Video Business trade magazine is
reporting that Liberty International Entertainment (who have been behind the DVD releases of
The Lost World, among others) has been purchased. The buyer is Jay Boberg, who used to be President of MCA Records but may be better-remembered as the co-founder of I.R.S. Records (boy, I remember buying Go-Go's songs on vinyl from that record company...okay, I just dated myself). With Liberty now in hand, Boberg has created a new video distribution company called Liberation Entertainment.
Liberation will be taking over a large number of the DVD properties that Liberty had control of, including - according to the
Video Business story - "2,400 hours of TV shows, including music programs such as PBS’s
Sound Stage show and such classic TV series as
Daniel Boone and
Peter Gunn."
Daniel Boone, of course is the hour-long show starring Fess Parker (of
Davey Crockett fame) in the title role. Liberation now owns DVD control of all 165 episodes, which were remastered from the original negatives in recent history. So fans of this series who have long waited for the show to come to DVD will finally see some movement in this direction soon.
Peter Gunn has already had a pair of DVD set releases from A&E in March, 2002, but these are largely off the market. PBS's
Soundstage show, of course, is the musical performance series that started way back in 1974 and has featured top acts along the way such as Three Dog Night, Journey, Grand Funk Railroad, George Jones, Lyle Lovett, Trisha Yearwood, Heart, Ringo Starr, and too many more to name here. This will be welcome to music lovers everywhere!
VB also reports that Liberation "has licensed TV programs from
Here! Network, targeting the gay and lesbian audience." They are also looking to acquire other libraries of content. The article credits Boberg with saying "that most of the company’s DVDs will be released through the Weinstein Co.’s Genius Products".
This is all very early in the way of plans, of course, and Liberation still needs to firm up what products they will release, and when. Stay tuned and we'll keep an eye on this and keep you, our readers, up to date on new developments. For now we'll congratulate Liberation on the forming of their new company, and openly invite them to contact Gord and myself to keep us informed of the goings-on there so we can pass the info on to everybody. Hopefully they'll take us up on that offer. Stay tuned!
