Videoage International October 2020

28 October 2020 V I D E O A G E U .S. film and TV veteran Irving (Irv) Holender began his career in the entertainment industry as an intern at Desilu Studios in Hollywood in 1966. He was 21 years old and already married. He had moved from his native Bronx, New York to Los Angeles six years earlier when his parents inexplicably decided to move west. The job at Desilu was secured thanks to a friend whose father was president of Licensing at the studio, which was founded in 1950 by husband and wife team Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Just a year later, in 1967, Holender became Desilu’s vice president of International Licensing. That same year, he also attended his first MIP- TV in Cannes on behalf of Desilu. “There, I met the legendary Lew Grade of ITC,” recalled Holender. His rise through the ranks might seem quick, but it only foreshadowed the frenetic pace that he would set the following 46 years, until 2012, when he re-launched Multicom Entertainment Group and took a more corporate role. He had founded the company in 1995, and currently serves as its chairman. Throughout the years, Holender has been involved with over 10 entertainment enterprises, and acquired film and TV libraries from more than 30 companies, some of which converged into Multicom. In 2018, he used the content to launch TheArchive channel, home to 1,000 hours of restored, retro, and hard-to-find movies and TV shows in 4K and HD, which is available worldwide with AVoD and SVoD options. In 1968, Holender co-founded Holcorp (Holender Corp.), which came about after Ball sold Desilu to Paramount’s corporate owner, Gulf and Western, in 1968. (Ball had bought out Arnaz’s shares in 1962.) Holcorp handled worldwide licensing andmerchandising formajor studios, including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. “Holcorp was a licensing company for toys, publishing, and music,” Holender explained. He continued with the company for three years before co-founding ZIV International, which was named after his partner, Mark Ziv, a real estate developer who Holender bought out within two years. The company, recalled Holender, “amassed a large content library and licensing and merchandising rights [to an abundance of properties].” (ZIV International wasn’t connected to Ziv Television Programs, a syndication company founded in 1948 by producer Frederick W. Ziv, ‘1905-2001’ in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ziv Television was sold to United Artists in 1960). Acquiring film and TV libraries has been Holender’s main goal from the start, more so than producing new content, and he’s now one of the world’s foremost experts in finding, assessing, and acquiring them. From 2010 to 2017, Multicom acquired 14 film and TV libraries from companies such as Kushner-Locke, Leonard Hill, and Passport, for a total of over 6,000 hours of content. “I realized early on the risk of producing, and began focusing on content, especially on proven historical iconic TV series and films,” Holender said. “The preference is always to own. However, we still distribute third-party content.” And when it comes to his acquisition strategy, he explained, “there are no two deals that are alike. Each is a separate challenge, whether it’s a producer or a banker who wants to sell the asset.” A big part of the content Multicom acquired — some of whichwas produced in 1958, like the Peter Gunn TV series — required restoration, which was done through Multicom’s technical facility in Inglewood, located in south Los Angeles, a few miles from Multicom’s headquarters in Beverly Hills. Recently, over 100 titles have been restored to 4K from their original 35mm by Multicom’s facility. The technical facility was originally a remote storage space for tapes and film, but Holender turned it into a place that specializes in film and video services, including format conversions, film preservation, and digitization services. Throughout his career, Holender witnessed all five major development phases of the television business: starting with the growth of domestic (U.S.) syndication, which lasted from 1970 until 1993; the emergence of U.S. cable TV networks, which began in 1972 with HBO (followed by superstation WTBS and ESPN in 1979, then BET and USA Network in 1980, MTV in 1981, and Discovery Channel in 1985); the development of home video from 1975 to 2015; the evolution of international television, which blossomed in 1980; and the explosion of digital media, which began in earnest after 2015. As an independent operator (i.e., one not associated with a studio), he had to adapt to each of the new phases and every new business environment by making alliances, focusing on content, creating new companies, and opportunistically merging or selling them off. Strategically, hisoutlook tends tobepessimistic, in order to be prepared for any surprises that might arise. But he doesn’t back away from new challenges. He collects vintage cars for fun, but his main hobby is business, and his favorite meeting place with this journalist was a Coffee Bean café (that has since closed) in theWestwood area of Los Angeles. We usually met at 7 a.m., and by that time, he had already read The Los Angeles Times, checked Wall Street’s stock trends, and spoken with executives in Europe, New York, and Toronto. He’s a little bit of a hypochondriac, so his late morning hours are usually reserved for doctors’ visits, but he spends the remainder of his days on the phonewith virtually all of Hollywood. He tends to know well in advance who is going to be fired, what is included in the execs’ financial exit packages, and who’s going to be hired in their stead. But while he’s in the know, he’s also well-known for being a mensch. Young people call him for career advice. Competitors call him for sales opportunities. And he regularly checks on the health status of friends and acquaintances. After his quick rise at Desilu and co-founding Holcorp with Al Ehrlich, among other investors, Holender’s third major challenge was the co- creation of the aforementioned ZIV International in 1971, where he served as executive producer for over 600 hours of television programming, including animated features such as Sinbad, Les Miserables, and The Adventures of King Arthur , as well as over 20 major music concerts, including performances from Tony Bennett and Folies Bergere. ZIV also handled the worldwide distribution and licensing for Dallas, Abbott & Costello , and Bruce Lee’s franchises, as well as over 1,700 feature films. In 1982, Holender sold his shares of ZIV International to Lorimar, became president and COO of ZIV/Lorimar, and took over worldwide sales and licensing for series like Knots Landing and Falcon Crest. Getting close to Lorimar allowed Holender to also witness the birth of the American Film Market. Irv Holender: A Mensch Who Harvests Libraries And Sells Content Worldwide Int’l TV Distribution Hall of Fame By Dom Serafini Multicom’s executive team (l. to r.): Irv Holender, Leo David, Darrin Holender at MIPCOM 2018 The Grammy award received for the Little Prince in 1974 (l. to r.): producer Buddy Kay, Richard Burton, Al Ehrlich, and Irv Holender (Continued on Page 30)