Video Age International October 2015

18 October 2015 V I D E O A G E B ruce Gordon started his successful career in the international program distribution business in 1962, but to describe him, it is better to beginwith the present. That said, this one page couldn’t do justice to his accomplishments, which would require an entire book to outline. Gordon doesn’t believe in titles, so he’s content being deputy chairman of WIN, an entertainment group based in Wollongong, Australia, which owns a TV network, radio stations, a production company, a rugby team and investments in several TV outlets. The executive chairman is his firstborn, 44-year-old Andrew, and his daughter Genevieve, 24, is a board member. Gordon became a broadcaster by chance. In the mid-1960s he began to buy shares of Sydney’s TV Channel Ten as a family investment. When, in 1979, Rupert Murdoch decided to take control of the channel, he met Gordon for lunch in New York City and traded his majority shares in TV station WIN-4 in Wollongong for the Gordon family’s shares of Channel Ten. Gordon accepted that offer immediately, unlike in 1958 when he declined a job offer to run Murdoch’s TV station in Adelaide. The seaside resort town of Wollongong has been Gordon’s home base ever since, and it now boasts The Bruce Gordon Theater, which was inaugurated in 1988 by Prince Charles and Princess Diana. His links to both the town and the arts go back to his childhood. He recalls summer holidays and when he performed his magic act at the old Town Hall Annex in Wollongong, a town south of his birthplace, Sydney. Today, at age 86, Gordon is a bundle of energy trying to prevent the joint Discovery-Foxtel A$590 million bid to buy the Ten TV network, where he owns a 14.9 percent stake, pitting him against shareholders Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer. Subsequently, Foxtel bought a 15 percent stake in Ten for A$77 million. Recently, Gordon acquired for A$40 million a five percent share in Network Nine in anticipation of media reforms that could trigger a series of takeovers. He also owns 2.02 percent of TPG, which is in the midst of a A$1.4 billion takeover of iiNet to create Australia’s second-largest broadband provider. Gordon’s life has been bound inextricably to the theater and media. He first rose through the ranks of the Tivoli Theatre chain in Australia before eventually becoming business director and a member of the chain’s management board in 1960. Then, in 1962, the American Desilu Studios (of I Love Lucy fame) asked him to run its Sydney office, heading sales of Desilu programs in Australia and Asia. In 1967, Desilu was bought by Paramount for $10 million, and Gordon became the studio’s managing director for the Far East. In 1972, he was promoted to VP of International TV Sales and in 1974 was named president of Paramount International Television and moved to New York City to work under the company’s owner Charles Bluhdorn and Paramount’s chairman Barry Diller. In a recent interview with VideoAge , Gordon recalled the early challenges when he had to integrate the Desilu international sales structure into Paramount, which did not have an extensive overseas TV program sales unit. Indeed, Gordon’s first TV market was MIP-TV in 1966 with Desilu. “In the beginning we had a very small stand, but when Columbia gave up its booth, we quickly took that larger space in the Old Palais. After that, all our stands became thematic, reflecting the key series that we were launching internationally,” he said. He also recalled just before the sale to Paramount, Desilu had three series in production: Star Trek , Mission Impossible and Mannix . Those series subsequently became big franchises for Paramount. In 1985, two years before Paramount’s international TV division moved to Hollywood, ProgramSales Gave BruceGordonThe Savvy ToConfrontMurdoch, Packer inAustralia Int’l TV Distribution Hall of Fame (Continued on Page 20) He doesn’t like to brag about his good fortune. On the contrary, he likes to keep quiet so as not to stimulate unnecessary jealousy and envy. Bruce Gordon Bruce Gordon introduced the thematic booths at international TV trade shows, here the Paramount’s stand of Cheers at MIP-TV 1985 The Gordon family: Genevieve, Bruce, Andrew, Judith