 This is the SF Productions podcast network This episode is a paramount importance from the pop culture bunker I'm Mindy and I'm Mark you can check out our audio podcast how I got my way to read comics on iTunes or on our website SFpodcastnetwork.com the second of our movie studio histories covers a company that went through multiple iterations mergers breakdowns and takeovers Paramount pictures we begin in 1912 and famous players film company founded by Adolf Zucor who made his career investing in Nickelodeon's The Periscope like viewer with a hand crank not the cable network His plan was to make films using big names in the legitimate theater Which would appeal to the working class who couldn't afford to go see a play Sarah Bernhardt was one of his first stars Meanwhile producer Jesse L. Laski had started laski feature play company using money He got from his brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish. If you don't recognize the name he later changed it to gold win He said he signed up a stage director with no film experience named Cecil B. DeMille for their first feature Both studios began to distribute through a third company called Paramount Pictures Corporation This was the first attempt to sell films nationally up to that point You went through distributors at the state level Paramount was also making their own pictures Including a series of Jack London films by 1916 Zucor and laski merged then bought out the Paramount owner to create Famous players laski corporation Zucor wanted big stars and he got them signing up Mary Pickford Douglas Fairbanks Gloria Swanson Rudolph Valentino among others He also introduced block booking which forced exhibitors to buy a year's worth of films upfront if they wanted to get those big stars And that will create problems down the line as we'll see Zucor also built a chain of almost 2000 theaters under Publix theater corporation ran studios in California and New York and Invested in early radio at one point he owned 50% of the nascent CBS Not the last time Paramount and CBS would meet these studios named chains to Paramount famous laski corporation in 1926 Then Paramount Publix Corporation a year later another acquisition involved theaters The Balaban and Cats theater chain they would become a major part of the management structure And by the way the actor Bob Balaban is related to both Balaban and cats They develop what were called wonder theaters massive movie palaces in Chicago an attempt to expand this to New York City started a fight with the Lowe's chain Which was owned by MGM and they eventually agreed to stay out of each other's towns It was around this time that two series of films began Inkwell imps the early animation work of Fleischer studios Which would later bring Betty Boop pot by in Superman and the Paramount news a newsreel program that would run into the late 50s They moved into talkies in 1929 with innocence of Paris featuring Maurice Chalvet All this expansion led to Zucor being overextended just as the Great Depression hit the company went into receivership and by 1935 Barney Balaban was president while Zucor had been bumped up to chairman This is also when it officially became known as Paramount Pictures, Incorporated Paramount continued to emphasize stars into the talkies era including May West W.C. Fields, Claudette Colbert, the Marx Brothers, Dorothy Lamar, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper And by the mid 30s the studio was cranking out 60 to 70 films a year because they had all of those theaters to fill up Speaking of those the government decided in the 40s that may be pre-booking films a year in advance Plus having your own huge theater chain was a problem The lack of guaranteed pre-seals forced Paramount to go from 70 to 20 films a year The United States versus Paramount Pictures Supreme Court 1948 decision made it illegal for a studio to own a theater chain Kind of like how Universal owns Comcast today The theater chain was spun off and became United Paramount theaters headed by Leonard Goldinson who is already running that part of the business He had a lot of money from the downtown real estate of movie theaters and couldn't invest legally in films So he turned to the new medium of television buying ABC in 1953 and making them a going concern Speaking of TV Paramount had invested in early experiments in LA and Chicago the former eventually becoming KTLA and the letter WBBM they also bought a stake in Dumont by 1948 they ran their own regional TV network Paramount television Alongside Dumont this became problematic when they wanted to buy more stations The FCC said the existing networks together had hit their limit and so they were allowed no more This led to both concerns losing ground to CBS NBC ABC And was a factor in the end of the Dumont network with the loss of a theater chain Paramount went into a decline as did the other studios dropping the number of studio produced films over distribution of independent efforts They also released their contract players which together effectively ended the studio system Paramount also made a terrible decision Their film library they decided. Ah, we don't really need it little value So they sold all their pre 1948 works to what would become universal television in 1958 and this included the bulk of the Ben Crosby Bob Hope road pictures that had kept Paramount afloat for years by the 60s Paramount was hemorrhaging money and did little to change course Zooker was chairman emeritus despite being in his 90s while chairman Balaban was in his 80s Industrial conglomerate Gulf and Western bought out Paramount in 1966 and new chair Charles Blutom Put unknown producer Robert Evans in charge of production This led to film such as the odd couple Rosemary's baby love story the Godfather Chinatown and three days of the condor So golf and Western then bought Desi Lou studios the next year Of course that was created by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnais who had an impressive set of TV content Star Trek Mission Impossible and the Untouchables all of which would go on to various successes in film and TV Paramount used this existing relationship with TV networks to become a major TV production company Especially in sitcoms and by the mid 70s a group of execs came in with TV experience Barry Diller Michael Eisner Jeffrey Katzenberg all of whom would go on to run other studios They had high concept films like Saturday Night Fever and Greece Diller was pushing the idea of a fourth TV network called Paramount television service in the late 70s It didn't come to fruition at the time But Diller took it later to Fox where they made it work a decade later by the 90s Paramount finally tried it with UPN now merged with the WB into the CW Using a new Star Trek series Voyager as they front as their flagship now They had already hit syndication paydirt with TNG and DS9 back to the movie studio where the 80s and early 90s Went very well for Paramount Airplane, American Jigolo, Ordinary People, An Officer and a Gentleman, Flashdance, Terms of Endearment, Footloose, Pretty in Pink, Top Gun, Procodile Dundee, Fail Attraction, Ghost, and the franchises for Friday the 13th, Eddie Murphy and Star Trek They also divested themselves of all the industrial parts of GNW Renaming it Paramount Communications. They still had a range of companies in music cable TV Publishing and ironically movie theaters, but in Canada There were also TV stations and amusement parks involved at one point 1994 brought a buyout of Paramount by Viacom Ironically started by CBS to syndicate TV shows then later bought up CBS itself The combined companies then split into two companies in 2006 Viacom would own Paramount pictures and cable networks such as Company Central, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon While CBS Corporation owned CBS, Paramount's TV arm and the publishing business This resulted, among other things, to split Star Trek into movies owned by Viacom and television owned by CBS And this is why we now have a Kelvin universe based on the rebooted film franchise Alongside the classic Trek universe on TV where Star Trek Discovery is based. Neither can use each other's concepts There have been talks about Remerging Viacom and CBS together again, but this was held off by Les Moonves who until recently was CBS chair The recent allegations of sexual misconduct by Moonves got him kicked out and it was agreed to hold off merger talks for two years Assume a merger will occur in the early 2020s Oh, and the Paramount logo the original Paramount president W. W. Hodkinson sketched it while in a meeting with Adolf Zucker back in 1914 The 24 stars over the mountain was based on their existing contracts at the time with 24 actors It's kind of interesting. Yeah Well while you're thinking about that you can check out our audio podcast How I got my wife to read comics on iTunes or on our website sfpodcastnetwork.com From the pop culture bunker, I'm Mindy, and I'm Mark. Thanks for watching