Mark Goodson Production

The Mark Goodson Production is an American production company that mainly produces game shows. With it's orgins based on the original Mark Goodson Production (Goodson-Todman 1946-1982 when it became just Mark Goodson Television Production), the company is run by Mark's children, Jill and Jonathan Goodson, and Majorie Goodson. Jonathan also operates his own production company, Jonathan Goodson Production, and the family runs both companies at the same time.

## History

### Goodson-Todman

**Goodson-Todman Productions** was a long-running and long-serving television production company formed by Mark Goodson and his longtime partner Bill Todman. Together, they produced and created some of the long-running and greatest game show formats ever in television history. While they attempted to produce other types of TV shows, such as *The Web*, *The Richard Boone Show*, and the Chuck Connors classic *Branded*, none of these were particularly successful.

### Mark Goodson

After Bill died in 1979, Mark ran his company solo; he acquired Todman's share of the company in 1982, and renamed it as simply **Mark Goodson Productions**, with the closing spiel altered to **A Mark Goodson Television Production** to keep it in line with the original. The first shows to use this were *Child's Play* and *Family Feud*, while the rest of the pre-1982 shows slowly disbanded the Goodson-Todman for Mark Goodson's name up to 1984. The company slowly disbanded after Mark Goodson died on December 18, 1992. Mark's son, Jonathan, continued to run the company through 1995, when the family sold the rights to the library of shows (except for *Concentration*, which had been licensed by NBC) to All-American Television (which later became Pearson Television, now FremantleMedia), in order to pay off a massive inheritance tax.

The **Mark Goodson Productions** name, logo, and announcement continued to be used on some of the shows in production at the time, despite the actual company no longer being in existence. The name, logo, and announcement was used on the 2000 revival of *To Tell the Truth* during the end credits for its run, as well as the 1999 revival of *Family Feud* and the 2001 revival of *Card Sharks* until 2002. *The Price is Right* continued to sign off with the Mark Goodson Productions name, logo, and announcement all the way up until Bob Barker retired in 2007. After that, the usage of the Mark Goodson company was no more. *Price* started using the FremantleMedia name, logo, and announcement, and is still used to this day (although current CBS press releases for the show refer to it as "a Mark Goodson Production, in association with FrematleMedia").

### Relaunch

In 2010, Jonathan Goodson decided to revive the Mark Goodson Production and get back into making the game show business that his father was famous for. Although he was still running his production company at the time, Jonathan Goodson Production mainly produced game shows for state lotteries, and Jonathan wanted to go back to making game shows for syndication and the nation. After consulting with his sisters, in 2014, weeks before FremantleMedia, which held rights to the original Mark Goodson Production library, announced the launch of Buzzr, the family announced that they're going to relaunch the company and begin to start making more game shows for both network and syndication.