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Michael Eisner‘s Tornante Co. is teaming with Sinclair Broadcast for a new joint venture focused on first-run syndication television projects, the company announced Monday.
Tornate and Sinclair Television Group will each own 50 percent of the new venture, Tornante-Sinclair LLC, which will begin development for the 2016 broadcast season on a wide variety of syndicated programming including talk shows, game shows, court shows as well as comedy. Tornante Television will oversee creative development.
This marks the second collaboration for the two companies following the syndicated court show Judge Faith, which launches season two in September. In addition to Judge Faith, which launched in partnership with Trifecta Entertainment, Tornante Television is also behind Netflix’s hit animated comedy BoJack Horseman, which launches its second season in July.
“We are thrilled to launch this new joint venture with Sinclair Broadcast Group, with whom we have been working as a licensee of Judge Faith for over a year now,” said Eisner, owner of The Tornante Company. “When we met with David Smith, Steve Pruett and team it was immediately clear that they had a vision for the future of broadcasting and our intent is to pair our expertise in developing content with their distribution capabilities to create tremendous new opportunities for both parties.”
Tornate-Sinclair LLC will be based in Los Angeles with a new development team that will work in tandem with Tornante’s co-president Lauren Corrao.
“Michael Eisner’s impact on the television industry is legendary — having brought us many of our nation’s most treasured programs for over four decades and counting,” said Sinclair Broadcast president and CEO David Smith. “We are excited to further leverage and expand our exceptionally vast and diversified portfolio at Sinclair in partnership with The Tornante Company to further secure our position as a leader in the television business and deliver new high-quality programming to our viewers.”
Eisner, the former CEO of the Walt Disney Co., founded Tornante in 2005. The company’s other properties include The Topps Company, Inc., Clique Media, Task Rabbit, Omaze, AirTime and new media studio Vuguru.
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