B.C.

distrib

Vancouver: Newly formed TSC Film Distribution is about to boldly go where no other b.c.-based company has gone before – into the hazardous territory of international film and television distribution.

tsc will also be the first company to access British Columbia Film’s fledgling distribution business expansion program. The provincial film funding agency has invested $250,000 in the company to assist with the initial capitalization of the venture.

The remaining financing will come from parent company TSC Shannock, one of Canada’s largest video wholesalers, and private sources. A public offering will be undertaken later this year to raise further financing for tsc’s film distribution activities.

William McCartney, president and ceo of TSC Shannock, says the new full-service distribution company, to be headed up by Gordon Guiry, a former president of Astral Films and CVN Communications in Montreal, will enable TSC Shannock to vertically integrate and expand and diversify its activities into program acquisition.

The new distribution wing is expected to be operational by the end of the month.

Other senior staff at the new company include manager of foreign sales Melanie Kilgour, formerly with North American Releasing in Vancouver, and manager of domestic sales Janine McCaw, previously with Vancouver-based Northern Lights Releasing.

Wayne Sterloff, president and ceo of B.C. Film, says the province has never had a full-fledged, full-service distributor handling theatrical as well as television and non-theatrical productions. This, he says, has always been a major stumbling block for the indigenous production community.

‘Without sales, there’s a huge hole in our infrastructure. And if you’re going to have a stable production industry you can’t have a hole in the infrastructure. Not having full-time sales people out preselling product and existing inventory affects producers tremendously.’

Founded in 1978, Vancouver-based TSC Shannock is a publicly traded corporation listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange with revenues of $72.3 million in fiscal 1994. Operating as a fully integrated home entertainment supplier of video, audio cassettes, compact and laser discs, and interactive video games, the company has sales offices in Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Don Mills, Ont., Mississauga, Ont. and Dartmouth, n.s.

It also holds exclusive Canadian home-video distribution rights to a library of Canadian and u.s. titles, including those produced under the mpi, Rhino and view labels.

Among TSC Shannock’s other holdings are Calgary video and post-production facility Echo Video Productions, Trax Music Vision retail outlets, and a videotape manufacturing company in Malaysia.

Producers in b.c. have long contended that not having a local distributor puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to staying on top of the rapidly changing market.

‘That’s terribly important,’ says Sterloff, ‘because the closer you can get to the marketplace, the closer you can get to the demand side of the economy. Full-time salespeople having to earn revenue for their shareholders are going to let you know very quickly exactly what the demand for their product is going to be.’

Others in the industry, however, question how tsc can compete with the well-established and heavily capitalized eastern Canadian distributors, given the failures in recent years of other Western-based companies like Vancouver’s Festival Films and Calgary’s Nova Entertainment, another video wholesaler that quickly discovered you need mighty deep pockets to survive in the international distribution game.

McCartney insists the difference is ‘diversification.’ TSC Shannock, he argues, does not depend on a single stream of revenue. It is a large, diversified firm, the third largest video wholesaler in Canada. ‘We have the resources to carry out these distribution activities and we have the corporate infrastructure already in place at Shannock that we can offer this new company,’ he says.

‘We also hope we can offer Western producers a viable alternative to the major eastern-based companies. Competing won’t be easy, but I think we have an advantage in that we are new.

‘In any established business that you take over, there’s always baggage,’ McCartney says. ‘With this company, we don’t have any baggage, so we can do things differently and come up with new ideas. We are not necessarily bound by what the industry holds as the norm.’

Competing, he says, will also rely on the acquisition of quality Canadian programming. ‘We intend to pay more attention to the programs we are acquiring – reflecting what will sell in the marketplace – and then to market these acquisitions well with efficient marketing campaigns.

‘Certainly our intent will be to initially concentrate on local production,’ says McCartney. ‘But it will have to be good; if it’s not it won’t sell, and I don’t care where it’s made.’