MTM Entertainment Team Welcomes British Merger

Actress Mary Tyler Moore and the three top executives of MTM Entertainment confirmed at a Wednesday morning news conference that the successful Studio City-based television production company is being acquired by Television South of London for $320 million.

Flanked by MTM President Arthur L. Price, Senior Executive Vice President Mel D. Blumenthal and Executive Vice President Thomas E. Palmieri--with the company’s famous mewing kitten logo in the background--an upbeat Moore pronounced that it was “a very important and exciting day for us, both corporately and individually.”

Asked if she felt she was the victim of a foreign takeover, Moore laughed and said: “No, I feel like we’ve been given a tremendous opportunity to grow, especially in the European market.”

Price said that, rather than an acquisition, MTM management viewed the TVS buyout as “a merger out of which will grow a bigger and stronger company.”

MTM’s principal asset is a library containing more than 1,000 hours of programming--including such long-running series as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Lou Grant,” “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere.” The company also holds a 50% interest in the CBS/MTM Co., a partnership whose principal asset is a 40-acre production facility in Studio City, and a controlling interest in MTM Ardmore Studios Ltd. in Dublin, Ireland. According to a prospectus issued in connection with the proposed acquisition, MTM had pretax profits of $43.8 million in 1987, up from $41.1 in 1986.

Moore said she would use some of the millions she earned on the deal “philanthropically. I have a number of medical projects that are very close to me.”

According to Price--who founded the company in 1970 along with Moore and her former husband Grant Tinker--the current MTM management will remain in place as will the company name. He said the four directors--Moore is a “non-executive” director--”have taken a major stock position” in the new company, which he put at 20% for the group, and have signed seven-year management contracts.

“There will be no change in personnel or creative attitude,” he said, adding “the only thing that will change is that our bank account will move from New York to London. (TVS Chief Executive) James Gatward has no intention of coming over here and telling us how to run the company.”

Price and Blumenthal will take two of the 12 seats on TVS’ board of directors. Price said he is now the largest individual shareholder in TVS.

Until news of the deal was first reported last week by the Financial Times of London, TVS was little known outside of England, where its TV productions are aired in the southern part of the country on Britain’s two-channel commercial network, Independent Television. Price said Wednesday that talks between MTM and TVS actually had been going on for 10 months and that the two companies had a relationship dating back to 1984, when they co-produced a two-hour NBC-TV movie called “Behind Enemy Lines” that starred Hal Holbrook. Since 1986, Telso Communications Ltd., the international arm of TVS, has distributed many MTM programs in the international market.

In addition, TVS currently owns 3.5% of North Star Holdings, which operates Network 10, one of three commercial television channels in Australia; and 10.6% of Super Channel Ltd., an English-language satellite channel serving 11 million homes in Western Europe.

To partly finance the MTM deal, TVS sold 20% of its stock to two French companies--Canal Plus, which operates a pay TV channel, and General d’Image, which is a 90%-owned subsidiary of Company General Des Eaux, or the water company.

‘Made the Marriage’

In an interview following the news conference, David Gersh, the lead U.S. counsel for TVS, described the acquisition as “a brilliant synergistic deal that has long-term consequences for the television business.”

“What you have here, if you think about it, is an interlocking of important TV production companies on a global basis,” Gersh said. “Both companies were looking for a foreign market. That’s what made the marriage.”

Gersh called the acquisition “an extraordinary deal” for TVS. “It gives them access to the U.S. market and a major production facility.”