20th Century Fox Television is the television production division of 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, and a production arm of the Fox Broadcasting Company (both are subsidiaries of the Fox Entertainment Group, in turn part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation). 20th Television is a separate distribution arm overseen by News Corporation's Fox Television Stations, although it uses a variant of the film studio logo.
20th Century Fox Television was founded in 1949 as other studios were branching out into television production as well. At that time, the company was known as TCF Television Productions, Inc. until 1955. TCFTV folded the operations of TV production companies they've acquired: Metromedia Producers Corporation in 1986, New World Entertainment in 1997, and MTM Enterprises in 1998, and is the current distributor for most of the shows originally produced by these companies.
Since 1986, 20th Century Fox Television has served as the Fox television network's unofficial production arm (with Fox Television Studios being viewed as the network's official television production division), producing the bulk of television series airing on the television network. 20CFT produced the first two series that aired on Fox's sister network, MyNetworkTV: Desire and Fashion House. During the same year, Metromedia Video Productions was merge 20th Century Fox Television into 20th Century Fox Television Video Productions before reverting back to the 20th Century Fox Television name in 1994.
In 1986, Metromedia Producers was renamed to Twentieth Television Corporation, a separate entity from 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. Both companies were subsidiaries of News Corporation unit Fox Inc.; the move was made to separate the television productions from the movie studio in order to increase the latter's output. Following a 1994 restructuring of Fox's television production companies, 20th Television was refocused on syndication and "non-traditional programs," while network television programming once more came under the 20th Century Fox Television banner and returned to being a division of the movie studio.
Notable shows produced by 20th Century Fox Television include: Glee, How I Met Your Mother, Bones, Family Guy, 24, Modern Family, American Dad!, Futurama and most notably The Simpsons.
Famous quotes containing the words century, fox and/or television:
“To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.”
—Lao-Tzu (6th century B.C.)
“We follow where the Swamp Fox guides,
His friends and merry men are we;
And when the troop of Tarleton rides,
We burrow in the cypress tree.
The turfy hammock is our bed,
Our home is in the red deer’s den,
Our roof, the tree-top overhead,
For we are wild and hunted men.”
—William Gilmore Simms (1806–1872)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)