[quote name=\'uncamark\' date=\'Jan 21 2005, 03:44 PM\'][quote name=\'zachhoran\' date=\'Jan 20 2005, 09:35 PM\'][quote name=\'PaulD\' date=\'Jan 20 2005, 08:20 PM\'][quote name=\'FeudDude\' date=\'Jan 20 2005, 07:51 PM\']All-American Television bought Mark Goodson Productions in 1995, and then in 1997, Pearson bought All-American.
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I had never heard of them. Were these small companies that mortgaed everything they had in an effort to get into the Kingworld-style big leagues?
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All-American distributed a syndicated series that had an ill-fated original run on NBC with David Hasselhoff about lifeguards. That's their biggest claim to fame. They also syndicated America's Top 10 with Casey Kasem and the Combs syndicated Feud.
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To continue on, Pearson was (and is) a British-based media conglomerate primarily involved with publishing, including Penguin Putnam Books in the U.S. and the Financial Times around the world. They had already acquired Grundy Productions, Thames Television and the small American syndicator ACI, along with some other European production companies, before acquiring All-American, primarily for "Baywatch," most likely, not Goodson-Todman. These entities were all combined into Pearson Television. A couple of years later, the RTL Group of European radio and TV stations (including the legendary Radio Luxembourg), a division of the Bertlesmann media conglomerate of Germany, bought into Pearson Television and in 2000, Pearson decided that they wanted out of the television biz and sold their share to RTL. Reaching for All-American's old overseas subsidiary for a name, they became FremantleMedia and remain so to this day.
[Tom Bergeron] And now you know. [TB]
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Indeed. Thanks.
