Paramount Pictures Corporation is a film and television production / distribution company founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom.

In 1993, Sumner Redstone's entertainment conglomerate Viacom made a bid for a merger with Paramount Communications ; this quickly escalated into a bidding war with Barry Diller's QVC.

But Viacom prevailed, ultimately paying $ 10 billion for the Paramount holdings.

In 1995, Viacom and Chris-Craft Industries ' United Television launched United Paramount Network ( UPN ) with Star Trek: Voyager as its flagship series, fulfilling Barry Diller's plan for a Paramount network from 25 years earlier.

In 1999, Viacom bought out United Television's interests, and handed responsibility for the start-up network to the newly acquired CBS unit, which Viacom bought in 1999 – an ironic confluence of events as Paramount had once invested in CBS, and Viacom had once been the syndication arm of CBS as well.

The decision was made to split Viacom into two companies, which in turn led to a dismantling of the Paramount Studio / Paramount TV infrastructure, with the current Paramount, consisting only of the movie studio, retaining only about one-quarter its former size under Dolgen and Lansing.

Paramount's home entertainment unit continues to distribute the Paramount TV library through CBS DVD, as both Viacom and CBS Corporation are controlled by Michael Redstone's National Amusements.

* Paramount also owns ( through the Viacom merger ) US distribution rights to the 1951 film The African Queen, originally distributed by United Artists ( the international rights are with ITV Global Entertainment ).

* The Viacom merger also gave Paramount the TV rights to the pre-1984 New World Pictures library, under license from Roger Corman, the company's founder ;

* Paramount has TV and digital rights to some films in the Nelson Entertainment catalog, also as a result of the Viacom merger, including the Bill & Ted films – all other rights, including Nelson's later films and the copyright to Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, reside with MGM ( several other Nelson films are owned by Paramount for TV and digital distribution through the Spelling merger, as Worldvision at one point had rights to some Nelson films as well );

Independent company Hollywood Classics now represents Paramount in the theatrical distribution of all the films produced by the various motion picture divisions of CBS over the years, as a result of the Viacom / CBS merger.

** USA Networks ( also including what is now called Syfy ) – Paramount owned a stake starting in 1982, 50 % owner ( with Universal Studios ) from 1987 until 1997, when Paramount / Viacom sold their stake to Universal ( now part of NBCUniversal )

The new network launched on January 16, 1995 ; less than a year earlier, Paramount had been bought by Viacom.

Around that time, Paramount was sold to Viacom, making Voyager the first Star Trek TV series to premiere after the sale concluded.

UPN was originally owned by Viacom / Paramount and Chris-Craft Industries, the former of which, through the Paramount Television Group, produced most of the network's series.

Paramount, and its eventual parent Viacom, did not try to forget about the possibility.

NTA changed its name to Republic Pictures ( which was previously the name of a minor film studio, whose backlog had been sold to NTA ) in 1986, sold to Spelling Entertainment, Inc. in 1994, and was sold to Viacom in 1999, hence all the material sold to U. M .& M.

The new network launched on January 16, 1995 ; less than a year earlier, Paramount had been bought by Viacom.

Even after Chris-Craft sold its share of the network to Viacom, WWOR was still commonly regarded as the flagship station since it had long been common practice to accord this status to a network's New York station.

In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, which coincidentally had begun as a spin-off of CBS in 1971.

On October 21, 2009 it was announced that cable channel Nickelodeon ( a subsidiary of Viacom ) had purchased all of Mirage's rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property.

During the filming of his last Perry Mason movie in the spring of 1993, Raymond Burr fell ill. A Viacom spokesperson told the media that the illness might be related to the malignant kidney that Burr had removed that February.

In 1982, Westinghouse, who had acquired TelePrompTer the previous year, sold its share of Showtime back to Viacom.

It had ranked as the # 1 cable channel as of early 2011 but by the end of that year had suffered a double-digit ratings drop described as " inexplicable " by parent company Viacom.

The network had dipped from the previous week, likely because it had lost DirecTV viewers in a carriage issue with Viacom and DirecTV, since restored.

In August, just hours before announcing its most recent quarterly earnings, Viacom announced that it had acquired Atom Entertainment for $ 200 million.

The complaint contended that almost 160, 000 unauthorized clips of Viacom ’ s programming were made available on YouTube and that these clips had collectively been viewed more than 1. 5 billion times.

As a result, WCW programming was canceled on both TBS and TNT, leaving Vince McMahon's company, which at the time had an exclusive deal with Viacom, free to acquire the trademarks, video libraries and a few contracts.

National Amusement had purchased all of Orion investor Viacom International, bringing its share of Orion to 21 percent, and then added another 5 percent for a total of 26 percent.

Rumours had been floating around the Internet prior to the offer about Take-Two possibly being bought over by a bigger company, albeit with Viacom as the potential bidder.

" Complicating matters is the question of who actually owns the magazine and trademark, though strong evidence points to Viacom / MTV, having acquired the trademark for a planned TV series.

Later, in 1982, Time Inc. ( which would go on to merge with Warner Communications to become Time Warner ) and Gulf + Western's Paramount Pictures unit ( now part of Viacom ) would buy stakes in the venture.

In 1997, Westinghouse became CBS Corporation, which would then merge with Viacom ( ironically Paramount's parent since 1994 ) in 2000, making KDKA a sister station with Pittsburgh UPN ( now The CW ) affiliate WNPA-TV ( now WPCW ).

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation ( who split from Viacom at the end of 2005 ) and Warner Bros. ( the TimeWarner division that operated The WB ) announced that they would dissolve UPN and The WB and merge them to create The CW.

CBS and Viacom would merge in 2000, making WXRT an Infinity Radio station whose parent companies were CBS and Viacom.

Reflecting in part the troubles of the broadcasting business, in 2005 Viacom wrote off over $ 28 billion from its radio acquisitions and, early that year, announced that it would split itself in two.

In early 2006, as Viacom went through a corporate split ( creating a new version of Viacom and renaming the original company CBS Corporation ), Paramount Parks was assigned to CBS Corporation.

Among major early backers of iWon was Viacom, parent of CBS, UPN and MTV.

In early 2006, Viacom split itself into two corporations, one called Viacom ( who still owns Paramount Pictures ), and the other called CBS Corporation.

During this period, the Rangers were owned by Gulf + Western, which was renamed to Paramount Communications in 1989, and sold to Viacom in 1994.

The film was originally released on NTSC VHS in 1989 by Video Treasures under license from Viacom ().

New episodes were made for first-run syndication from 1989 until 1990 which were distributed by Viacom.

Before its launch, Tele-Communications, Inc. made a failed attempt to acquire a 50 percent stake in Showtime in 1989. there was some debate as to whether Viacom or TCI originally conceived the idea for Encore, a service similar to Flix, that also focused on films from the 1960s to the 1980s until a format change in 1999 in which recent films were added to the mix.

Most of the urban music videos that have ever aired on an MTV, VH1 or even BET can be seen on MTV Jams, as well as many more obscure urban videos that cannot be seen on any other Viacom network, though usually the channel does not air music preceding the 1989 premiere of Yo!

In 1989, after Morgan Stanley filed for an IPO, he joined Lazard as a general partner and completed various deals for companies such as Viacom and Comcast.

Two years earlier Cablevision, who at the time owned the Nets ' broadcast home, SportsChannel New York ( later known as Fox Sports Net New York, and now known as MSG Plus ), became the sole owner to the television rights of all seven MLB, NBA and NHL teams in the New York market when they acquired the competing MSG Network ( previously owned by Gulf + Western, Paramount Communications, and Viacom ), which had the Yankees broadcast rights since 1989.