The story
Founded by Irwin Molasky, Lee Rich and Merv Adelson on Feb 1, 1969.1
Early years and merger with Telepictures (1969–1986)
In the late 1960s, Lorimar Productions was founded with the aid of a bank loan of $185,000 from Adelson. Prior to Lorimar, Rich had an established reputation first as an advertising executive at Benton & Bowles, then as a television producer, co-producing (with Walter Mirisch) successful series such as The Rat Patrol.
Lorimar initially produced made-for-television movies for the ABC Movie of the Week. Rich bought the script to an adaptation of Earl Hamner Jr.'s novel The Homecoming and subsequently sold the rights to CBS. The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, airing during the 1971 holiday season, was a ratings success, and served as the pilot for Lorimar's first major hit, The Waltons, which premiered in 1972. Throughout the 1970s, Lorimar produced a number of hit shows, including Eight Is Enough; of these, the most popular by far was Dallas.
Lorimar's operations gradually expanded, first with a syndication unit. In late 1978, Lorimar Productions and United Artists (UA) entered into a partnership; UA distributed Lorimar-produced films, while Lorimar sought to adapt UA properties into television series. However, nothing would come of the latter, and UA's distribution deal with Lorimar ended in 1980. In 1980, Lorimar purchased the Allied Artists Pictures Corporation library.
In the 1984–85 season, three of the top 10 shows in the United States were produced by Lorimar; Dallas, Knots Landing, and Falcon Crest. In the mid-1980s, Lorimar's output swung toward family-friendly sitcoms; among these were The Hogan Family (initially titled Valerie), Perfect Strangers, and Full House, which were produced by Miller-Boyett Productions. 1985 saw a concerted effort to expand into the lucrative field of first-run syndication with the acquisition of Syndivision, whose rights include syndication of The Greatest American Hero and It's a Living, with ultimately aborted plans to tape new episodes of the CBS game show Press Your Luck.
In October 1985, Lorimar, as part of their first-run syndication expansion, announced it would merge with television syndication firm Telepictures, becoming Lorimar-Telepictures. That same year Lorimar announced their intention to buy a 15% share in the then-financially troubled Warner Communications. On February 19, 1986, the Lorimar-Telepictures merger was completed and the company started trading on the New York Stock Exchange as "LT". In 1986 they purchased the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio lot in Culver City, as well as the Metrocolor laboratory from Ted Turner. L-T turned around and sold off the Metrocolor facility to Technicolor for $60 million. Around that same year, Rich left the company and moved to MGM.
Purchase by Warner Communications and consolidation with Warner Bros. Television (1987–1993)
In 1987, Lorimar-Telepictures's production arm became Lorimar Television and the L-T distribution business was rebranded as Lorimar Syndication. This was part of a strategy where the Lorimar name would be used as an operating name for all of L-T's business units. Plans were announced for a television series based on TV Guide magazine, but these plans did not come to fruition (TV Guide would come to television in 1999, when the Prevue Channel was rebranded as the TV Guide Channel).
In June 1988, Lorimar was purchased by Warner Communications, which in 1990 merged with Time Inc. to form Time Warner. Lorimar's distribution business was folded into Warner Bros. Television Distribution and became Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution; since then, the Telepictures name has been resurrected as both a production company (circa 1990), and once again as a syndication company (1995).
The former MGM studio lot was sold to Sony to house Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, and Sony's other operations towards the end of 1989 with the facilities renamed as Columbia Studios (now Sony Pictures Studios) at the beginning of 1990. In 1990, David Salzman left Lorimar to start Millennium Productions, an independent production company allied with Warner Bros. In 1991, after Orion Pictures shut down its television unit, Gary Nardino moved to Lorimar, taking some Orion-produced shows and talent deals (Thomas Carter, Robert Townsend, Paul Stojanovich, Clifton Campbell and Deborah Joy LeVine) with them. In 1992, Barbara Corday, former CBS executive, struck a deal with the studio.
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Lorimar continued as a production company until September 1993, when it was eventually consolidated into Warner Bros. Television, primarily for economic reasons. The last series to premiere under the Lorimar name was Time Trax, as part of the Prime Time Entertainment Network programming block. Several shows slated to be Lorimar productions, such as Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Living Single, It Had to Be You, Café Americain, The Trouble with Larry, Against the Grain and Family Album ended up being produced by Warner Bros.
Les Moonves, who would later become the chairman and CEO of CBS Corporation, was the president and CEO of Lorimar Television from 1990 to 1993. Moonves then became the chairman of Warner Bros. Television after the merger with Lorimar.
Additionally, Lorimar owned key components of the film library of the defunct Allied Artists film studio (originally Monogram Pictures), which includes Cabaret and Papillon; these, too, are now owned by Warner. After the merger with Telepictures, they also took possession of the Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment animation house, along with the post-1973 library of that company, including its entry into the 1980s animation market, ThunderCats, which ran until 1989; a Warner Bros. Animation-produced revival show aired on Cartoon Network for one season in 2011.
From Wikipedia’s article on Lorimar Television, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4