Paramount Television Network - Paramount's Later Involvement With Television

Paramount's Later Involvement With Television

Despite Paramount's failure to build a national broadcast television network, the company retained KTLA, and executives at Paramount continued to toy with the idea of entering the television medium once more. Paramount sold its library of shorts and cartoons in separate deals to U.M.&M. T.V. Corp., Associated Artists Productions, Motion Pictures for Television and Harvey Comics. In 1958, Paramount sold most of their pre-1950 sound live action feature film library to EMKA, Ltd., a subsidiary of MCA. The live action films would end up with Universal's library after MCA bought Universal Pictures.

After acquiring Desilu Productions in 1967, the company continued to produce series seen on the "big three" television networks. Among these programs were Here's Lucy, Mission: Impossible, and Mannix for CBS; The Brady Bunch, The Odd Couple, and Happy Days for ABC; and (in later years) Family Ties and Cheers for NBC. KTLA was eventually sold to actor and singer Gene Autry for $12 million in 1964.

In 1978, Paramount CEO Barry Diller planned to launch the Paramount Television Service, a new "fourth television network"; its programs would have aired only one night a week. Thirty "Movies of the Week" would have followed Star Trek: Phase II on Saturday nights. This plan was aborted when Paramount made the decision to transform Phase II into Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Despite this failure, Diller would eventually launch a successful fourth television network, when in late 1986, he joined Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to create the Fox network, which would go on to be one of the most successful networks in the country.

In the 1980s, Paramount became increasingly involved with original syndicated programming in the U.S., with such successful series as Entertainment Tonight, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Friday the 13th: The Series, and The Arsenio Hall Show, all of which were among the most popular syndicated series broadcast in that decade; with the continuing success of the Star Trek franchise (notably, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and the purchase of the TVX station group (made up of independent stations), the groundwork for a new network venture was laid.

On January 16, 1995, Paramount launched the United Paramount Network (UPN), a new broadcast television network. In eleven years on the air, UPN never made a profit; The New Yorker reported that the network had lost $800 million during its first five years of operation. UPN ceased operations in 2006, when it merged with the WB Television Network to form the CW Television Network. Today Paramount's television division is part of CBS Television Studios.