Licensing, Ownership and Television Broadcast
When the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies began in 1930, although Warner Bros. retained the rights to the cartoons, Harman and Ising owned the rights to the Bosko characters. When Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. in 1933, their former producer Leon Schlesinger started his own studio for Warner Bros. continuing the Looney Tunes series. Harman and Ising retained the rights to Bosko and began making Bosko cartoons at Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer in 1935. However these cartoons were not a success and in 1937 MGM fired Harman and Ising and purchased their studio to create MGM cartoons, thus obtaining the rights to Bosko. Meanwhile the Schlesinger studio continued to make popular cartoons until 1944 when Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. and since then, Warner Bros. has owned all rights to all post-1933 characters created by Leon Schlesinger Productions and Warner Bros. Cartoons. The rights to individual cartoons however are in other hands.
In the early 1950s, Warner Bros. sold its black-and-white Looney Tunes (plus the black-and-white Merrie Melodies made after Harman and Ising left) into television syndication through their subsidiary Sunset Productions. These cartoons were distributed by Guild Films until it went bankrupt and shut down in 1961. Warner Bros. then licensed the syndication rights to Seven Arts Associated, who distributed them until their purchase of Warner Bros. in 1967.
In 1956, Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.) acquired for television most of Warner Bros' pre-1950 library, including all Merrie Melodies (except for those sold to Sunset and Lady, Play Your Mandolin!) and color Looney Tunes shorts that were released prior to August 1948. Unlike the sale to Sunset Productions, a.a.p. was allowed to keep the Warner titles intact and simply inserted an "Associated Artists Productions presents" title at the head of each reel (as a result, each Merrie Melodie cartoon had the song "Merrily We Roll Along" playing twice). a.a.p. was later sold to United Artists, who merged the company into its television division—United Artists Television.
In 1981, UA was sold to Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, and five years later, Ted Turner acquired the pre-May 1986 MGM library—which included the rights to MGM's cartoon characters like Tom and Jerry and Bosko. He also acquired the rights to the a.a.p. library. In 1996, Turner's company, Turner Broadcasting System (whose Turner Entertainment division oversaw the film library), was purchased by Time Warner who also owned Warner Bros.. Today, Warner Home Video holds the video rights to the entire Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies animated output by virtue of Time Warner's ownership of Turner Entertainment—this is why their Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD box sets include cartoons from both the pre-8/48 Turner-owned and post-7/48 Warner Bros. owned periods. As of 2012, all Warner Bros' animated output are under the same Time Warner umbrella of ownership.
Starting in 1960, the cartoons were repackaged into several different TV programs that remained popular for several decades before being purchased by Turner Broadcasting Systems. Turner's Cartoon Network reran the cartoons for 12 years, from their start in 1992 until 2004, when the cartoons were removed from the schedule. In November 2009, Cartoon Network brought back reruns of Looney Tunes shorts. After only one month, the network stopped airing the cartoons on January 1, 2010. In March 2011, the cartoons returned once again to Cartoon Network, as a run-up for the new series The Looney Tunes Show.
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