Editing Paramount Pictures (section)

===1951–66: Split and after===
With the separation of production and exhibition forced by the U.S. Supreme Court, Paramount Pictures Inc. was split in two.<ref name="Nelmes">{{cite book |last=Nelmes |first=Jill |title=An Introduction to Film Studies |publisher=Routledge |year=2003 |edition=3 |page=16 |isbn=0-415-26268-2}}</ref> Paramount Pictures Corporation was formed to be the production distribution company, with the 1,500-screen theater chain handed to the new [[United Paramount Theaters]] on December 31, 1949. [[Leonard Goldenson]], who had headed the chain since 1938, remained as the new company's president. The Balaban and Katz theatre division was spun off with UPT; its trademark eventually became the property of the Balaban and Katz Historical Foundation. The foundation later acquired ownership of the Famous Players trademark. Cash-rich and controlling prime downtown real estate, Goldenson began looking for investments. Barred from film-making by prior antitrust rulings, he acquired the struggling [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] television network in February 1953, leading it first to financial health, and eventually, in the mid-1970s, to first place in the national Nielsen ratings, before selling out to [[Capital Cities Communications|Capital Cities]] in 1985 (Capital Cities would eventually sell out, in turn, to [[The Walt Disney Company]] in 1996). United Paramount Theaters was renamed ABC Theaters in 1965 and was sold to businessman Henry Plitt in 1977. The movie theater chain was renamed Plitt Theaters. In 1985, [[Cineplex Odeon Corporation]] merged with Plitt. In later years, Paramount's television division would develop a strong relationship with ABC, providing many hit series to the network.

Paramount Pictures had been an early backer of television, launching experimental stations in 1939 in Los Angeles and Chicago. The Los Angeles station eventually became [[KTLA]], the first commercial station on the West Coast. The Chicago station got a commercial license as WBKB in 1943, but was sold to UPT along with Balaban & Katz in 1948 and was eventually resold to CBS as [[WBBM-TV]].

In 1938, Paramount bought a stake in television manufacturer [[DuMont Laboratories]]. Through this stake, it became a minority owner of the [[DuMont Television Network]].<ref name="Hess1">{{cite book |last=Hess |first=Gary Newton |title=An Historical Study of the DuMont Television Network |publisher=Arno Press |location=New York City |year=1979 |page=91 |isbn=0-405-11758-2}}</ref> Paramount also launched its own network, [[Paramount Television Network]], in 1948 through its television unit, Television Productions, Inc.<ref name="Schatz">{{cite book |last=Schatz |first=Thomas |title=Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s |publisher=University of California Press |year=1999 |page=433 |isbn=0-520-22130-3}}</ref>

Paramount management planned to acquire additional [[owned-and-operated station]]s ("O&Os"); the company applied to the FCC for additional stations in San Francisco, Detroit, and Boston.<ref name="Browne">{{cite book|last=Browne|first=Nick|title=American Television: New Directions in History and Theory|publisher=Routledge|year=1994|page=32|isbn=3-7186-0563-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yuU72DJI97UC&q=%22Paramount%20Pictures%22%2B%22FCC%22%2B%22San%20Francisco%22&pg=PA32|access-date=April 9, 2010|archive-date=January 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125224023/https://books.google.com/books?id=yuU72DJI97UC&q=%22Paramount%20Pictures%22%2B%22FCC%22%2B%22San%20Francisco%22&pg=PA32|url-status=live}}</ref> The FCC, however, denied Paramount's applications. A few years earlier, the federal regulator had placed a five-station cap on all television networks: no network was allowed to own more than five [[VHF]] television stations. Paramount was hampered by its minority stake in the DuMont Television Network. Although both DuMont and Paramount executives stated that the companies were separate, the FCC ruled that Paramount's partial ownership of DuMont meant that DuMont and Paramount were in theory branches of the same company. Since DuMont owned three television stations and Paramount owned two, the federal agency ruled neither network could acquire additional television stations. The FCC requested that Paramount relinquish its stake in DuMont, but Paramount refused.<ref name="Browne" /> According to television historian William Boddy, "Paramount's checkered antitrust history" helped convince the FCC that Paramount controlled DuMont.<ref name="Boddy">{{cite book|last=Boddy|first=William|title=Fifties Television: the Industry and Its Critics|publisher=University of Illinois Press|year=1992|page=56|isbn=0-252-06299-X}}</ref> Both DuMont and Paramount Television Network suffered as a result, with neither company able to acquire five O&Os. Meanwhile, CBS, ABC, and NBC had each acquired the maximum of five stations by the mid-1950s.<ref name="BrooksandMarsh">{{cite book|last1=Brooks|first1=Tim|last2=Marsh|first2=Earle|title=The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946–present|publisher=Ballantine|location=New York City|year=2007|edition=9th|page=xiii|isbn=978-0-345-49773-4}}</ref>

When ABC accepted a merger offer from UPT in 1953, DuMont quickly realized that ABC now had more resources than it could possibly hope to match. It quickly reached an agreement in principle to merge with ABC.<ref name="Bergmann5">Bergmann, Ted; Skutch, Ira (2002). ''The DuMont Television Network: What Happened?'', pp. 79–83. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2002. {{ISBN|0-8108-4270-X}}.</ref> However, Paramount vetoed the offer due to antitrust concerns.<ref name="RWPDTV">{{cite web |last=Dean |first=L. |url=http://www.r-vcr.com/~television/TV/TV11.htm |title=DuMont TV — KTTV TV11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061231105843/http://www.r-vcr.com/~television/TV/TV11.htm |archive-date=December 31, 2006 |url-status=dead |website=Larry Dean's R-VCR Television Production website |access-date=December 28, 2006 }}</ref> For all intents and purposes, this was the end of DuMont, though it lingered on until 1956.

In 1951, Paramount bought a stake in [[Telemeter (pay television)|International Telemeter]], an experimental pay television service which operated with a coin inserted into a box. The service began operating in Palm Springs, California on November 27, 1953, but due to pressure from the FCC, the service ended on May 15, 1954.<ref>{{cite web |title=Telemeter: Coin Operated TV |date=March 31, 2009 |url=http://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/cointv/ |publisher=TVObscurities.com |access-date=June 9, 2012 |archive-date=July 22, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120722103506/http://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/cointv/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

With the loss of the theater chain, Paramount Pictures went into a decline, cutting studio-backed production, releasing its contract players, and making production deals with independents. By the mid-1950s, all the great names were gone; only [[Cecil B. DeMille]], associated with Paramount since 1913, kept making pictures in the grand old style. Despite Paramount's losses, DeMille would, however, give the studio some relief and create his most successful film at Paramount, a 1956 [[The Ten Commandments (1956 film)|remake]] of his 1923 film ''[[The Ten Commandments (1923 film)|The Ten Commandments]]''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.filmsite.org/tenc.html |title=Filmsite.org |publisher=Filmsite.org |access-date=January 7, 2010 |archive-date=January 10, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100110055701/http://www.filmsite.org/tenc.html |url-status=live }}</ref> DeMille died in 1959. Like some other studios, Paramount saw little value in its film library and sold 764 of its pre-1950 films to [[MCA Inc.]]/[[EMKA, Ltd.]] (known today as [[Universal Television]]) in February 1958.<ref>McDougal, Dennis (2001). ''The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood'' (pp. 231–232). [[Da Capo Press]].</ref>