Hearst Media Production Group
Hearst Media Production Group, usually shortened to HMPG, is the production and syndication company of Hearst Television, based in New York and with offices in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte. The batch listing for this profile places the company in New York City, which fits its role as the national-facing arm of a broadcaster whose local stations are spread across the United States. HMPG produces and distributes original programming for television stations, for broadcast and cable networks, and for streaming services. It is best known not for a single prime-time hit but for something more structural: the weekend educational programming blocks that allow the major American broadcast networks to meet their obligations to younger viewers, and for the nationally syndicated public-affairs programme Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien. Understanding HMPG means understanding its predecessor, Litton Entertainment, because the modern company is a rebranding and expansion of a business built over three decades on educational television.
Origins as Litton Syndications
The company was founded in 1988 as Litton Syndications by Dave Morgan in Baltimore, Maryland. The founding date is sometimes given as 1989 in later corporate accounts, reflecting the difference between formation and the start of full operations, but the 1988 origin is the one carried in the company's own history. Its earliest syndicated productions were one-off, sports-related specials, and many of its early programmes were bought in from other companies rather than made in-house. That beginning mattered. Litton started as a distributor first — a company that understood stations, time periods and barter and cash syndication — and only gradually became the producer it is today. That distributor's instinct, to find an underserved time period and fill it reliably, week after week, would define the business for the next thirty years.
The Children's Television Act and a New Market
The turning point came with American children's television regulation. The Children's Television Act required television stations to air a weekly quota of educational programming for children, and in the 1990s Litton recognised the growing market that rule created. Stations needed programming that was genuinely educational and informational — the category known in the industry as E/I — and they needed it in dependable blocks they could schedule, promote and report. Litton began syndicating Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures, built around the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium director emeritus Jack Hanna. The relationship with Hanna and his family became one of the longest in the company's history, producing further series through the 2000s and 2010s and ending actively only with Hanna's retirement in 2021 after a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. The Hanna family later sold their shares in their programming library to Hearst in 2023, and the company has continued to create new series re-edited from his archive for contemporary young audiences.
From Baltimore to Charleston and Burbank
In 1993 Litton moved from Baltimore to Charleston, South Carolina, while maintaining a production base in Burbank, California. That geography — a Southern headquarters, a West Coast production presence, and later a New York base under Hearst — reflects how syndication companies actually work: close to stations and advertisers in one place, close to talent and production in another. Charleston remained central to the Litton identity for decades, and senior executives were active in Charleston civic and cultural organisations. Under the Hearst name the footprint widened again to New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Charlotte, the last reflecting the continued importance of the former Litton operation. The move was never just about addresses; it tracked the company's growth from a regional syndicator of specials into a national supplier of network weekend programming.
Expanding the Syndication Library
Through the 2000s Litton broadened beyond children's programming. In May 2007 it added the series Baywatch to its outside syndication library, and that same period it purchased syndication rights from Peace Arch Entertainment Group to 85 films in the Castle Hill library, bundling the low-budget films into four groups in its first move into syndicating feature films. By 2008 its library included syndication rights to three former MTV programmes — Cribs, Pimp My Ride and Date My Mom — and it added Storm Stories from The Weather Channel. For the 2009–10 season it offered the unconventional court programme Street Court. None of these titles made Litton a household name on its own, but together they show a company learning every part of the syndication trade: off-network repeats, film packages, reality formats and first-run strips, alongside its educational core. That breadth made it an attractive acquisition for a station group that wanted production capacity of its own.
The Weekend Blocks That Changed Saturday Morning
Litton's most consequential innovation was the network weekend block. Announced on 24 May 2011, Litton's Weekend Adventure premiered on 3 September 2011 on ABC stations, replacing the ABC Kids block. It was a three-hour, Saturday-morning block of live-action documentary and lifestyle series for a family audience, syndicated directly to ABC stations rather than forming part of the network's official schedule — a compromise after ABC decided in 2010 that it no longer wanted to provide educational programming itself. The model was then replicated, with different branding for each network. Litton came to supply E/I blocks for most of the major networks, a position later described as control of four of the five E/I-compliant Saturday morning blocks on the five major broadcast networks. Under HMPG those blocks are Weekend Adventure on ABC stations, CBS Dream Team — later also styled CBS WKND — on CBS, The More You Know on NBC, One Magnificent Morning on The CW, Mi Telemundo on Telemundo, and Go Time on independent stations. The programmes tend toward science, nature and STEM-related subjects, and the blocks have won Emmy Awards.
Hearst Acquires Litton
On 6 January 2017 Hearst announced it had acquired majority control of Litton Entertainment, and the deal closed on 1 February 2017. Hearst acquired the remaining interest in 2021. For Hearst Television, one of America's large local station groups, the logic was clear: owning the producer-distributor that supplied so much weekend programming gave it original content it controlled, rather than programming it merely bought. For Litton, Hearst ownership brought scale, a larger station base and a parent with news and public-affairs ambitions. The two companies first operated with Litton's name intact, which preserved relationships with networks, stations and producers, before Hearst moved to put its own name on the combined operation.
Becoming Hearst Media Production Group
HMPG was formed in September 2021 to expand Hearst Television's original programme production and distribution, incorporating the existing resources of Litton Entertainment and the weekly syndicated programme Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien. In January 2022 Litton was formally rebranded as Hearst Media Production Group. A senior leadership team was announced at the rebrand: Bryan Curb, formerly Litton's chief creative officer, became executive vice president and general manager for E/I programming, overseeing development, business standards and practices, sales and marketing; Angelica Rosas McDaniel, who had joined Litton in 2020 from CBS, became executive vice president and general manager for entertainment, leading unscripted original development and its related marketing, syndication and distribution; and Chris Matthews, Litton's senior vice president and chief financial officer since 2016, served as chief financial officer. A new visual identity, created by Hearst Television's in-house design team, paired the Hearst logotype with coloured boxes and vertical lines suggestive of the letter H.
Matter of Fact and Public-Affairs Programming
Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien is the company's flagship beyond children's television. Hearst describes it as America's number-one nationally syndicated public-affairs news magazine — in some accounts, the number-one syndicated political programme. The show had been produced by Hearst Television before the rebrand, with distribution outside Hearst stations handled in national syndication, and it was folded into HMPG so that production and distribution sat in one place. Its presence changed the character of the company: HMPG is not only a supplier of weekend educational hours but also a producer of weekly journalism for adults, distributed to stations that need credible public-affairs programming for their own schedules. Alongside it, HMPG produces or distributes Consumer Reports TV, extending the same logic — trusted, service-oriented content that stations can schedule with confidence.
Streaming, FAST Channels and the Hanna Library
Like every syndicator, HMPG has had to follow audiences from broadcast schedules to streaming. The company produces hundreds of hours of programming annually across linear, streaming, digital and social platforms, for domestic and international distribution in nearly 100 countries, and it reports a library of more than 4,000 hours of programming. Its dedicated free ad-supported streaming television channels include Xplore, The Jack Hanna Channel and Rovr Pets, available on popular smart TVs and streaming platforms. The acquisition of the Jack Hanna library consolidated one of its most valuable assets: decades of animal and nature programming that can be re-edited, re-packaged and streamed for new generations. HMPG has also worked with partners on revivals such as bringing Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom back to NBC, and it has been recognised with dozens of national Telly Awards, including being named Telly Company of the Year. The company is represented by United Talent Agency.
Why HMPG Matters in American Television
HMPG occupies a part of American television that viewers rarely think about but stations depend on every week. When a network steps back from supplying educational programming, someone must still fill those hours to a standard that satisfies regulators, parents and advertisers. When a local station needs a respected public-affairs programme, or a film package, or a block it can sell locally, a syndicator provides it. Hearst Media Production Group, through its Litton inheritance, became the dominant specialist in the first of those jobs and a credible player in the others. Its story — from Dave Morgan's Baltimore syndication start-up in 1988, through the Jack Hanna years in Charleston, to a Hearst-owned group with offices in four cities and distribution in nearly 100 countries — is a concise history of how American syndication adapted: from specials and reruns, to regulated educational blocks, to streaming channels built from a deep library. For worldnm.com readers, HMPG belongs in the agencies and syndication category precisely because its work reaches audiences through other outlets, most of them never carrying its name in the programme title.
