American International Television

American International Television
Founded	1964
Dissolved	1980 (folded into Filmways Television)
President
Notable Works	The Avengers Flipper The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet Sinbad Jr. and his Magic Belt Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot

American International Television (AITV) was an American television production and distribution company.

History

AITV was formed in 1964 as the television division of American International Pictures, a B-movie studio formed in 1956 by James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. AITV served mainly as the TV distributor for movies either produced by AIP (mainly teen-oriented genre films like I Was a Teenage Werewolf, The Amazing Colossal Man and the Beach Party film series, blaxploitation movies like Blacula and Foxy Brown, and mainstream films like The Amityville Horror, Force 10 from Navarone and The Island of Dr. Moreau) or which were acquired by the studio from foreign studios and dubbed into English for domestic distribution (including numerous Italian "sword and sandal" genre films, several Japanese daikaiju films featuring Godzilla and Gamera, and an American English-dubbed version of the Australian dystopic action film Mad Max).

AITV also served as the distributor for several TV series, including The Avengers, Japanese imports Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot and Prince Planet and the Hanna-Barbera-produced Sinbad Jr. and his Magic Belt. It was also the original distributor for The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet before Ozzie Nelson, the show's creator, executive producer and star, began distributing the show himself in the late 1960s.

AITV and parent company AIP were acquired by Filmways in 1979, and AITV was folded into Filmways Television in 1980. MGM Television, the successor-in-interest to Orion Television (whose parent Orion Pictures acquired Filmways, including most of the AIP and AITV catalogues, in 1982), now owns the TV distribution rights to most of the AIP/AITV library (excluding the Godzilla films which AITV had distribution rights to, which are now split between DreamWorks Classics and Sony Pictures Television).

External Sites

• American International Television projects on IMDb

• American International Television closing logos at Closing Logos Group Wiki