Tropes/Dork Age

Film — Studios and Production Companies

 * Argosy Media and its sister studio, MTM Enterprises, have had a few:
 * The first one, known as the “Argosy Dark Age”, was from 1981-1993 when Paul Stacker ran Argosy, having performed a hostile takeover of the Argosy Media Affiliates holding company through his own company, Stacker and Associates, which had previously operated a failed restaurant chain. He quickly led the studio into massive debt, leading to Argosy going bankrupt after only a year under his ownership, and only managing to survive by forcing through a merger with rival company MTM to form Argosy Entertainment. It didn’t end there, as Stacker bribed Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker to keep himself in an executive role. Under Stacker, the Argosy unit was only barely kept afloat by the decent performance of its Argentinian satellite animation studio (home of Manuel García Ferré), and half-decent television programs from the creative minds of Paul Lopez and a young Ellen Peck (who were hired by executives on the MTM side). Lopez himself had a vast criminal record (mostly DUIs) and a nasty drug habit, both of which Stacker bribed Seattle police to sweep under the rug. Stacker’s own productions were gaudy and poorly-written, and he notoriously hated animation, only begrudgingly keeping the Argosy animation unit alive because it made most of the company’s money; meanwhile translating the beloved Wondertoons characters into a poor live-action version. The combined Argosy/MTM company went into administration in 1988, and had to be scooped up by TVS, a British TV station, to stay afloat. However, TVS kept Stacker in charge because they had cold feet and were afraid to put anyone from their homeland in charge of their new American subsidiary. It wasn’t until 1993, when TVS itself went into administration (having lost its broadcasting license to upstart Meridian after overstretching itself by acquiring the Merv Griffin company and other former Columbia Pictures assets that Sony didn’t want) and was taken over by televangelists, when Stacker was fired and thereafter arrested. At that point, Lopez had died in a car accident, so Ellen Peck gained full creative control over the company. Peck had heard good things about a guy from Chicago who created an early form of computer animation, hired him on the spot because she wanted a “real animation wizard”, and that’s how we got The Aaron Show, starting the “Argosy Golden Age” of the 1990s and early 2000s.
 * The secomd one, known as the “Argosy Interregnum”, was from 2006-2013. This was when Ellen Peck, figurehead of the company, kicked herself upstairs. (TBA)