Studios are an integral part of independent television production, providing television programming created either by independent producers or, at times, the studio itself.

Studios have a long history with television. In 1944, three years before the FCC approved commercial broadcasting, RKO Studios announced plans to package theatrical releases and programming for television. Five years later, Paramount explored the profit potential of the new medium. By the early 1950s, Columbia and Universal-International had also started television subsidiaries. However, these early efforts were merely false starts. Low ad revenues and overall industry instability resulting from the 1948 anti-trust action against studio-owned theater chains made it difficult for studios to profit.

Toward the mid-1950s, after the networks successfully wrestled programming control away from commercial sponsors, however, studios provided the link between programming and a new breed of independent producers and syndicators. The most significant of these early studios--which began as an independent production company--was Desilu, founded in 1951 by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. On the strength of its hit sitcom I Love Lucy, Desilu became a production empire that, by the late 1950s, rivaled the size and output of the largest motion picture studios. The company also solidified the position of the telefilm and independent producer's role in the medium. Under the leadership of Arnaz, Desilu hosted numerous successful independent producers, including Danny Thomas and Quinn Martin.

By this time, other studios were getting into the act, with Universal providing studio services for Jack Webb's Mark VII productions, and MCA's Revue Studios filming such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Leave it to Beaver; although the Revue program's were quite diverse, they shared many studio qualities, including the same catalog of incidental and transitional music.

Warner Brothers studios became central to the rise of the action-oriented telefilm with its string of hit Westerns, including Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, and Bronco Lane. These shows were paired with a group of slick, contemporary detective shows such as 77 Sunset Strip and Hawaiian Eye. In many ways Warner Brothers, the studio, was instrumental in discovering the techniques, the narrative strategies, and the modes of production needed for a large film studio to shift into the production of series television.

Another prolific 1960s independent producer/studio was Filmways, which began as a commercial production company. The studio's fortune grew when it joined with independent producer Paul Henning, creator and producer of such hits as The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction.

As the rural sitcom's corn-pone silliness gave way to the 1970s new age of relevance, Filmways was eclipsed by another major studio which also began as an independent--MTM Enterprises. Run on the fame of actress Mary Tyler Moore and the business-sense of her then-husband Grant Tinker, MTM became a major television studio that provided everything from writers and producers to stages and cameras. At the same time, the television divisions of Twentieth-Century Fox and Paramount Pictures were turning out such hits as M*A*S*H and Happy Days.

Today, producer/studios such as Desilu and MTM have faded, with most major television production provided by independents working in contractual relations with major studios such as Twentieth-Century Fox, Paramount, MCA-Universal and Warner Communication. For example, The Simpsons, which is independently produced by James L. Brooks' Gracie Films, is filmed by Twentieth-Century Fox (which, in the case of The Simpsons, farms out much of its animation to overseas production houses). In the sea of production logos flooding the end credits of most modern series, the final credit is usually that of a major film studio.

-Michael B. Kassel