T.A.T. Communications Company (partially found TV production logo; 1979-1982)

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T.A.T. Communications Company Logo c. 1980.png

The only available capture of the T.A.T. Communications Company logo.

Status: Partially Found

T.A.T. Communications Company was an American television production company formed by producer Norman Lear and businessman Jerry Perenchio in 1974. The company was notable for producing many iconic sitcoms during the 1970s and 1980s such as The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, and The Facts Of Life.[1]

Availability

At first, T.A.T. would be credited in name only at the end credits of the shows it produced, but starting in 1979 a production logo would begin to appear at the end of airings on daytime TV until 1982. To date, not much is known about the logo as a full capture of it in action has yet to surface. Print versions of the logo were found in promotional adverts and trade magazines, but the animated counterpart has yet to be found.[2]

The logo at one point was known for its dated synthesizer jingle and animation of a “rising star”, but this is only claimed by word of mouth by those who witnessed the logo. These witness accounts were discussed between members of the CLG Wiki in its earlier years on Yahoo! Groups circa 2002-2003, and the T.A.T. logo has remained sought after ever since. A variety of factors have contributed to the scarce nature of the T.A.T. logo, namely its duration and quick replacement as a result of various acquisitions in the mid 80s.

Following Lear and Perenchio’s acquisition of Avco Embassy Pictures Corporation in 1982, T.A.T. would be renamed as Embassy Communications, Inc. with Embassy Television quickly plastering the prior logo.[3]

Embassy Communications would then be sold to The Coca-Cola Company where it merged with Columbia Pictures Television in 1987, and was later sold to Sony in 1991 under the name ELP Communications.[4]

As a result, the distribution rights to these sitcoms would fall under the ownership of Sony Pictures Television where it remains today. Since Sony’s acquisition, the production logo for Sony Pictures Television would appear at the end of reruns of many T.A.T. shows, leading its logo further into obscurity.

Eyewitness Accounts

Since the discussions from the original CLG Wiki, more accounts of the T.A.T. logo would begin to surface with the recovery of the PITS Films logo in the mid 2000s. Both PITS Films and T.A.T Communications Company were created by Norman Lear.

For years PITS was also under similar obscurity, and was noted as being similar to the T.A.T. logo in its star animation and synthesized jingle. In 2006, a capture of the PITS logo would be uploaded to YouTube, where comparisons would be drawn between it and T.A.T.’s logo.

According to comments on said video, the T.A.T. Communications logo was last spotted on a WGN airing of The Jeffersons in 1994.[5] Other accounts say that the logo appeared during a Norman Lear marathon that aired on TV Land in 2002, but both claims have yet to be verified.

Speculation

With the growth of the CLG Wiki and further efforts in the archival of film/TV logos, the search for T.A.T. would intensify with various remakes and mockups being made to theorize what the logo may have looked like.

The logo was thought to have been the TAT letters in a custom version of the Yagi typeface inside a round black rectangle on top of a blue background, an animated rising star was thought to appear on the third T in the rectangle. Below the rectangle was the “Communications Company” byline.

The abundance of mockups being uploaded to YouTube complicated the search, with many creating false finds based on what many claimed the final logo looked like.

Partial Rediscovery

In the years since, only audio recordings of the full logo would be recovered, showing what the synthesized jingle had sounded like.[6] It wouldn’t be until 2018 that a partial video recording of the T.A.T. Communications Company logo was found on a video uploaded by YouTube channel pannoni4. Contrary to previous mockups, an orange star was shown to zoom out from the screen into the known T.A.T. wordmark (albeit with a different byline font) before being cut off by a CBS ID, where the search remains to this day.

References

  1. ↑ [1] Norman Lear: Act I and II
  2. ↑ [2] Letterhead c. 1976 [3] Close-up of print logo [4] Alternate print logo
  3. ↑ [5] "Embassy Pictures, the movie producing and distribution company, will retain its current president, Frank Capra Jr. T.A.T. will become Embassy Television, and P.I.T.S...the syndication arm for Tandem and T.A.T., will become Embassy Telecommunications."
  4. ↑ [6] Article about sale of Columbia Pictures to Sony.
  5. ↑ [7] "...there was a TAT Communications logo that I saw once on The Jeffersons on WGN in 1994 and haven't seen since..." -@Attmay "That's one I'd like to see as well...I saw it on the same station about a year after that and like you, never saw it again." -@tvpirate05
  6. ↑ [8] Audio recording from an airing of The Jeffersons. [9] Audio recording from a September 18th, 1979 airing of One Day at a Time.

External Links

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