Here is the lynch pin to the story I did not know. There was a live-action children’s television show that ran from 1975-76 about a team of bumbling detectives who would investigate ghostly occurrences called The Ghost Busters. It has NO relationship to the 1984 Ghostbusters movie.

Now. Ghostbusters, which is now referred to as Filmation’s Ghostbusters (for clarity), was the crappy animated Ghostbusters show featuring 2 idiots and a gorilla for some reason. It ran from 1986-1988, which had the plot:
Jake Kong, Eddie Spencer and Tracy the Gorilla are The Ghost Busters. Jake and Eddie Jr are the sons of the original Ghost Busters from the live action series of the same name; Tracy worked with their fathers.

The better of the two shows was The Real Ghostbusters. It WAS based off the 1984 Ghostbusters film. It ran from 1986 to 1991 and was Emmy nominated. Interestingly, Ernie Hudson did try out for the voice of Winston, but the role was given instead to Arsenio Hall (for the first 3 seasons before someone else took over). Also, when Arsenio left, Dave Coulier took over for the Peter Venkman character, who before that was done by Lorenzo Music, who also did the voice of Garfield in the Garfield cartoons (his Peter Venkman also sounded like Garfield). TRG was ranked as the #22 best show in the IGN Top 100 Best Animated TV Shows. There were 2 The Real Ghostbusters spin-offs including Slimer! and Extreme Ghostbusters.

The interesting thing here is that the terrible Ghostbusters live action show actually did come first. So it was Filmation who sued Columbia and made them use a name other then “Ghostbusters” (hence the ‘the real’ on front).

Source: mostly Wiki and wiki.