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Screen Gems was founded in 1934 as the animation division of Columbia Pictures, having merged into the Charles Mintz animation studio company. Screen Gems' animation output included such characters as Scrappy , Krazy Kat, and the Fox and Crow . The shorts were only moderately successful when compared to more popular animated shorts featuring Disney's Mickey Mouse and Warner Bros.' Bugs Bunny. The original Screen Gems company closed down in 1946, though their animation output continued to be released for another three years.

In 1948, Screen Gems became the television subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, producing popular shows (as noted below). In the 1970s the name was abandoned and changed to Columbia Pictures Television. Changes in corporate ownership came in the 1980s when the Coca-Cola Company had bought the studios, although continuing to trade under the CPT code. In the 1990s Columbia Pictures merged with TriStar Pictures under its new parent company, Sony Pictures Entertainment. In 2003, Columbia/Tri-Star Television became Sony Pictures Television, while two years earlier, in 2001, Screen Gems was resurrected as the specialty motion picture producing arm of Columbia Pictures.

Notable television programs produced by Screen Gems include:

• The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (1954-1959)
• Father Knows Best (1954-1960)
• The Donna Reed ShowThe Donna Reed Show was a situation comedy which aired on ABC from 1958 to 1966. It starred Donna Reed as Donna Stone, a housewife to pediatrician Alex Stone, played by Carl Betz. The couple had two children together, Mary and Jeff. This was an ordinary s (1958-1966)
• The FlintstonesThe Flintstones a Hanna-Barbera animated series, is one of the most successful television cartoons of all time, running in American prime time for six seasons, from 1960 to 1966, on ABC. An earlier proposed title was The Flagstones''. The show was set in (1960-1966)
• BewitchedFor the Irish girl band see B witched. Montgomery as Samantha and Sargent as Darrin Bewitched was an American sitcom broadcast on ABC from 1964 to 1972. The show's focus was the mixed marriage of a nose-twitching witch, Samantha Stephens, and her mortal h (1964 - 1972)
• I Dream of JeannieI Dream of Jeannie was a popular sitcom, filmed from 1965 to 1970 and produced by NBC. It was created by Sidney Sheldon in response to the great success of rival network ABC's Bewitched series, which had debuted in 1964 as the second most watched program (1965 - 1970)
• The MonkeesThe Monkees were a four-person band who appeared in an American television series of the same name, which ran on NBC from 1966 to 1968. History of the series The television show first aired on September 12, 1966 on the American NBC television network and (1966-1968)
• The Partridge FamilyThe Partridge Family was an American television sitcom about a widowed mother and her five children who traveled around in a very colorful bus to different venues to perform songs. The series originally ran from 1970 until 1974 on the ABC television netwo (1970-1974)