Asset Sale Marks End of the Line for Vidcom : Video production: The new company, to be called PMA Post, hopes to build on the reputation the Burbank firm earned in editing TV ‘promos.’

Vidcom Post Inc. in Burbank, once a well-regarded video post-production company, came to an inelegant and messy end last Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles.

Judge Geraldine Mund approved the sale of Vidcom’s assets--mainly leases on high-tech video-editing equipment--to the only bidder, Pacific Media Associates, a closely held Rolling Hills Estates production firm, for $65,000 cash.

The new company, to be called PMA Post Inc., will keep Vidcom’s Burbank offices. About 25 people now work there full time.

Pacific Media, a 4-year-old company that produces television documentaries, hopes to renegotiate Vidcom’s video-editing equipment leases and build on the the good reputation the company had earned for its specialty: editing the “promos” that hype upcoming television shows.

Pacific Media also wants to take the new company into longer feature work. “We hope to get involved in editing TV series and other programs that also require special effects and other editing skills Vidcom has,” Pacific Media President Kevin Juergensen said.

Vidcom filed for protection from creditors last July under Chapter 11 of federal bankruptcy laws with about $4 million of debt. In 1991, its last full year before the bankruptcy filing, it had net income of $33,000 on slightly more than $1 million of revenue.

Vidcom, which has been in business for six years, had been one of the smaller post-production firms, but respected for its ability to do cutting-edge special effects. But the company filed for bankruptcy amid squabbling by its founder and a former executive who each blamed the other for mismanagement that ruined the company.

Steve deSatnick, Vidcom’s former general manager, alleged in court documents connected with the bankruptcy that Vidcom’s ex-president and founder, Frank Celecia, and his wife, Joanne, took money out of the company just before the Chapter 11 filing, including $50,000 to buy a home in Westlake Village.

In the court documents, deSatnick further claimed that the Celecias and other Vidcom directors, officers and shareholders defrauded the company of more than $35,000 in loans to themselves. DeSatnick alleges that the loans were also deleted from Vidcom’s books just before the bankruptcy filing. “Those charges are totally untrue,” Frank Celecia said in an interview last week. Celecia, who now lives in Thousand Oaks, says deSatnick made them because he is still angry over a falling-out with Celecia two years ago.

Celecia says he hired deSatnick as Vidcom general manager in 1988 as a favor to deSatnick’s father, a retired ABC cameraman, who was Celecia’s friend. DeSatnick had also given Frank Celecia his first job in television at a New York PBS station when he was 18 years old.

When deSatnick joined Vidcom, he was director of USC’s School of Cinema and Television. “I thought we could work together, but I was wrong,” Celecia said, adding that deSatnick “had too many problems with the staff.” After the first year, Celecia didn’t renew deSatnick’s employment contract.

DeSatnick then sued Vidcom, winning a $223,000 judgment in arbitration against the company. When he attempted to seize Vidcom’s bank accounts to collect on the judgment, Vidcom filed for Chapter 11.

Said deSatnick: “I suspected the company would go Chapter 11 long before that because it wasn’t paying its bills.” Now living in Phoenix, Ariz., deSatnick said he is looking for another job in the video post-production industry.

Pacific Media has agreed to pay Vidcom’s bankruptcy estate another $125,000 if it can collect that much in the company’s accounts receivable--money owed Vidcom by current and former customers such as Disney, MGM, Columbia and Warner Bros.

But Vidcom still owes more than $1 million to its secured creditors, mainly companies that financed or leased it video-editing equipment. Unsecured creditors, including deSatnick and shareholders such as the Celecias, will get nothing in the deal.

Vidcom went public in 1988. But despite good growth, it continued trading at pennies a share in the over-the-counter market. The company’s stock’s price reached its high of slightly more than $1 a share last spring, just before Vidcom began to unravel. About the same time, Vidcom said it had hired Gruntal & Co., an investment banking firm in New York, to seek possible merger partners.

Since Vidcom filed for Chapter 11, several potential buyers have expressed interest in acquiring the company, according to David Isenberg, a lawyer with the Los Angeles firm of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton who represented Vidcom’s bankruptcy trustee, Ronald L. Durkin.

In February, one of Vidcom’s secured creditors, Joseph Hassen of Chicago, offered $315,000 for the company, but later withdrew his offer. Frank Celecia says he spent the last five months trying to put together an investor group to buy the company himself.

Throughout the ordeal, Vidcom remained reasonably busy until operations were cut back in anticipation of the sale to Pacific Media, according to Peter Criswell, Vidcom’s executive vice president, who will stay on as PMA Post’s sales and marketing director.

Vidcom produced several promos for CBS “Movies of the Week,” Criswell said. It also just finished creating videos on laser discs for Warner Bros.’ Batmobile ride at its theme park in Australia.

As for Vidcom’s new owner, Pacific Assets has made its name mostly from science documentaries. It currently has a 10-part documentary running on cable TV’s Learning Channel--”A Practical Guide to the Universe”--that will also soon run on cable’s Discovery Channel.

The company developed a similar program, “Everyman’s Guide to the Planets,” that ran on the Public Broadcasting System’s Pacific Mountain Network and the Whittle Classroom Channel last year. Pacific Media, which has only four full-time employees, had 1992 revenue of about $700,000.