MTM Enterprises (also known as MTM Productions) was an American independent production company established in 1969 by Mary Tyler Moore and her then-husband Grant Tinker to produce The Mary Tyler Moore Show for CBS. The name for the production company was drawn from Moore's initials. MTM produced a number of successful television programs during the 1970s and 1980s. The company's mascot was an orange Tabby cat named Mimsie who appeared in their logo (who was borrowed from a local shelter and then owned by one of the MTM staff, not by Moore and Tinker, who named the cat), inside a circle surrounded by gold ribbons, parodying how Leo the Lion is presented in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer logo. All of MTM's shows are now owned by The Walt Disney Company through its subsidiary, 20th Television. History For many years, MTM and CBS co-owned the CBS Studio Center in Studio City, California, where a majority of their programs were filmed and videotaped. Most of MTM's programs aired on CBS. In 1971, co-founder Grant Tinker was forced to quit 20th Century-Fox Television due to conflicts with how to run MTM, in order to maintain a full-time job at the company. In 1976, MTM teamed up with Metromedia Producers Corporation to start a variety show, a first for first-run syndication. Tinker oversaw MTM's operation until leaving the company in 1981 and becoming chairman of NBC. Lawyers backing NBC's then-owner RCA convinced Tinker to sell his remaining shares of MTM. Moore and Arthur Price, her business manager and company vice president, bought Tinker's shares; Price subsequently was elevated to president. Tinker later regretted leaving MTM, believing that the company started to decline without him. In 1986, MTM launched its own syndicated arm MTM Television Distribution, to handle off-net syndication of the MTM shows, and subsequently courted to continue its relations with syndicator Jim Victory to sell off-network rights to MTM's shows like Hill Street Blues and WKRP in Cincinnati, all the way up until the late 1980s as part of a contract settlement. In 1988, MTM was sold to UK broadcaster and independent station for the South and South East of England TVS Entertainment for $320 million. After TVS lost its franchise to broadcast on the ITV network to Meridian Broadcasting, a number of American companies (and to a lesser extent, Meridian) were interested in acquiring MTM, with Pat Robertson's International Family Entertainment making the first