Desilu Productions - Closure and Resurrection As Desilu, Too

Closure and Resurrection As Desilu, Too

Ball served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Desilu, while at the same time starring in her own weekly series. In February 1967, Ball agreed to sell her company to Charles Bluhdorn of Gulf+Western. The company is now called CBS Television Studios.

After selling Desilu, Ball established her own, new production company, Lucille Ball Productions (LBP), in 1968. The company went to work on her new series Here's Lucy that year. The program ran until 1974, and enjoyed several years of ratings success. Ball returned to network television in 1986 with the short-lived Life with Lucy. It lasted eight episodes before, a first for Ball, it was cancelled due to poor ratings. LBP continues to exist today, and its primary purpose is residual sales of license rights for Here's Lucy.

Desilu's series on television at the time, Mission: Impossible, Mannix, The Lucy Show and Star Trek changed packagers to Paramount.

Desilu-Paramount TV's holdings are currently owned by CBS Corporation, the eventual owner of the pre-1960s shows. Desilu Productions Inc. (aka Desilu Too L.L.C.) was reincorporated in Delaware in 1967, and still exists as a legal entity, mostly as a licensee for I Love Lucy-related merchandise. Desilu Too also partners with MPI Home Video and Lucille Ball Productions (formed by Ball and second husband Gary Morton) on the video releases of Here's Lucy and other material Ball and Arnaz made independently of each other. Recently, Desilu, Too officials worked with MPI Home Video for the home video re-issue of The Mothers-In-Law. Paramount Home Entertainment (through CBS DVD) continues to hold DVD distribution rights to the CBS library. Syndication rights for Here's Lucy was sold by Ball to Telepictures, which later merged into Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution. Warner Bros. is the show's current distributor although MPI now holds video rights under license from Ball Productions and Desilu, Too.

It is not known if Desilu, Too has interests in the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York. Neither Desilu, Too nor LBP are currently production companies.