Status of Ownership
Currently, the rights to the Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts are scattered.
RHI Entertainment (successor-in-interest to Hallmark Entertainment) owns the copyrights of and holds the theatrical and home video rights to the Roach-produced Our Gang shorts. RHI acquired these after absorbing Hal Roach Studios, Roach's estate, and Cabin Fever Entertainment in the late 1990s.
CBS Television Distribution, formed by the merger of King World Entertainment with CBS Paramount Domestic Television, owns the rights to the Little Rascals trademark and the Little Rascals television package. CBS offers both original black-and-white and colorized prints for syndication. The King World/CBS Little Rascals package was featured as exclusive programming (in the United States) for the American Movie Classics network from August 2001 to December 2003, with Frankie Muniz as the host. As part of a month-long tribute to Hal Roach Studios, Turner Classic Movies televised a 24-hour marathon of Roach Our Gang shorts - both sound films and silents - on January 4–5, 2011.
The MGM-produced Our Gang shorts, General Spanky, and the rights to the Our Gang name became the property of Turner Entertainment in 1986 when its founder Ted Turner bought the classic MGM library. Today, the MGM Our Gang shorts are distributed for Turner by Warner Bros. Television Distribution. Turner made a deal with King World in the early 1990s to jointly market the Little Rascals and Our Gang films and properties, instead of competing with one another. The MGM Our Gangs today periodically on the Turner Classic Movies cable network.
The widely circulated rumor that entertainer Bill Cosby bought up the rights to Our Gang to keep the racial stereotypes off of television is false. Cosby has never owned any rights to the series at any time.
Read more about this topic: Our Gang
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