Fremantle Media
Mega-successful production company responsible for Baywatch, although Reality TV and Game Shows are their stock in trade. Bought out the entirety of Pearson's television division (which had been partly owned by them anyway), who in turn had bought out All-American Television. They all had essentially the same management, though.
Fremantle owns all formats and libraries formerly held by Goodson-Todman, Reg Grundy, Hatos-Hall, and Bill Carruthers...which adds up to a whole lot of footage. They even authorized DVD compilations of Family Feud, Password, Match Game, The Price Is Right, and Game Show Moments Gone Bananas...although further ones for Tattletales, To Tell the Truth, and What's My Line didn't happen due to BCI going out of business.
Fremantle strongly dislikes the Writer's Guild, often clashing with them over jurisdictional beefs since they think game/reality shows don't have writers...even though they do, with Jeopardy! and The Singing Bee as just two of the many examples.
They're also frequent recipients of flack from classic Game Show fans for making unreasonable and unnecessary changes to their shows; said flack is rarely, if ever, without merit.
Also notable for message board posters (particularly GSN's) spelling their name as "Freemantle". Just go to their website and tell them they're spelling their name wrong.
Programs include:
- America/<insert country here>'s Got Talent
- American/<insert country here> Idol, and its predecessor, the UK's Pop Idol.
- The Apprentice
- Baywatch
- The Bill (by subsidiary Talkback Thames)
- Family Feud
- Hole In The Wall
- The Price Is Right (and all other Mark Goodson formats)
- QI (with Quite Interesting Limited)
- SOKO Leipzig
Fremantle invokes the following Tropes:
- Executive Meddling: It seems that when planning a revival, Fremantle thinks they need to put their own "mark" on formats that had already been fine-tuned over the years and proven themselves to be of the can't-miss variety. The results speak for themselves.
- Syd Vinnedge mandated a "Hollywood mural" design for the Turntable on Price in September 2002, which lasted all of six months before going to a new color scheme of the "classic" patterns.