included 66 feature films including Joan of Arc, Anna Karenina, 14 Sherlock Holmes movies and 13 East Side Kids movies/shorts films and two late 1960s westerns television shows, Branded and The Guns of Will Sonnett. Shortly after this, King World in partnership with Oprah Winfrey launched Harpo Productions, and The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986, which eventually led to the creation of the spin-off series Dr. Phil, in 2002 as well as the latest Harpo Productions contribution, Rachael Ray. On February 11, 1985, King World formed the King World Enterprises division to develop joint-venture programs with advertisers and station groups and to handle international distribution for King World and Camelot.
1990s: King World Direct and KWP
In the 1990s, King World operated an "As Seen On TV" VHS service called King World Direct. Stuart Hersch, a lawyer by trade, was the financial expert who helped to take the company public, making it one of the hottest stocks on Wall Street at the time. The company traded as "KWP". King World had virtually no debt and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues after going public. Television stations that broadcast King World programming had first choice on any series King World offered to distribute. On November 25, 1991, King World acquired the Hollywood Squares format rights from Orion Pictures Corporation after Orion closed down its television division. In 1996, King World began co-distributing Geraldo with Tribune Entertainment, and would continue co-distributing the show until its cancellation in 1998. On September 28, 1998, King World acquired the worldwide leasing rights to the solo-developed game shows by Merrill Heatter Productions for a limited time.
CBS and Viacom acquisition
On January 19, 2000, King World was acquired by CBS. After CBS' purchase of the company, Eyemark Entertainment, the successor to Group W Productions following the CBS/Westinghouse merger, was folded into King World. CBS Enterprises was bought by Viacom, Inc. around the time of CBS's acquisition of King World, thus becoming owned by the post-split CBS Corporation as well as all of Viacom's former TV production and distribution operations. In its latter days, King World was considered the syndication branch of the CBS network, having succeeded Eyemark in that role. King World, however, distributed newer CBS shows such as Everybody Loves Raymond while the older shows were syndicated by corporate affiliate CBS Paramount Television, the successor to the original distributor Viacom Enterprises. Additionally, from 2000 to 2006, King World distributed archive programs from Group W, such as The Mike Douglas Show. On September 26, 2006, CBS announced that King World and CBS Paramount Television's syndication operations would be combined to form the CBS Television Distribution Group. Roger King was announced as CEO of the new entity. However, he died on December 8, 2007, after suffering a stroke the previous day. Paul Franklin currently serves as President of CTD. For one year, the King World on-screen identity was kept for the programs it distributed at its closure. However, most of the programs handled by King World were distributed under CTD. On September 27, 2007, CBS Television Distribution introduced a new closing logo to replace the old logos of King World, CBS Paramount Domestic Television, and its predecessors.
Programming
King World was responsible for the highest rated shows in syndication for over two decades. They also had the television rights to a large library of theatrical films. When it was acquired by CBS Enterprises in 2000, it distributed a number of CBS-produced series for syndication, such as Everybody Loves Raymond, ,', and '. King World turned part of its attention to producing in-house newsmagazines including American Journal and Inside Edition.
