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| Industry | Home video distribution |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | London , England |
Area served | United Kingdom |
| Products | Television and Film on Blu-ray Disc, DVD-Video, video on demand |
| Services | Streaming media |
Number of employees | 20 |
| Website | networkonair |
Network Distributing (formerly Network/Network DVD) is a video publishing company that specialises in classic British television programmes. The company holds the rights to a number of archive British programmes, predominantly from ITV, though it also holds rights for some programmes shown by the BBC and Channel 4. The company is also developing a catalogue of world cinema titles through its film arm Network Releasing.
ITV is a British free-to-air television network with its headquarters in London, it was launched in 1955 as Independent Television under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to BBC Television, that was established in 1932. ITV is also the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, its legal name has been Channel 3, to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time, namely BBC 1, BBC 2 and Channel 4. In part, the number 3 was assigned because television sets would usually be tuned so that the regional ITV station would be on the third button, with the other stations being allocated to the number within their name.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London, and it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total, 16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff are included.
Channel 4 is a British public-service free-to-air television network that began transmission on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially-self-funded, it is ultimately publicly-owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. With the conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital terrestrial broadcasting on 31 March 2010, Channel 4 became a UK-wide TV channel for the first time.
Network was founded in 1997 as a video sell-through label specialising in archive television programmes. Its first releases were Charley Says , Robin of Sherwood and Catweazle . It has gone on to become one of the most successful independent DVD distributors in the UK, with a library of 3,000 unique film and TV properties. The company has built up a reputation for including extensive special features on many of its DVD box sets. It has also moved into releasing new feature films in cinemas.
Charley Says is a series of very short cut-out animated cartoon public information films for children, produced by the British government's Central Office of Information and broadcast in the United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s. Six films were made in 1973.
Robin of Sherwood is a British television series, based on the legend of Robin Hood. Created by Richard Carpenter, it was produced by HTV in association with Goldcrest, and ran from 1984 to 1986 on the ITV network. In the United States it was shown on the premium cable TV channel Showtime and, later, on PBS. The show starred Michael Praed and Jason Connery as two different incarnations of the title character. Unlike previous adaptations of the Robin Hood legend, Robin of Sherwood combined a gritty, authentic production design with elements of real-life history, 20th century fiction, and pagan myth. The series is also notable for its musical score by Clannad, which won a BAFTA award.
Catweazle is a British fantasy television series, starring Geoffrey Bayldon in the title role, and created by Richard Carpenter for London Weekend Television. The first series, produced and directed by Quentin Lawrence, was screened in the UK on ITV in 1970. The second series, directed by David Reid and David Lane, was shown in 1971. Each series had thirteen episodes, most but not all written by Carpenter, who also published two books based on the scripts.
Network won two HEW Awards in 2008 for Best TV DVD release for The Prisoner 40th Anniversary Special Edition and Best Comedy DVD for The Goodies at LWT. The latter award was shared with The Mighty Boosh Series 3.
In 2004 Network signed an output deal with Granada Ventures, giving the company the rights to release all non-core ITV brands on DVD in the UK (incorporating the Granada, Carlton, ITC Entertainment, Central, HTV, LWT, Yorkshire, Anglia and Tyne Tees libraries). At the same time Network sourced its sales function to Fremantle. In return Network acquired the DVD rights to the Fremantle library, which includes the Thames Television library. This means that the majority of ITV shows are released via Network DVD rather than ITV's commercial division. The American-made series Baywatch is also part of the Fremantle library and Network DVD holds UK DVD rights to the series.
Carlton Television was the ITV franchise holder for London and the surrounding counties from 9.25am every Monday to 5.15pm every Friday. The company is now managed with London Weekend Television as a single entity, but the two companies are still separately licensed. The station is owned and operated by ITV plc under the licensee of ITV Broadcasting Limited. Carlton has been branded on air as 'ITV1' since 28 October 2002, and as 'ITV' since 14 January 2013. Carlton legally exists as Carlton Television Ltd. This company is, along with most other regional companies owned by ITV plc, listed on www.companieshouse.gov.uk as a "Dormant company". As Carlton's name has no relation to its region, its on-screen identity has been completely removed. Other regions have kept their original company name as a region name and in their local news name.
The Incorporated Television Company (ITC), or ITC Entertainment as it was referred to in the United States, was a British company involved in production and distribution of television programmes.
ITV Wales and West, previously known as Harlech Television (HTV), refers to the Independent Television franchise area until 31 December 2013, licensed to a broadcaster by the regulator Ofcom.
In 2005 and 2006 Network released three decade box sets of the long-running ITV soap opera Coronation Street. The 60s, 70s and 80s sets each included 10 DVDs, with 8 memorable episodes per disc. In 2011, the sets were re-released in slimmer packaging, with the 90s and 2000s collections being released for the first time.
A soap opera is an ongoing drama serial on television or radio, featuring the lives of many characters and their emotional relationships. The term soap opera originated from radio dramas being sponsored by soap manufacturers.
Coronation Street is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960. The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner-city Salford. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in 1902 and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.
In addition to Network’s strong TV catalogue, the company also has an extensive film library, which includes properties from Alliance Atlantis, Rank Organisation, Raymond Rohauer and ITC Entertainment catalogues. Notable films include Sign o’ the Times , Oliver Stone's Talk Radio , Black Narcissus , The Last Seduction and This Sporting Life .
Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. was a Canadian media company that operated primarily as a specialty service operator in Canada. Alliance Atlantis also had offices in Halifax, Los Angeles, London, Dublin, Madrid, Barcelona, Shannon, and Sydney.
Raymond Rohauer was an American film collector and distributor.
Sign o' the Times is a 1987 American concert film written and directed by Prince.
In 2007 the company moved into new releases following a re-release of The Ipcress File at UK cinemas nationwide in 2006. The company acquired Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon starring Juliette Binoche, which it released at cinemas and on DVD in 2007. In 2008 it acquired four new films from the Cannes Film Festival: Afterschool, Rumba, Soi Cowboy and Tony Manero, which were all released in the UK in 2009. It established its world cinema website networkreleasing.com the same year and all of its new film titles are now released under the Network Releasing banner. In July 2010 it released Lymelife , a coming-of-age feature executive-produced by Martin Scorsese and starring Alec Baldwin, Rory and Kieran Culkin, Cynthia Nixon and Emma Roberts. In 2011, it released the Asian slasher movie Dream Home .
The Ipcress File is a 1965 British espionage film directed by Sidney J. Furie and starring Michael Caine. The screenplay, by Bill Canaway and James Doran, was based on Len Deighton's novel The IPCRESS File (1962). It received a BAFTA award for the Best British film released in 1965. In 1999, it was included at number 59 on the BFI list of the 100 best British films of the 20th century.
Hou Hsiao-hsien is a Taiwanese film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a leading figure in world cinema and in Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement, an auteur. He won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1989 for his film A City of Sadness (1989), and the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 for The Assassin (2015). Other highly regarded works of his include The Puppetmaster (1993) and Flowers of Shanghai (1998).
Flight of the Red Balloon is a 2007 French-Taiwanese film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. It is the first part in a new series of films produced by Musée d'Orsay, and tells the story of a French family as seen through the eyes of a Chinese student. The film was shot in August and September 2006 on location in Paris. This is Hou Hsiao-hsien's first non-Asian film. It references the classic 1956 French short The Red Balloon directed by Albert Lamorisse.
Network's release schedule and catalogue availability were temporarily affected by the Sony warehouse fire in Enfield, North London, during the riots in England in 2011.