Warner Bros. Television Distribution
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Television production |
| Founded | March 21, 1955 |
| Founder | William T. Orr |
| Headquarters | Burbank, California, United States |
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Key people
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Peter Roth (President and Chief Content Officer, Warner Bros. Television Group) |
| Products | Television programs |
| Revenue |
 US$5.62 billion (2015) |
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US$344 million (2015) |
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| Owner | Time Warner |
| Parent | Warner Bros. Entertainment |
| Divisions |
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| Website | www.warnertv.com |
Warner Bros. Television (WBTV) is the television production arm of Warner Bros. Entertainment, itself part of Time Warner. Alongside CBS Television Studios, it serves as a television production arm of The CW Television Network (in which Time Warner has a 50% ownership stake), though it also produces shows for other networks, such as Shameless on Showtime, The Leftovers and Westworld on HBO (though Time Warner also owns HBO). As of 2015, it is the world's largest television production company measured by revenue and library (along with Sony's Sony Pictures Television). Its most notable TV shows include Friends, ER, The West Wing, Smallville, Supernatural, The Big Bang Theory, and Full House.
The division was started on March 21, 1955 with its first and most successful head being Jack L. Warner's son-in-law William T. Orr. ABC had major success against its competition with Walt Disney's Disneyland TV series and approached Warner Bros. initially with the idea of purchasing the studio's film library (WB eventually sold the rights to the negatives of pre-1950 films and pre-1948 cartoons and shorts to Associated Artists Productions, or a.a.p., in 1956). WB formally entered television production with the premiere of its self-titled anthology series Warner Bros. Presents on ABC. The one-hour weekly show featured rotating episodes of television series based on the WB films, Casablanca and King's Row, as well as an original series titled Cheyenne with Clint Walker. The first one-hour television western, Cheyenne became a big hit for the network and the studio with the added advantage of featuring promotions for upcoming Warner Bros. cinema releases in the show's last ten minutes. One such segment for Rebel Without a Cause featured Gig Young notably talking about road safety with James Dean.
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Wikipedia