Media Home Entertainment story · 1:26am Dec 31st, 2017
Media Home Entertainment was one of the earliest video distributors. It was founded in 1978 by filmmaker Charles Band along with his colleague Irwin Yablans; for the first three years of its existence, Mr. Band called the firm Meda Home Entertainment in honor of his first wife, with whom he raised two children, one of whom (Alex Band) sang lead for the post-grunge group The Calling. The company's initial releases were random, and ranged from obvious products of the public domain (some of its first releases included a package of Max Fleischer's Superman cartoons and Reefer Madness) to X-rated films (lots of films with Girls in the title comprised their early product as well). By March of 1979, the company had issued over 70 tapes.
The beginnings of the company were rough. ABKCO successfully sued Media for issuing VHS and Betamax copies of the Rolling Stones' Hyde Park concert. Later, it, VCI Home Video and Video Tape Network were sued by Northern Songs for releasing Beatles items (including Around the Beatles, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones performing backup with such performers as Long John Baldry, the 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour, Sextette with ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, and a concert they had in Tokyo).
It would be hard to think about but Media managed to survive both hits in the noggin. It had issued several horror B-movies, like the original VHS releases of Halloween and Night of the Living Dead. By arrangement with New Line Cinema, it issued the first five Nightmare on Elm Street films in the US and Canada. Movies from Palomar Pictures International (Sleuth, The Heartbreak Kid) were issued on Media as well along with products from such companies as The Cannon Group and (briefly) Troma. Internationally, their tapes were distributed by such companies as VPD (UK) and Video Classics (Australia).
In 1984, British tycoon Gerald Ronson acquired Media Home Entertainment and made it a unit of his company Heron International, known in America as Heron Communications, Inc. During this time, Media had three subsidiary labels, which included the kidvid-centric Hi-Tops Video, the TCM-esque Nostalgia Merchant, and Fox Hills Video, which specialized in miscellaneous content.
Media Home Entertainment was one of the biggest home video companies of the 1980s, with enough power and influence to rival the video units of any major Hollywood studio. However, the company began to fall on hard times in 1990 when Mr. Ronson found himself on the list of the Guinness Four, a man known to be involved in the Guinness share-trading fraud of the 1980s. During that year, Ronson was convicted of one charge of conspiracy, two charges of false accounting and one charge of theft. He was fined £5 million and sent to prison for one year (he ultimately served six months).
The trial severely damaged Media Home Entertainment's standing in the home video market. It lost its own distribution network, relying on CBS/Fox (later FoxVideo) and budget label Video Treasures to get its product out the door. By 1993, Media Home Entertainment officially ended its life. Media will best be remembered for its introducing VCRs across America to Freddy Krueger, on top of its having a wide, varied catalogue of comedy, drama and action films; it will also be remembered (along with its sublabels) as one of the 1980s' most influential video companies.
