Magnetic Video Corporation

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

History
The company was established in 1967 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.

Then, 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

Fall 1977 (The first 50 titles)
The earliest prints of Magnetic Video releases lacked an F.B.I. Warning bumper. Instead, the tapes would typically cut to the Magnetic Video logo, followed by the film itself. The front covers were black/white slipcases, and featured a photo of a scene from the film. In early 1980, they were changed to have the title above the photo. The original back cover catalog listed all the 50 films from Fox, from Hello, Dolly! to A Farewell to Arms (Fall 1977). Also, in these days, the balance between tapes on two-tape releases was more equal, or else the ratio between program and blank tape was greater on the second tape. The original 1977 printings had their tapes manufactured in, and imported from, Japan.

Spring 1978
In 1978, a red FBI Warning was added to the start of the tapes. It, and successors based upon it, would carry over to subsequent Fox video labels (it would also be used by some Embassy Home Entertainment titles after their split from Magnetic/TCF Video, and into the 1990s by Worldvision Home Video). Some back covers listed the newly-released titles from Viacom (Spring 1978) and/or the estate of Charles Chaplin (Summer 1978), others listed those plus some more Viacom titles and the first 15 from Avco-Embassy (Fall 1978A), and others listed everything from Hello, Dolly! to The Sound of Music. Around this time, newer pressings of older two-tape films started filling the first tape more.

The Estate of Charles Chaplin (RBC Films)
The Chaplin titles had no back catalogs; just descriptions of the films.

Winter 1979
A single title was released in mid-February 1979. In addition, virtually all titles up to this point were reissued with the back catalog listing everything from Hello, Dolly! to The Sound of Music.

Summer 1979
The first version of the back covers for 1979 (Summer 1979) listed all the titles (except, for some reason, for Fantastic Voyage and Von Ryan's Express), plus a few from Avco-Embassy that never got released. The second (Fall 1979A) and third (Fall 1979B) versions of the back covers list different tiles (the latter including some new releases) along with "And many more...".

Fall 1979
Beginning with this wave, the warning on the front of the box was re-aligned. In addition, the "T.M." trademarks were now printed on the spines of the tape cartridges by the Magnetic logo, and titles from Avco-Embassy now carried a mini-logo of such studio on the fronts and sides of the packaging.

Bill Burrud Productions
Wildlife documentaries produced by wildlife expert Bill Burrud. At least 6 of them were released by Magnetic Video in 1979. All have specially-patterned marquees reflecting nature itself, and even most of the normally white parts of the slipcover use this pattern as well.

Pathé News
At least 4 different collections of public domain newsreels from the French company were released by Magnetic Video in 1979; as with the Chaplin titles, there was no back catalog.

March 1980
At first, the back catalog was the same as before, except it now carried a 1980 copyright date.

May 1980
The back catalog was the same as before, but the font had changed, the title makeup was changed, and the marquee was now at the top.

ITC Entertainment
Most ITC Entertainment releases featured an Associated Film Distribution logo, the American arm of ITC, or else that of other local American distributors of ITC's films. Magnetic's first title from ITC Entertainment was 1979's The Muppet Movie.

July 1980
Around this time, the company got a new logo: the angled letters "M" and "C" written in a rounded font, with the inward-facing edges turning into lines; with a small triangle in-between (sometimes colored red), the negative space between the letters formed a "V". The company's name and a Twentieth Century-Fox byline were written in a thin font, beneath the logo. This only ever appeared on the packaging of tapes and promotional material; the tapes themselves continued to use the 1977 mirrored-M logo. (It did make an on-screen appearance on the MVC co-produced video compilation A Golden Decade of College Football in 1981, however.)

ABC Video Enterprises
Some films either had the ABC Pictures logo, or the ABC Pictures International logo. Most films that had the latter on the tape originally had the domestic 1968 version. ABC Pictures films were originally distributed by Cinerama Releasing, but such logo was removed on most Magnetic Video releases.

American Film Theatre
14 were produced for Motion Picture Theaters from 1973 to 1975, and all of them were released by Magnetic Video in 1980. They came in large leather black bookcases. On the front was the words "Video Playhouse" written in script on the top, and on the bottom was a small picture from the film, and the title in script font.

1981
Towards the end of 1981, the company got one last logo change; it was basically the text from beneath the "MVC" logo ("MAGNETIC VIDEO" in thin letters), only increased in size. Again, the original semi-circles logo continued to be used at the start of the tapes.

United Artists Corporation
United Artists' library included films that were previously distributed by Warner Bros. and owned by now-UA subsidiary Associated Artists Productions; also, earlier UA releases from Magnetic Video featured Transamerica references to the company. The sale to MGM wouldn't be finalized until August 1981, and following that, Transamerica then ordered UA to remove their name from the logos of all their films. Transamerica references were also seen on early CED and LaserDisc releases of United Artists films, earlier in 1981. Transamerica logos are also rumored to appear on UK Intervision Video releases of UA films from December 1980.

Scrapped and unreleased titles
TBD

Locations

 * Farmington Hills, Michigan