Detroit Free Press du lieu suivant : Detroit, Michigan • Page 31

DETROIT FREE PRESSSUNDAY, OCT. 19, 1980 3C IS 7" lution 9 video revo sionary greets dawn VI Here we are on Industrial Park Court in Farmington Hills, thousands of miles from L.A., the Coast, the glitzy California glamor, the Hollywood hype and all those miles and miles of sunglasses, Mercedes cars and ortho-dontically perfect, pearly white, silver screen smiles. Except Around the bend on this suburban business thoroughfare lies Magnetic Video a quiet, heavyweight Hollywood connection. The company, founded and headquartered in Michigan, is the king of the burgeoning home video cassette business. Not only does the king hold the rights to titles such as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "Julia," "Towering Inferno" and "Alien." The king also set a video cassette milestone when its newest offering, "All That Jazz," racked up $1 million in pre-release sales, making it the first video cassette ever to, in show business parlance, ship gold.

Mike Duffy television MAGNETIC VIDEO is the business concoction of a man of Free Press Photos by PATRICIA BECK Four years ago. Magnetic Video of Farmington Hills was making 20.000 video cassettes a month. Now the number is up to 165,000. But back in 1969, Magnetic Video was strictly into audio, making ends meet by duplicating eight-track pop music cassettes by groups such as the Supremes. IN THE EARLY 70s, the company moved into industrial training films and tapes.

But still, the plotting and planning all revolved around getting in on the ground floor of the home video cassette market. That meant doing business with the major film studios that owned the films. By the time Sony unleashed the Betamax in 1976, Blay already had been to Hollywood. He went in cold, knocked on a few doors and did what you might find fairly unbelievable by striking an exclusive licensing deal with 20th Century-Fox. The three-year deal gave Magnetic Video the right to manufacture and distribute 50 Fox films (including "MASH," "Patton" and "The Sound of for video-cassette recorder use.

Not bad for a small Farmington Hills firm. Blay obviously knew what he was doing. In 1979, Fox bought Magnetic Video for $7.2 million, and Blay stayed on as president and mastermind. Now he has the clout of Fox's vast millions to make deals such as the $43 million purchase of United Artists' film library. HOW WAS what Blay bemusedly terms "the infamous Fox deal" made? "The studios had always lamented the fact that they passed up the chance to control television when it began in the late 40s," he said.

"They could have been the networks instead of ABC, NBC and CBS. "Then when cable and, more importantly, pay-cable came along, they also missed out on that. This time, they didn't want to miss out. They were afraid not to take a gamble on something new again." Four years ago, Magnetic Video was making 20,000 video cassettes a month. Now it's up to 1 65,000 cassettes a month worldwide and spiraling upward.

"We knew it was going to grow, but we certainly didn't think it would explode like this," Blay said. MAGNETIC VIDEO, housed in three buildings, still, makes industrial training tapes. There also are post-production facilities and a studio where TV commercials for clients like Chrysler are made. But Hollywood films still are where the big money is. By 1983, when seven percent to 10 percent of American homes are expected to be equipped with video cassette recorders, Blay expects the business to start tripling and quadrupling.

"That's when it will start to go through the roof the way color TV did," he said. Though Warner Paramount and CBS-MGM have joined the home video cassette wars, Magnetic Video remains a strong No. 1 in the field. "We still have over 40 percent of the market," Blay said. "Obviously, that's going to be declining, but we want to remain No.

1. The competition is good. It builds the market. And this is going to be a multibillion-dollar market." French descent who grew up in Mt. Clemens, Andre Blay.

Blay, mid-40ish and a dapper dresser, is a self-effacing Michigan State University graduate and family man who gets up three or four times a week at 7 a.m. to play racquetball with his minister before driving the 1 V2 miles from his home to Magnetic Video. Hollywood does not seem to have rubbed off on him. He is not interested in self-promotion. In fact, he is worried that a story about Magnetic Video will turn out to be too much "local boy makes good," too much Andre Blay.

Trouble is, it's hard to downplay a cagey visionary like Blay, who saw a revolution before it happened, who anticipated a market before it existed. "We're moving more toward a time when the television set will be a personal item, rather than something that the networks tell us what we're going to watch," Blay said. THE THING to remember is that Blay also said that back in 1969, before any of us knew what a Betamax or a video disc or a Home Box Office was. Back then, Blay, who had put in time with Corning Glass, among others, before tiring of playing corporate politics, heard the futurists talking about the coming video revolution. It was just a matter of getting the technology perfected.

So, wanting to be ready with the software when the hardware finally went on sale, Blay and partner Leon Nicholson founded Magnetic Video in Farmington Hills. They knew that come the dawn of the home video age, people affluent enough to buy the Betamaxes and such would have a voracious appetite for programming. Especially movies. AND IT HAS only just begun, Blay said. "There's going to be two winners in this business.

Those who control programming and those who control distribution. We control both. Sometimes we only distribute. We distribute Columbia Pictures and Walt Disney through our mail order club (Video Club of America)." The next big frontier to conquer is programming. New programming.

"If we want to be a really important part of the business when it really explodes in a few years, we'll have to create our own programming," Blay said, smiling at the thought of a new challenge. "If I can't be involved in the creative process, then the fun will soon be over. I don't want to just package and sell other people's movies for the rest of my life." So get ready, America. Someday soon you might be seeing, right there on your home screens, direct from Farmington Hills by way of Hollywood, a Magnetic Video Production. Meanwhile, the stacks and stacks of video cassette duplicators (called slaves) hum on quietly in Farmington Hills, popping out cassette after cassette, making a local boy look awfujly good.

Andre Blay anticipated the video explosion years before it happened. "'PRIVATE BENJAMIN'comes out with flags flying. Goldie Hawn proves that she is the screen's leading comic actress. If we gave promotions she'd be a I -fit i -I AM IpecicIs THE DINNER WINNERS! "'PRIVATE BENJAMIN' is funny and Goldie Hawn is totally charming." VI- I A'jln- lit Si YOU MAY HAVE YOUR CHOICE OF "AWinner! Deliriously Nutsy." "GOLDIE HAWN at her very best." OffJySy great I uui. imuv.

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