Magnetic Video Corporation

Magnetic Video Corporation is the birthplace of home video as we know it today.

History
The company was established in 1968 as an audio duplication facility in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, Michigan by Andre Blay. Blay was an ambitious filmmaker who had always wanted to duplicate movies on videocassette. He had a problem though: not only was the technology not advanced enough yet, the majors were skeptical because of something called analog piracy (the predecessor vice to digital piracy).

Then came Sony's Betamax, in 1975, and then JVC's VHS format, one year later. One month after VHS was introduced to the States, Blay managed to reach an agreement with 20th Century Fox, represented by their telecommunications director Steve Roberts, to distribute 50 films from the company for a down payment of between $250,000 and $500,000 plus royalties. Roberts had Fox go through and look for 50 films in their library to release on video; and all of them had to have already been broadcast on television before being released on home video. Blay also established the Video Club of America in order to sell the titles directly to consumers by mail.

That same year, George Atkinson bought one Betamax and one VHS copy of each of the first 50 movie titles from Magnetic Video that were then being sold to the public and established the Video Station rental company from a storefront in Los Angeles. He charged $50 for an "annual membership" and $100 for a "lifetime membership," which provided the opportunity to rent the videos for $10 a day. This and similar video stores were a success, and Magnetic Video took off, with Blay crossing the Atlantic to form "Magnetic Video UK" in 1978. Not long after, Magnetic Video branched into Australia, trading under "Magnetic Video Australia". In March 1979, Fox saw how successful the Magnetic Video Corporation was turning out to be, and purchased it outright; Mr. Blay remained president until late 1981, when he left to form Blay Video.

But Fox wasn't the only company Magnetic had dealings with.

In 1978, Blay acquired the rights to material released by Viacom International (including seven films featuring Elvis Presley, three films featuring Jerry Lewis, and Terrytoon cartoon compilations and sports tapes), RBC Films (specifically, their Charlie Chaplin library), and Avco Embassy Pictures Corporation.

Distribution of films from Brut Productions, Bill Burrud Productions, and Pathé followed in 1979.

ABC Video Enterprises, ITC Entertainment, and the American Film Theatre joined Magnetic in 1980, and so did United Artists Corporation (including films that were originally distributed by Warner Bros.) in 1981.

in January 1982, after Andre Blay left the company to form Blay Video (which would, ironically, become Embassy's home video division), Magnetic received a new name: Twentieth Century-Fox Video. Since then, they have taken on the names CBS/Fox Video (during that era, they also utilized the sublabels Key Video and Playhouse Video) and FoxVideo (utilizing the FoxVideo name for Fox movies, while CBS/Fox was relegated to BBC Video and other miscellaneous titles), before settling on their current name, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, in 1998.

During the company's final year, they also had a short-lived sports division called "Magnetic Video Sports", and a short-lived LaserDisc division. There were also international branches in the UK, the South Pacific, and Australia. Magnetic Video was also a duplicator for early tapes released by Paramount Home Video and MCA Videocassette, Inc.

In the United States alone, over 400 different releases were produced by Magnetic Video Corporation over the course of 5 years from 1977 to 1982.

Distributed libraries

 * 20th Century Fox
 * ABC Video Enterprises
 * American Film Theatre
 * AVCO Embassy Picture Corporation
 * Bill Burrud Productions
 * Brut Productions
 * ITC Entertainment
 * New Line Cinema
 * Pathé
 * RBC Films (Charles Chaplin library)
 * United Artists Corporation
 * Viacom International