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Williams Street
Atlanta-based animation production studio From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Williams Street Productions, LLC,[1] formerly known as Ghost Planet Industries, is an American animation and live action television production studio owned by the Warner Bros. Television Group division of Warner Bros., a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. The studio is the in-house production arm of Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim. Mike Lazzo and Keith Crofford of The Cartoon Network, Inc. oversaw operations for the building for most of its existence.
On December 16, 2019, co-founder Lazzo retired from the company,[2] with business partner and co-founder Crofford retiring the following year.[3] Michael Ouweleen was named president of Adult Swim on April 29, 2020 as well as The Cartoon Network, Inc. from November 27, 2019 to July 1, 2020 and since May 13, 2022.[4][5]
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History
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In 1976, Ted Turner bought the building and used it for his own television station, WTCG. This new channel was the result of a recent UHF takeover. In December 1976, the first WTCG signal was beamed via satellite to its four cable systems located around Georgia. This broadcast was the first use of non-pay-service satellite transmission, an innovation that would come to revolutionize basic cable nationwide.
Starting out as a minor local channel, the station grew into success and was re-launched as WTBS in 1979, Turner having bought the call sign from MIT's low-power student-run Technology Broadcasting System FM station. Then, after a five-year period, WTBS was renamed TBS Superstation. During this time, Turner also created CNN, a 24-hour news network. Both became the standard for cable providers by the late 80s. Due to this success, the studio building became too small to operate as a headquarters. A new campus was built across the street for the expanding Turner empire. Upon completion, Turner launched Cartoon Network to showcase their recent acquisitions of the vast MGM and Hanna-Barbera library of cartoons.
When Turner moved out of the Williams Street building, they kept ownership, using it as a storage facility. Although no longer its main purpose, to this day, Williams Street houses all the show tapes for Turner Networks. Appointed to run the building were veteran Turner employees such as Keith Crofford, Andy Merrill, and former mail-room employee Mike Lazzo. Although Cartoon Network was run at Hanna-Barbera Studios at the time, certain duties were eventually controlled by the trio at Williams Street. One of their most important early tasks was producing host segments for The Moxy Pirate Show (later The Moxy Show).
From 1990 to 1993, TBS had started its own original programming such as Captain Planet and 2 Stupid Dogs. This interested the team at Williams Street, and they all wished to create their own series. Towards the end of 1993, the three mustered up courage to approach Ted Turner with their ideas for Cartoon Network original programming. Turner turned them away, instead emphasizing they needed to prioritize using the corporate archive of animation he recently acquired, such as the Hanna-Barbera library.[6] As Lazzo recounts, “Ted has said, ‘I bought you a library, now utilize it.'"[7] It was from this library that the Cartoon Network programmers created the channel's first fully original series, Space Ghost Coast to Coast.[8]
They decided to produce their own series pilot. On a shoestring budget, they tried to come up with compatible ideas. During brainstorming, they realized they could simply re-use footage of any animation in the Turner library. They eventually settled on Space Ghost and Dino Boy. Because they felt it would fit, they paired it with Mike Lazzo's idea of a satirical talk show with a clueless host asking guests a stream of stupid questions. The final pilot featured rotoscoped animation superimposed on a simple background and used CNN interview footage for the live-action interview.
They went back to Turner and presented the pilot, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast was then greenlit for a ten-episode season. Work began, and the minor CN production/storage facility became its own studio, named after Coast to Coast's own in-show one: Ghost Planet Industries. Soon the series was acquiring its first C and D-list celebrity guests, small animation and writing crew, and voice actors. The voice actor for Space Ghost was local voice actor George Lowe; all other roles were done by the GPI crew. The series eventually premiered on April 14, 1994. This marked Cartoon Network's first original series and the first animated talk show in history.
Due to its more mature surreal humor, the series attracted a devoted cult audience. Its success led to a special that was simulcast on TBS, a special short for VHS release of blockbuster The Mask, and guests who were more well-known. In the height of popularity, it was awarded its own spin-off. Turner commissioned GPI to produce some sort of lighter version for TBS, due to a need for children's programming. Cartoon Planet premiered on TBS in 1995 and later moved to Cartoon Network in 1996. The series featured Space Ghost hosting segments and cartoons for young viewers. After two seasons, TBS decided to cancel all kids' programming, following the trend of TNT and USA.
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Name and logo
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The current name of the company originates from the location of its headquarters building (which is also the home office for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim) at 1065 Williams Street NW in Atlanta, Georgia near the current offices of TBS and TNT on Techwood Drive.[9] The facility began as a carpet factory and was purchased by Turner as overflow offices for, among other things, set building and woodworking facilities, as well as CNN Field Engineering. Soon after CNN moved into the CNN Center in downtown Atlanta in the early 1980s, other Turner operations moved into the Techwood campus, an old country club which became the first headquarters for CNN.[9] The street is named for early Atlanta settler Ammi Williams.
The company's original name, Ghost Planet Industries, came from Space Ghost's fictional planet, where the animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast was purportedly filmed.[10]
The studio's production logo features a wavy, blurred gray image of Space Ghost's fictional studio, with the words "Williams Street" beneath it. The soundtrack of Jack Webb's Mark VII Limited's production logo (a rumbling drum roll and two clinks of a hammer) is often used while the GPI/Williams Street production card is shown.[11]
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Filmography
TV animated series
TV live-action series
Internet series
Failed pilots
Specials
Stand-alones
TV series-related
Blocks
Feature films
Direct-to-video films
Future series in development
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Other
Games
This list is only for video games licensed by Williams Street Games; see Adult Swim Games for other video games produced after the label's dissolution.
Music
Williams Street formed their own music label, Williams Street Records. The label was created after Jason DeMarco, Adult Swim's vice president of strategic marketing and promotions, worked on Danger Doom, a project with Danger Mouse and MF Doom in 2005. Danger Mouse had previously worked on the music for Toonami and wanted to do an album that sampled that work. The group suggested the idea to Mike Lazzo; the project was successful. Williams Street Records now releases a majority of the music related to their shows. The label is managed by DeMarco.[41]
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Homages
1065, the street number for Williams Street, is also the hull number for FishCenter Live's USS FishCenterprise (a parody of the original Star Trek's USS Enterprise).[42]
See also
References
External links
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