DreamWorks Television

Background

DreamWorks Television was a television production arm of DreamWorks, LLC, established with the studio in 1994. Its first production, Champs, a series co-executive produced by DreamWorks founders Steven Spielberg, Jeffery Katzenberg, and David Geffen, aired in 1996, more than a year before the first DreamWorks movie was released. From its inception until the joint venture agreement ended in 2002, ABC owned a 50% stake in the TV studio. It eventually went with Paramount Domestic Television to distribute its shows. Paramount would acquire DreamWorks in 2006, so CBS Paramount Domestic Television/CBS Television Distribution (a part of CBS Corporation, which split from Viacom 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.

Contents

1st Logo (1996)	2nd Logo (January 9, 1996-August 4, 2013)

1st Logo (1996)

Visuals: On a white background, a picture of the boy fishing on the moon is seen inside a box. Underneath is the 3D text:

DREAMWORKS
SKG
TELEVISION

Technique: None.

Audio: The ending theme of the show.

Availability: It was a placeholder logo and was so far only used on The Greatest Moments of the Olympiad with Bud Greenspan.

Legacy: This logo is the debut of the DreamWorks logo's design overall, predating the movie logo's debut by a year.

2nd Logo (January 9, 1996-August 4, 2013)

Visuals: The logo is cut down to only the last second or so of the animation from the movie logo, except there is a different cloud backdrop (namely, a portion seen earlier in the movie logo). The boy fishing on the moon in the upper center of the clouds can be seen.

Trivia:

The Champs and Dear Diary variants mark the first appearances of the ending portion of the DreamWorks Pictures logo, over a year before its debut in movies.

Variants:

On Champs, the end of the movie logo is used (although slightly sped up), transitioning from the Ubu Productions logo. There's a version without a transition on the unsold pilot Dear Diary.
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 in January 2006, the logo now reads "DREAMWORKS TELEVISION", with "TELEVISION" below the line and replacing "SKG".
On season 1 of Smash, the logo is zoomed in.
On season 2 of Smash, the logo is either stretched (on widescreen prints) or not (on 4:3 full-screen prints).

Technique: Computer animation.

Audio: A soft four-note horn sounder (different from the movie logo). Like the movie logo, this was composed by John Williams. Otherwise, silence, the show's closing theme, or a generic network theme is heard.

Audio Variants:

A low-tone version exists, which is heard on Undeclared, Boomtown, and the unsold pilot Life on Parole.
A different 3-note violin theme is also heard on an unknown show, though of course this could just be the end credits theme.
Part of the movie theme was heard on Alienators: Evolution Continues.

Availability:

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, Ink and the first three seasons of Falling Skies, among others.
The logo first appeared on the series Champs over a year and a half before the debut of the theatrical logo.
This logo does not appear on Band of Brothers or newer prints of Freaks and Geeks, as they use the still version of the theatrical logo instead.
Foreign prints of Evolution: The Animated Series also 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 U.S. 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).
It also made a surprise appearance at the beginning and the end of the 1999 sizzle reel to Chicken Run, meaning that it could also possibly appear on other sizzle reels to their films at the time.