MTM Entertainment Seeks Hit on Stock Market

After 17 years of producing hit television series under private ownership, the firm founded by actress Mary Tyler Moore announced plans Tuesday to sell stock to the public.

MTM Entertainment (a new corporate name for what was once MTM Enterprises) said its initial public offering will be for 4 million, or 22%, of its 18 million common shares. The company estimated that the initial offering price will be between $25 and $28 a share, for a total of $100 million to $112 million.

From its production facilities in Studio City, the MTM firm has turned out 28 TV series and 14 TV movies since it started in 1970 with “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a CBS hit until 1977. Its productions since then have included such bell-ringers as “Newhart,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Lou Grant,” “St. Elsewhere,” and “The Bob Newhart Show.”

The firm is producing “Newhart,” “St. Elsewhere” and a “Hill Street Blues” spinoff, “Beverly Hills Buntz,” for the fall season.

Moore, a director of the corporation, is among the four present owners who will hold the remaining 78% of the firm’s shares after the offering. The others are Arthur Price, president; Mel D. Blumenthal, senior executive vice president, and Thomas E. Palmieri Jr., executive vice president. Figures on their respective ownership were not given by the company.

MTM said it filed a registration statement Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It said it will distribute a prospectus in about 10 days, when an amendment to the statement will be filed. Meanwhile, said Jim Lukas of Burson-Marsteller, the firm’s outside financial public relations consultant, MTM officers are barred from talking about the sale. Lazard Freres & Co. of New York is managing the stock offering.

Price, who was Moore’s agent when the company began, has been heading the firm since the departure of the actress’ ex-husband, Grant Tinker, who left in 1981 to become chairman of NBC-TV. He left the network in the summer of 1986.

MTM has won more than 80 Emmy awards over the years, including 28 for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” 21 for “Hill Street Blues,” which halted production at the end of the 1986-87 season, and 16 for “Lou Grant.” The firm operates MTM Music Group, a Nashville record and music publishing company, and also publishes music associated with its television properties.