During the 1980s, WTBS featured a heavy schedule of movies – airing two film presentations during the daytime hours each weekday, and a largely movie-exclusive schedule during the nighttime hours after 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time as well as on weekends from late morning to overnight (with exceptions made for scheduled sporting events, specials, original programs and, in the case of Sunday nights, off-network syndicated series and paid programming). In 1986, Ted Turner purchased the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film studio and co-owned United Artists (UA) for $1.5 billion. However the debt that Turner Entertainment incurred from the purchase forced Turner to subsequently sell the studios back to previous owner Kirk Kerkorian that October, in exchange for retaining ownership of the entire MGM/UA film library (including certain acquisitions by MGM). As a result, WTBS acquired the rights to feature films released by the MGM and UA studios for its movie inventory as well as the rights to many theatrical cartoon shorts such as "Tom & Jerry" and comedy and drama series such as "Gilligan's Island" and "CHiPs" for its daily schedule. By 1987, WTBS was available to 41.6 million households with a cable or satellite subscription nationwide. On September 7, 1987, the "W" in the station's call letters was dropped from the "SuperStation WTBS" branding outside of Atlanta in order to emphasize the channel's national programming prominence. Within the Atlanta market, through the early 1990s, station promos and digital on-screen graphics referred to the station as "TBS 17". The "SuperStation" branding was dropped entirely on September 10, 1990, in accordance with the national feed's discontinuance of the moniker; for a short time in the late 1990s, in concurrence with the restoration of the sub-brand on the national feed, the "Superstation" brand returned to WTBS – under the "Superstation 17" moniker – without the "TBS" branding. On September 22, 1995, Time Warner – a New York City-based media company formed in 1989 through the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Bros. corporate parent Warner Communications – reached an agreement to acquire the Turner Broadcasting System and its associated properties (including WTBS/TBS, CNN, TNT, Headline News and Cartoon Network as well as Turner Entertainment) for $7.5 billion; the deal would also expand Time Warner's cable television holdings, as it had owned HBO and sister premium service Cinemax as well as cable television provider Time Warner Cable since the Time-Warner Communications merger six years prior.