Ponderosa Steakhouse and Bonanza Steakhouse under the Metromedia Restaurant Group. The names of the restaurants were derived from the classic TV series "Bonanza", which was set at a place called Ponderosa Ranch. In 1963, Dan Blocker, who played Eric "Hoss" Cartwright on "Bonanza", started the Bonanza Steakhouse chain. The first Bonanza opened in Westport, Connecticut. Sam Wyly and his brother Charles Wyly bought the small Bonanza restaurant chain three years later. The company grew to approximately 600 restaurants by 1989, when the Wylys sold it to Metromedia. In 1965, Dan Lasater, Norm Wiese and Charles Kleptz founded Ponderosa in Kokomo, Indiana, moving the headquarters to
Bonanza 1857), "Bonanza" is also set in what in real life would have been Utah Territory. Several early episodes have fallen into the public domain. These episodes have been released by several companies in different configurations, with substandard picture and sound quality, edited, and by legal necessity with the copyright-protected Evans-Livingston theme song replaced with generic western music. In 1973, NBC licensed the distribution rights to the series, along with the rest of its pre-1973 library, to National Telefilm Associates, which changed its name to Republic Pictures in 1986. Republic would become part of the Spelling Entertainment organization in 1994 through