MGM Television Logo History

"MGM Television Logo History (Updated)" by TR3X Productions, video made from 20-22 and 25-27/10, uploaded on 28/10/2024.
MGM Television is the television studio division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, founded by Loews, Inc. on 30th June 1956 to primarily focus on producing and distributing TV shows, as well as specialising in broadcast syndication. Their first TV series was created a year before MGM Television was established, and that was MGM Parade (1955-56), starring the 1953-56 film logo with Jackie the Lion in the intro, and it was broadcast on the ABC Television Network. However, ABC cancelled that series a few months before MGM Television was created, and MGM collaborated with NBC to produce tv shows for that network instead, e.g. the Thin Man (1957-59), Dr. Kildare (1961-66) and the Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68), but they did reconcile with ABC as the 1960s arrived, releasing shows such as the Islanders (1960-61) and the Asphalt Jungle (1961) for them. In conjunction with NBC, MGM Television produced shows for CBS starting from the late 1960s, and this was a decade before MGM joined forces with CBS Video to create MGM-CBS Home Video; Daktari (1966-69) and Medical Center (1969-76) are two examples of MGM TV shows that appeared on CBS at that time. Shortly after Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer merged with United Artists in 1982, MGM Television was renamed to MGM/UA Television Distribution, which is evident in the last variants of the 4th logo, as well as the 6th, 7th and early takes of the 8th logos, but some variants retained the former text in certain cases (i.e. first variant of the 8th logo). In 1992, MGM/UA Television Productions reverted to MGM Television, and a few years later, the company was reformed to create several brand labels in 1996, e.g. MGM Domestic Television Distribution, MGM International Television Distribution, etc. Despite their brand labels went dormant before their twelfth logo was introduced, MGM Television is still going strong two-thirds of a century later, and some of their popular shows in the last twenty-five years include Stargate SG-1, Survivor, Teen Wolf, Billy the Kid and many more.
Note (28/10/24): I missed out a variant of the eleventh logo that contains a different roar, and it appeared on the first episode of Get Shorty; here is the link to it    • Holmes Quality Yarns/MGM Television (...   . I'm aware that other variants are absent in the video as well (e.g. still variant with Tanner's roar on Thirtysomething, late 1980s), but they were excluded because I could not find video footage of them online, and I did not feel the need to show variants with voiceovers that were exclusively shown on TV channels.

Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:05 1st logo (1957-60)
0:57 2nd logo (1960-73)
2:37 3rd logo (1969)
2:40 4th logo (1973-87)
3:37 5th logo (1975)
3:40 6th logo (1982-84)
3:56 7th logo (1984-85)
4:02 8th logo (1986-2008)
6:30 9th logo (2008-12)
7:27 10th logo (2011-21)
7:31 11th logo (2012-23)
8:03 12th logo (2021-present)
8:29 Credits


-TR3X