Managing director Anthony Utley told the BBC News website why his industry owed cartoonist Joseph Barbera - who has died aged 95 - a great debt.

Dangermouse is one of Cosgrove Hall's best-known productions

What's forefront in everyone's minds in animation in the UK at the moment - and probably the States as well - is that we really owe it to Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera for introducing animation to television back in the '50s.

It was not considered that it was going to work - animation was for movies, not for TV.

Cosgrove Hall wouldn't be here today, I suspect, if hadn't been for Hanna and Barbera.

He made the industry more prolific.

If you're making movies, it's much more high-risk area of business.

For every one movie that's a success, there are 20 or 30 - if not more - failures, whereas for TV, if a broadcaster commissions something, it's going to get made.

There's now much more opportunity in opening animation to a wider audience and making the industry proliferate, not only in the US but in the UK.

'Huge memories'

I think he will be remembered in terms of bringing a whole new genre of programming into television.

I grew up watching The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, Huckleberry Hound and The Jetsons - huge memories from my childhood.

Never did I think I'd end up running of the UK's biggest animation studios in the end but maybe that's a reason for me being here as well.

I believe Joe Barbera visited Cosgrove Hall back in the '80s.