Carolco to Acquire Orbis for TV Syndication Entry

Los Angeles-based Carolco Pictures, continuing an aggressive acquisition program, said Monday that it has signed a letter of intent to swap $15.4 million of its stock for Orbis Communications, a major national television distribution and advertising specialist.

Peter Hoffman, president and chief executive of Carolco, a publicly traded independent producer best known for the “Rambo” movies, said one of the firm’s important strategic objectives has been to get into television syndication.

If the deal is completed, it will give Carolco a going operation in the placement of syndicated programs from various producers on large groups of TV stations, as well as in TV advertising sales.

Less than three weeks ago, Carolco announced that its International Video Enterprises subsidiary agreed to acquire control of Lieberman Enterprises, a leading U.S. distributor of home-video tapes and recorded music.

Orbis, a private firm founded in February, 1984, has headquarters in New York and offices in Los Angeles and Chicago. It began in advertiser-supported, or barter, programming: trading programs to TV stations for air time, which it then sells to national advertisers.

Some of the programs that it handles include a “premiere” package of HBO movies; the King Features animated super hero adventures “Defenders of the Earth” and a variety of movies sponsored by Procter & Gamble.

Next winter, Orbis will distribute “The Next President,” a series of David Frost interviews with presidential candidates, the joint announcement said. Orbis also distributes programs in the international market.

“What we like most is (Orbis’) management,” Hoffman said. “They put together a good team. . . .To get it all in one bunch saves us time.” The parties said Orbis management is to remain “at least three years.”

President Bob Turner helped formed Orbis with John C. Ranck and Ethan Podell, who were fellow executives at Lexington Broadcast Services, and Brian T. Byrne, former advertising sales executive at Telepictures Inc., now Lorimar-Telepictures.

Turner, in an interview from New York, said the firm expects to report about $1.50 per share in earnings this year but declined to give details. He said his management group controls about two-thirds of the firm’s stock, with the rest held by outside investors.