[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Jan 19 2004, 11:22 AM\'][quote name=\'tommycharles\' date=\'Jan 19 2004, 01:02 AM\'] Not to nitpick here, but Sony doesn't outright *own* any incarnation, does it? I thought it had to split the Stewart library with Liberty Media when they bought a chunk of GSN. [/quote]
It depends on what was or was not part of the agreement. Sony's ownership of the libraries (Barris, B-E and Stewart most notably) could easily be a completely different thing than control of GSN itself. In fact, I thought the speculation was that one reason we're seeing the same season of reruns over and over on some shows was that Sony didn't want to bother letting GSN have any more.
I'm SO not in a position to know for sure, but my instinct would be that Sony would have retained the rights to the libraries and merely sold off a half-interest in the operation of GSN.[/quote]
I'm pretty sure that your hunch is correct, Matt--in fact, Sony owned the Barris library for a few years before GSN was conceived. They acquired it as part of the deal that brought Jon Peters and Peter Guber in to run the studio in 1991. Guber and Peters had acquired Barris from Burt Sugarman and Jeff Wald in 1990. In fact, it was the ownership of the Barris properties, along with Merv's properties, that inspired Sony to come up with the idea of GSN.
And as for the other suggestion brought up--I think I can say without fear of contradiction that Bob Stewart is retired permanently from television. Period. And considering that formats are still potentially profitable overseas, if Sande Stewart wanted to take "Pyramid" off of Sony's hands, they would probably ask for more money than he could afford.
What Sony should've done all along was hire Sande Stewart to supervise the new version, but that's water over the bridge now--and since he might've gone for the post-industrial set and techno music, as well, even if he kept everything else like the original, some of you would've still complained.
