Following Roger King's death, the company and its subsidiary KWP Studios Inc. continue to exist on paper as intellectual property holders who maintain the copyrights for programs like The Little Rascals, Rachael Ray, and the Hollywood Squares format.

Merv Griffin, the show's creator and producer, had shopped the program to various other studios prior to reaching a deal with King World.

King World also would acquire the rights to distribute Griffin's own long-running talk/variety program from Metromedia's syndication division.

[citation needed] A year later, Griffin announced plans to revive another of his game show creations, Jeopardy!, and King World agreed to distribute that program as well.

[7] In 1987, King World's Camelot Entertainment Sales entered into an agreement with Buena Vista Television, whereas Camelot would sell all national spots for all programming produced by Buena Vista Television, which included Siskel & Ebert, DuckTales, Disney Magic I and Win, Lose or Draw, and Camelot was willing to accept the lower figure because DuckTales represented King World's first foray into the animated strip business, and Disney Magic I marked King World to the barter movie operation business for the first time.

Stuart Hersch, a lawyer by trade, was the financial expert who helped to take the company public, making it one of the hottest stocks on Wall Street at the time.

On September 28, 1998, King World acquired the worldwide leasing rights to the solo-developed game shows by Merrill Heatter Productions for a limited time.

[14][15] On January 19, 2000, Eyemark Entertainment, the successor to Westinghouse Broadcasting following the CBS/Westinghouse Electric Corporation merger, was folded into King World.

Roger King was announced as CEO of the new entity and retained that position until suffering a stroke on December 7, 2007, and dying the next day.

King World turned part of its attention to producing in-house newsmagazines including American Journal and Inside Edition.