Media Home Entertainment Inc. was a home video company headquartered in Culver City, California, originally established in 1978 by filmmaker Charles Band.
Media Home Entertainment also distributed video product under three additional labels — The Nostalgia Merchant (very old or classic films), Hi-Tops Video (children's videos), and Fox Hills Video (special-interest videos/obscure B-movies and low-profile Cannon pictures). The "Fox Hills" name was derived from a geographical location near the company's headquarters at 5700 Buckingham Parkway.
History
The company got off to a rocky start when ABKCO Records successfully sued them for releasing The Rolling Stones' Hyde Park concert on Betamax and VHS, followed by a successful suit against it, VCI Home Video, and Video Tape Network filed by Northern Songs for releasing Beatles material (Media's tapes included Around The Beatles—featuring the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as backup singers, with performers such as Long John Baldry—a John Lennon solo concert, Magical Mystery Tour, a Shea Stadium concert, Sextette—featuring Beatles member Ringo Starr—and a Tokyo concert), but would eventually become one of the largest independent video distributors in the U.S., relying on acquired films, television programs, and children's programs to establish a library of product. Some releases from the company included the original Halloween, the majority of the Peanuts specials (up to 1984), The Adventures of the Wilderness Family, Enemies, A Love Story, I Come in Peace, some films from the Cannon Films library, and all of the Nightmare on Elm Street films in the 1980s (1984–1989), the first two Texas Chain Saw Massacre'''s (1974's original and 1986's second, "2", both Tobe Hooper's direction) and 1976's original John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13.
In 1983, Media Home Entertainment entered into an agreement with film distributor United Film Distribution Company whereas Media would release seven United Film Distribution Company's film titles on videocassette. Also, the following year, in 1984, the company bought out the home video rights of the movie Santa Claus: The Movie for $2.6 million from the Salkinds.
On April 18, 1984, the company received an agreement with Cinetel Productions and gave them right of first refusal on any direct-to-video project Cinetel has ever produced for Media Home Entertainment and the budget is in the $50-200,000 range for Cinetel/MHE projects. On April 25, 1984, Media Home Entertainment entered into an agreement in order to grab the home video rights to the Peanuts specials under the new "Snoopy's Home Video Library" banner and gave them the worldwide home video rights of all the specials, and has plans to produce direct-to-video material.
On July 14, 1984, the company had bought out The Nostalgia Merchant, which was previously a distributor of classic, contemporary and modern films on videocassette, for an undisclosed seven-price tag.
In 1984, Media Home Entertainment was bought by Heron Communications Inc., a subsidiary of Gerald Ronson's Heron International. However, by late 1990, Media Home Entertainment had begun downsizing its staff and selling off its video assets in the wake of Ronson's involvement in the Guinness share-trading fraud in Great Britain.
On September 14, 1985, Media Home Entertainment and The Cannon Group inked an agreement that they would pick up videocassette rights to upcoming 32 films from the studio's own feature film catalog, which is the largest deals in the video industry. In 1986, Trans World Entertainment had inked an agreement with Media Home Entertainment whereas the eight theatrical Trans World titles would be handled on video by Media Home Entertainment. In February 1986, Media Home Entertainment entered into the U.S. Hispanic market by launching its own Spanish product line Condor Video, which was growing to became the biggest video distributor in the sector, and had an agreement with American General Film Distribution, the largest U.S. Hispanic film distributor ever, and also had Spanish-subtitled versions of Media's flagship products, which were The Cannon Group, as well as entities in the Nightmare on Elm Street film franchise, which had a total of 124 titles in the library.
