Bruce Media History

It all started in San Mateo, California in the mid 1940s. A young childhood friend of our parents, Merv Griffin became very successful in television game shows and his famous talk show. He loved games of all types and they played many over the years with Merv.

“Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy” were CREATED BY……Merv Griffin. Later, Merv sent a young Michael King over to our brother’s house where he slept on the sofa dreaming of his next big deal. His family owned the “Little Rascals”, but Michael wanted to build his new company “King World Productions” into a force in national television syndication. While on a trip to Chicago, he was watching the local news and noticed a young field reporter, Opray Winfrey! He saw incredible potential and offered her an opportunity to start a talk show with no money upfront. She would only be paid when King World placed the show in National Syndication.

As they distributed “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy” as a mandatory “both or none” pair only to lead into Prime Time, they leveraged the new “Oprah Winfrey” Program and had overwhelming success with all three! The rest was history. Merv became one of the wealthiest people in Hollywood along with the Kings, Oprah and the hosts of all of his shows.

:10 Second Commercial Spots were established as part of program content. In these shows, advertisers would have their :10 second commercials air nationally prior to commercial breaks in the local markets. These :10s would offer a national commercial with virtually identical recall as a :15 second commercial.

THE COST OF A NATIONAL :10 IS LESS THAN A :15 IN JUST LOS ANGELES AND NEW YORK!

:10s have been referred to as “Producer’s Time”. It is an additional revenue stream for shows and distributors before being distributed to local stations where they sell their local spots.

PIC-TV was the company where our family initially sold the Nationally Syndicated :10s for these shows and just about all syndicated shows for many years. PIC-TV was sold to InterPublic Group (IPG) which eventually stopped the unit to focus on higher priced :15s and :30s.

Enter Bruce Media! Sometimes called “PIC LITE”. With long standing relationship with all syndicators and a history of delivering outstanding value to our customers. We were often described as……

Many syndicated programs do not want to publicly lower prices as unsold :10s near deadline. We often get the call to place these :10s at HUGE discounts “under the radar” to the benefit of our advertisers!

“WELL CONNECTED, WELL RESPECTED”!