Tribune Entertainment

Did You Know?

• On March 1, 1991, Tribune's Geraldo show became the first US program broadcast in the USSR under the Glasnost policy.
• In 2003, Tribune purchased syndication rights to 34 DreamWorks Pictures feature films for use on Tribune stations starting in August 2006.
• Tribune Studios' first original drama for WGN America was Manhattan, which aired from 2014 to 2015 for 2 seasons.

History

Tribune Entertainment began in 1964 as Mid-America Video Tape Productions, a unit of Chicago's WGN-TV created to send the show National Barn Dance to various TV markets. Two years later, it was renamed WGN Continental Productions, serving as a videotape arm of the WGN Continental Broadcasting Company. In 1975, Dale M. Juhlin departed the company to launch his own Chicago-based production firm. The 1980s saw Tribune's first syndication successes: the agricultural news program U.S. Farm Report, which started in 1975, and Independent Network News, a news show for independent stations produced by WPIX in New York that premiered in 1980. In 1982, Tribune acquired the film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel for the program At the Movies, though it lost them to Buena Vista Television four years later. That same year, WGN Continental Productions became Tribune Productions, with Sheldon Cooper, formerly of WGN-TV, taking over as president. By 1983, it was renamed Tribune Entertainment Company and secured deals to produce two-hour movies for syndication, branching into British shows, mini-series, and a co-production arrangement for TV movies. In 1984, it bought the syndication rights to the film The Smurfs and the Magic Flute. The following year, it began distributing the musical series Soul Train, nine years after that show had moved to WGN-TV, and also acquired the British police drama Dempsey and Makepeace for U.S. broadcast. In 1987, Tribune partnered with rival Coca-Cola Telecommunications on two projects that never came to fruition, including the telefilm Gunfighter.