Was Cooper always the actual owner of Light's Out?

Comments on Was Cooper always the actual owner of Light's Out?

Endof80
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Posted Sep 17, 2014 - 11:15 AM:

First off.. Glad to see the site back up Paul (after being offline last week).

I was surprised by two statements made in the August 6, 1947 issue of Variety, and would like to hear some insight concerning it...

(calling MS!)

The two things that surprised me was:

1. Wyllis Cooper owned "Lights Out" in 1947 when ABC yanked the show.. (I never realized he ever "owned" it.. did he always??)

2. In 1947, Lights Out had by that time resorted to re-using Coopers original scripts from a decade before... if that's the case it would seem some of those broadcast exist.

Is there something I'm missing here?.. I know he wasn't to keen on Oobler taking over when he had left, but if he was the owner, then why would have he allowed it?
But my real question is, was Cooper always the actual owner of Light's Out?

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Variety
August 6, 1947]

Eversharp Yanks 'Lights Out' Switch

Eversharp yanked the switch on "Lights Out" after last Wednesday's (30) broadcast, dousing the series after only three of a scheduled eight-week summer run. The sponsor is committed to the show's owner, Wyllis Cooper, for the contractual period, but is understood to have worked out a compromise payoff covering the cost of the scripts. Deal is also getting worked out with the ABC network, which will fill the unexpired weeks with a sustainer, for the time charges. This is believed to be part of negotiations with Mark Woods, ABC prez, and Martin Strauss, boss of the pen and razor firm, involving a reshuffle of the net's whole Wednesday night schedule for the coming fall-winter.

"Lights Out," horror series with a long and spotty history on both ABC and NBC, stumbled as a summer replacement from its first broadcast July 16. Although it was a minimum budget production, using old scripts originally written by Cooper when the series was launched a decade ago as a late-evening sustainer out of Chicago, it aroused the ire of Strauss, who ordered the Biow agency to yank it after the third installment. ...

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Paul
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Posted Sep 17, 2014 - 10:51 PM:

A hacker was deleting the site. Hopefully they're fully rooted out now.

Cooper created Lights Out, so that would make him owner at least in a sense. And certainly he owned the scripts that he was recycling for those episodes. But at any rate the network decides who does what since they're footing the bill.
MS
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Posted Sep 20, 2014 - 1:07 AM:

NBC owned the series outright. In Cooper's case, the rights to some of his scripts were assigned to him and others to the network. There's a 1939 memo (in the NBC papers in Wisconsin) from the head of NBC's literary rights department that mentions this arrangement. In Oboler's case, the situation was different; he owned his scripts outright.

For the 1940s Lights Out revivals, the two writers had to get permission to use the title "Lights Out." Oboler cut a deal with NBC to allow his 1942-43 revival to air on CBS, a rival network. In later years, he was unable to come to terms, so his syndicated 1970s Lights Out series had to be called "The Devil and Mr. O."

In 1946, Cooper apparently also cut a deal, providing the script for the premiere episode of the Lights Out TV series in exchange for NBC allowing him to do that summer's radio series. Researcher Martin Grams, Jr. has documentation about this, I believe.

Cooper probably had to make a similar deal in order to get the 1947 ABC series on the air. I think Variety has simply confused Cooper's owning the scripts with "owning the show."

Two broadcasts from this final run exist: DEATH ROBBERY, which was the premiere, and a half-episode that circulates as THE RING.
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