Walter Lantz finally shut down the studio in 1973, saying that continuing to produce shorts would be impossible due to rising inflation, which seemed to have tightened his cartoons budgets by the late 1950s. However, for Lantz, Woody Woodpecker's survival was lengthened when he started appearing in "The Woody Woodpecker Show" from 1957 to 1987, from which it entered syndication until 1990. NBC revived the show twice—in 1991 and 1992, and finally in 1997 Lantz sold all of the Woody Woodpecker shorts to Universal, then part of MCA.