Village Roadshow

Australian-based entertainment group Village Roadshow (VR) was founded by Roc Kirby in 1954 as one of the first drive-in cinemas, entering film distribution in the 1960’s and film production in the 70’s. It now operates an international chain of cinemas, operates in the film production and distribution sectors, is in partnership with AOL Time Warner in Australian theme parks and is a major Australian commercial broadcaster.

The group has been 33% owned by Amalgamated Holdings Ltd (AHL) - the hotels, cinemas, film-labs, ski-resorts operator - since the 1950s. As of mid 2000 the Kirby family owned another 32%.

     cinemas

Village Roadshow and partners currently operate around 1 500 cinemas (there's a PDF listing as of June 2001) in 15 countries. Village is Australia's largest cinema operator, with an interest in screens across all Australian states.

After significant losses, like its major counterparts in North America, it is in the process of leaving Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and France.

     film production and distribution

The group has restructured its production arm, now based in Los Angeles and apparently driven as a partnership with Warner Bros. Until recently it had 34.7% of shares in Hong Kong film company Golden Harvest Entertainment

Roadshow Distributors is a 50/50 joint venture with the Greater Union Organisation (GU) distributing theatrical movies to cinema, video, pay TV and free to air television in Australia and New Zealand. Roadshow Entertainment is a distributor of videos and interactive software in Australia and New Zealand. The group has a small distribution presence in Singapore and Greece.

     parks

The group is Australia's largest theme park operator, with three parks on Australia’s Gold Coast in partnership with the AOL Time Warner conglomerate: Warner Bros. Movie World, Sea World and Wet ‘n’ Wild Water World. It also has a stake in Sea World Nara Resort, a 405 room hotel adjacent to Sea World

     Austereo radio network

Village Roadshow subsidiary Austereo claims to be the "largest radio broadcaster outside America". It originated with the company that secured secured the first commercial FM licence in Adelaide in 1980 and purchased the struggling FOX FM in Melbourne in 1986 and 4BK in Brisbane in 1987 (converted to B105 FM). Village Roadshow sold its Triple M network to Austereo in 1994, for a 53.5% stake which has since been sold down to around 40%.

Austereo's currently expanded its Australian network and established a presence in the UK, Malaysia and Greece. Stations include

2Day FM - Sydney
2MMM - Sydney
Fox FM - Melbourne
3MMM - Melbourne
B105 - Brisbane
4MMM - Brisbane
SAFM - Adelaide
5MMM - Adelaide
MIX 94.5 - Perth
All New 92.9 - Perth
NXFM - Newcastle
KOFM - Newcastle
FM104.7 - Canberra (in partnership with Clear)
Mix 1063 - Canberra (in partnership with Clear)
Klik FM - Greece (75%)

It provides management services to the UKRD group and Malaysian broadcasters.

     Studies

There's no major corporate history of the group. For the film and television production arm see Australian Television & International Mediascapes (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 96) by Stuart Cunningham & Elizabeth Jacka.



::