Background: DreamWorks Television was a television production arm of DreamWorks, LLC, established in 1996, along with the studio in 1994. Its first productions aired in 1996, more than a year before the first DreamWorks movie, The Peacemaker, was released. Its shows had trouble coming to syndication because DreamWorks was too small to have its own syndication/distribution division. It eventually went with Paramount Domestic Television. Ironically, Paramount would acquire DreamWorks in 2006, so CBS Paramount Domestic Television/CBS Television Distribution (a part of CBS Corporation, which split from Viacom (now ViacomCBS) before the acquisition was completed) took over the complete rights to the DreamWorks Television library. DreamWorks broke apart from Viacom when its employees left to form the current version of DreamWorks. Currently, most of the pre-2008 DreamWorks Television library is owned by Paramount Pictures, syndicated under Paramount Worldwide Television Licensing & Distribution or licensed to Trifecta Entertainment & Media. The current DreamWorks had its TV arm merged into Amblin Television sometime in 2013.
(March 4, 1996-August 4, 2013)[]
Logo: The logo is cut down to only the last second or so of the animation from the movie ID counterpart, with the logo zooming out, including the boy fishing on the moon in the upper center of the clouds.
Variants:
- A later widescreen version has the same backdrop from the movie logo.
- The logo may appear more zoomed-out on some shows.
- On Boomtown, the 16:9 variant is squished to 4:3.
- Starting sometime in January 2006, the logo now reads "DREAMWORKS TELEVISION" with "TELEVISION" below the line and replacing "SKG".
- On the Season 1 of the short-lived series Smash, the 4:3 full screen version is cropped to 16:9 widescreen to fit the width of the aspect ratio, while the second season has the full screen version stretched to fit width of the widescreen ratio as well.
FX/SFX: Same as the movie logo.
Music/Sounds: A soft 4-note horn sounder (different from the movie logo). Sometimes, it's silent, had the last few notes of the show theme, or had a generic theme on Fox, NBC, CBS ABC and Fox.
Music/Sounds Variants:
- Sometimes it’s silent.
- A low-tone version was heard on the unsold pilot Life on Parole, Undeclared and Boomtown.
- Other times, the end theme plays over the logo.
- Part of the movie logo theme was heard on Alienators: Evolution Continues.
- On PAL prints of DreamWorks Television shows, including the DreamWorks Home Entertainment UK VHS releases of Boomtown, the music is high-pitched.
Availability: Common. It can be seen on quite a few shows such as The Contender, Carpoolers, Spin City, On The Lot, Boomtown, Rescue Me, Oliver Beene, Toonsylvania, Dog Bites Man and the first 3 seasons of Falling Skies, among others. The logo first appeared on High Incident, a series co-created by DreamWorks co-founder Steven Spielberg. This logo does not appear on Band of Brothers, as it uses the still version of the theatrical logo instead. Foreign prints of Evolution: The Animated Series do not have this logo either, instead having the Columbia TriStar Television logo (Columbia co-released the movie and therefore has overseas rights), whereas the US version (known as Alienators: Evolution Continues) had this logo along with the Incredible World of DiC logo prior to the Fox Kids-style compressed credits (reruns of the series on This TV plastered the DiC logo with Cookie Jar's logo).
Editor's Note: While not having as much animation, this logo stayed very true to it's movie counterpart.
Other[]
- For other related logos and images see: DreamWorks Television/Other