Who owns the 1987 series and a few other misc. questions
 

I've been in and out of Turtle fandom over the last several years, so someone please bring me up to speed on a few things and tie up some lingering questions.


Who owns the 1987 Fred Wolf Toon? Overall, broadcasting rights, and dvd rights please.


What channel did the show first air on before season 4 which wiki says CBS had all the way through season 10? CBS? NBC?

I'm just really confused by syndicated shows like this because most cartoons aired new episodes on Saturday Mornings on ABC or NBC right? Where the heck else where they?


Anyone who can enlighten me on any of these things would be greatly appreciated :)

The show aired on whatever station in your market paid for the rights. Could have been nbc, cbs, or abc or whatever local affiliates played shows owned by those channels. Even when cbs had their block other channels still had the rights to play the first 3 seasons of the show, most notably USA network.

and Im fairly certain peter laird owned the rights to all the ninja turtle cartoons and when he sold everything to Nick/Viacom it went to them.

Fred Wolf/Lionsgate owns the series, hence the DVDs.

Nope. For years, people would write to Mirage suggesting the cartoon be rereleased on home video or whatever. The response was always "we have no control over that". From what I understand, Fred Wolf never let go of the actual show and even brought legal action against Kevin & Pete claiming that they'd be nothing if it wasn't for him, but Mirage retained the rights to all the characters used in the show.