Celebrating its 20th anniversary this month, North Hollywood-based Studio City is evolving from one of the industry’s most productive promo houses into a producer of original series.

Studio City was launched in 1995 after Stu Weiss, the company’s owner and chief creative officer, realized he no longer wanted to work in the NBC corporate trenches.

“I was a vice president of creative services and I walked into Vince [Manze] and Jon [Miller]’s office in the summer of 1994 and said, ‘I think I’m going to leave at the end of the year.’”

Exhibiting much more open minds than many bosses, Manze and Miller suggested that Weiss start his own company, promising themselves as his first client. He took them up on the offer.

“That was extraordinary,” Weiss says. “It was truly a life-changing experience that rarely ever happens to anyone in any business. I’ll be indebted for the rest of my life to the two of them for doing that.”

Weiss signed a two-year contract with NBC to produce promos for its TV movies, and then felt pretty sure he would go out of business after that. Instead, Paramount (now CBS Television Distribution) called and asked ‘do you guys ever do syndication?’ Being the wise businessman, Weiss said he’d be happy to give it a go. Studio City started producing promos for a start-up show called Judge Judy, and ended up on that account for about five years.

From there, came a raft of other top-rated syndicated shows and network daytime programs, including Disney-ABC’s Live with Kelly and Michael, CTD’s Dr. Phil, CBS’ The Talk, Warner Bros.’ Ellen, Sony Pictures Television’s Dr. Oz and NBCUniversal’s Maury, Jerry Springer and Steve Wilkos.

Some two decades later, Studio City is going stronger than ever, producing promos for every major syndicator, the NBC Olympics and the upcoming Monopoly Millionaires’ Club, which is a weekly game show based on a new nationwide lottery game.

“The creative has driven the success of this company,” says Weiss. “When you take on a project like Live with Kelly and Michael, you are producing 252 episodic packages every single year. We make sure that the spot you see on Monday looks different from tomorrow’s spot. We reinvigorate the brand on a daily basis, and have a team on every show. And we’re not just doing promos anymore — we’re also doing social media elements, digital marketing and main title opens.”

“We look at our promos as a daily reminder for the viewer to engage with the brand itself,” says Joe Taminini, president of Studio City.

Studio City works to make its promos look as polished as they can, so no matter when they air, the show is front and center.

“One of the philosophies we’ve had here is that we never let a daytime promo look like a daytime promo,” says Weiss. “We’ve always had the edict that daytime needs to look like primetime.”

For example, the spots Studio City produces to promote Ellen often air during The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, so they need to look as appropriate there as they do when they air during the 5 o’clock news.

All of that production meant that syndicators started asking Studio City for ideas when it came to producing their day-and-date talk shows and other programs.

Those conversations led Studio City to develop Dish Nation, an entertainment magazine for Twentieth Television that features drive-time radio teams across the country. That show was just renewed through the 2016-17 season on the Fox-owned stations.

This week at Real Screen in Washington, D.C, the company is pitching seven series to buyers, including a show called I Give It A Month, hosted by comedian Kim Coles. It’s also been working with millennial talent Chelsea Krost on a talk show.

“It’s been a natural evolution and frankly, an exciting evolution, because it allows us to get out of the 30-second world a little bit and tell stories differently,” says Taminini. “Syndicated shows have been our meat and potatoes, but we are slowly but surely expanding beyond that. Our clients engaged us to try our hands at our own shows. They figured if we could tell stories in 30-seconds, what could we do in 30 minutes?”

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