20th Century Fox Television is the television production division of 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, and a production arm of the Fox Broadcasting Company (both are subsidiaries of the Fox Entertainment Group, in turn part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation). 20th Television is a separate distribution arm overseen by News Corporation's Fox Television Stations, although it uses a variant of the film studio logo.
20th Century Fox Television was founded in 1949 as other studios were branching out into television production as well. At that time, the company was known as TCF Television Productions, Inc. until 1955. TCFTV folded the operations of TV production companies they've acquired: Metromedia Producers Corporation in 1986, New World Entertainment in 1997, and MTM Enterprises in 1998, and is the current distributor for most of the shows originally produced by these companies.
Since 1986, 20th Century Fox Television has served as the Fox television network's unofficial production arm (with Fox Television Studios being viewed as the network's official television production division), producing the bulk of television series airing on the television network. 20CFT produced the first two series that aired on Fox's sister network, MyNetworkTV: Desire and Fashion House. During the same year, Metromedia Video Productions was merge 20th Century Fox Television into 20th Century Fox Television Video Productions before reverting back to the 20th Century Fox Television name in 1994.
In 1986, Metromedia Producers was renamed to Twentieth Television Corporation, a separate entity from 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. Both companies were subsidiaries of News Corporation unit Fox Inc.; the move was made to separate the television productions from the movie studio in order to increase the latter's output. Following a 1994 restructuring of Fox's television production companies, 20th Television was refocused on syndication and "non-traditional programs," while network television programming once more came under the 20th Century Fox Television banner and returned to being a division of the movie studio.
Notable shows produced by 20th Century Fox Television include: Glee, How I Met Your Mother, Bones, Family Guy, 24, Modern Family, American Dad!, Futurama and most notably The Simpsons.
Famous quotes containing the words fox and/or television:
“Perhaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox has obtained the widest and most familiar reputation.... His recent tracks still give variety to a winter’s walk. I tread in the steps of the fox that has gone before me by some hours, or which perhaps I have started, with such a tip-toe of expectation as if I were on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in the wood, and expected soon to catch it in its lair.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates—the inhabitants of marketing zones in the consumer goods society, television audiences and news magazine readerships... vote with money at the cash counter rather than with the ballot paper at the polling booth.”
—J.G. (James Graham)