Pearl & Dean

Last updated
Pearl & Dean
Company type Private
IndustryMedia advertising
Founded1953
FounderErnie Pearl
Charles Pearl
Bob Dean
Headquarters London, England, UK
Products Cinema advertising
Parent Willowbrook Investments Ltd
Subsidiaries Radiovision Broadcast International (RBI)
British Lion Films
Mediavision
Website www.pearlanddean.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Pearl & Dean is a British cinema advertising company, founded in 1953. [1]

Contents

Pearl & Dean is now owned by Willowbrook Investments Ltd, and controls advertising at many UK cinema sites including multiplex operators Empire, Showcase and AMC; the company also represents approximately half of the UK's independent cinemas.

History

Pearl & Dean was formed in 1953 by Ernie and Charles Pearl and Bob Dean, to sell advertising on British cinema screens prior to the showing of the main feature. [2] The short adverts, with which British cinema audiences quickly became familiar, were the idea of Joe Morris (born Joseph Iglitsky), one of Pearl & Dean's in-house advertising executives. The initial staffing of Pearl & Dean was by employees of Theatre Publicity and Langfords (The Rank Organisation) who followed the directors when they left to form the company upon obtaining the advertising rights in ABC Cinemas, the first time that group had accepted advertising in their cinemas.

In 1966, Pearl & Dean formed a subsidiary company called Radiovision Broadcast International (RBI) to represent the marketing interests of the American Broadcasting Company radio and television stations in Europe. During the same year, the company signed an exclusive contract to represent the sale of advertising time on the offshore pirate radio stations Swinging Radio England and Britain Radio. This contract with the offshore stations became mired in controversy due to a lack of sales and led to the headline-making bankruptcy of the original London management company for the two offshore radio stations that had been created by a private investment group formed by Don Pierson of Eastland, Texas, USA.

Pearl & Dean was acquired by British Lion Films in 1969, following a successful decade for the company, having 52% of the market share in cinema advertising, competing with Presbury, Faber Advertising Services and Rank Organisation. [2] A few years later, the company was acquired by Mills & Allen. Around the same time, Rank acquired Presbury and Faber. Under Mills & Allen's ownership, their share depleted to 12%, an all-time low for the company. [2]

For many years Pearl & Dean held the contract for ABC Cinemas, until ABC was bought by Cannon in 1986.

In 1993, Pearl & Dean was acquired by Mediavision, a French cinema advertising contractor, and their fortunes started to improve. In 1999 the company was bought out by Scottish Media Group (now STV Group) for £22million. [2]

In 2015, the company changed hands again with Image Ltd disposing of its holding to Willowbrook Investments Ltd. As part of the change of ownership, Irish media entrepreneur Dermot Hanrahan became the Chairman of Pearl and Dean. Hanrahan is also Chairman of Wide Eye Media in the Republic of Ireland which operates a similar business to Pearl and Dean. Both companies are now owned by the same group.

Pearl & Dean supplied advertisements for Warner Cinemas throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Warner was later renamed Warner Village Cinemas and then Vue Cinemas. In January 2011, Vue's advertising contract was taken over by Digital Cinema Media.

Pearl & Dean currently supplies advertising for the UK cinema chains Empire, Showcase, The Light, many independent cinemas in the UK and pop-up cinema events.

Asteroid

Pearl & Dean is known for its distinctive theme tune entitled "Asteroid", composed in 1968 by Pete Moore, which can be heard on the Pearl & Dean website. [3] The introduction of the new titles accompanied by the "Asteroid" theme saw the disappearance of the well known Grecian Pillars, with its music "Grand Vista" composed by Trevor Duncan.

The theme was sampled by Goldbug in their 1996 cover version of "Whole Lotta Love", which peaked at number 3 in the UK Singles Chart.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EMI</span> British music recording and publishing company

EMI was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its acquisition by Universal Music in 2012, it was the fourth largest business group and record label conglomerate in the music industry, and was one of the "Big Five" record companies. Its labels included EMI Records, Parlophone, Virgin Records, and Capitol Records, which are now referenced under Universal Music due to their acquisition with the exception of Parlophone, as it is now owned by Warner Music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vue International</span> British multinational cinema company

Vue International, is a multinational cinema holding company based in London, England. It operates in the United Kingdom and Ireland as Vue, with international operations in Denmark and Germany ; Italy ; Poland and Lithuania (Multikino); Netherlands.

Swinging Radio England ("SRE") was a top 40 offshore commercial station billed as the "World's Most Powerful" that operated from 3 May 1966 to 13 November 1966 from a ship in the North Sea, four and a half miles off Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England. While the station was dubbed a pirate radio station, its operation took place within the law and its offices were in the West End of London. Its representation was by a company formed earlier in the year to represent in Europe the ABC radio and television stations of the United States.

Odeon Cinemas Limited, trading as Odeon, is a cinema brand name operating in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Norway, which along with UCI Cinemas and Nordic Cinema Group is part of the Odeon Cinemas Group subsidiary of AMC Theatres. It uses the famous name of the Odeon cinema circuit first introduced in Great Britain in 1930. As of 2016, Odeon is the largest cinema chain in the United Kingdom by market share.

In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate, which is independently owned and carries network programming by contract.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taft Broadcasting</span> American media conglomerate (1939–1999)

The Taft Broadcasting Company was an American media conglomerate based in Cincinnati, Ohio.

News UK Broadcasting Limited, doing business as News Broadcasting and formerly known as Wireless Group Limited and previously UTV Media, is a radio and digital broadcasting network with headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland and with radio operations in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. It currently operates five stations in Ireland and 18 in the UK. The company was formerly known as UTV Media, owned by UTV Television. Its television broadcasting services were sold to ITV plc in February 2016 and its radio, sales services and websites were spun off into a new company, Wireless, later purchased by News Corp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pearl & Dean Ireland</span> Irish cinema advertising agency

Pearl & Dean Ireland, formerly known as Wide Eye Media, is the main cinema advertising company in Ireland. The company is owned by SGO Products Ltd and is a sister company to Pearl and Dean, the worlds longest established cinema advertising sales company.

Howard Thomas CBE was a Welsh radio producer and television executive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Associated British Picture Corporation</span> Film production company, 1927 to 1970

Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), originally British International Pictures (BIP), was a British film production, distribution and exhibition company active from 1927 until 1970 when it was absorbed into EMI. ABPC also owned approximately 500 cinemas in Britain by 1943, and in the 1950s and 60s owned a station on the ITV television network. The studio was partly owned by Warner Bros. from about 1940 until 1969; the American company also owned a stake in ABPC's distribution arm, Warner-Pathé, from 1958. It formed one half of a vertically integrated film industry duopoly in Britain with the Rank Organisation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Empire Cinemas</span> Cinema chain in the United Kingdom

Empire Cinemas Limited was a multiplex cinema chain in the UK. Prior to the company entering administration in July 2023, there were 13 Empire Cinemas across the country, with 128 screens in total.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ABC Cinemas</span> Movie theatre chain

ABC Cinemas was a cinema chain in the United Kingdom. Originally a wholly owned subsidiary of Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), it operated between the 1920s and the 1980s. The brand name was reused in the 1990s until 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">STV (TV channel)</span> Television channel in Scotland

STV is a free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the STV Group. It is made up of the Central Scotland and Northern Scotland ITV public broadcaster licences, formerly known as Scottish Television and Grampian Television respectively.

The Gaumont-British Picture Corporation produced and distributed films and operated a cinema chain in the United Kingdom. It was established as an offshoot of the Gaumont Film Company of France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BBC Studios</span> British production company

BBC Studios Limited is a British content company. It is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC that was formed in April 2018 through the merger of the BBC's commercial production arm and the BBC's commercial international distribution arm, BBC Worldwide. BBC Studios creates, develops, produces, distributes, broadcasts, finances and sells content around the world, returning around £200 million to the BBC annually in dividends and content investment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital Cinema Media</span> Cinema advertising company

Digital Cinema Media (DCM) is an advertising company, supplying cinema advertisements to Cineworld, Odeon, and Vue cinema chains, as well as some independent cinema chains. The company was formed in July 2008 and is owned by Cineworld and Odeon equally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pete Moore (composer)</span> Musical artist

Pete Moore was a British composer and arranger for a string of famous artistes from the 1950s onwards. Born in Essex, England, Moore studied composition and arranging privately for approximately ten years with three teachers. These were Alfred Nieman, Henry Geehl and a certain "Dr. Cook" who was probably another staff member at one of the London music colleges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">STV Group</span> Scottish media company

STV Group plc is a media company based in Glasgow, Scotland. Beginning as a television broadcaster in 1957, the company expanded into newspapers, advertising and radio; after completing a restructuring in 2010, STV Group is active in broadcast television, video-on-demand and television production. The company is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index.

This is a timeline of the history of the British broadcaster Scottish Television. It provides the ITV network service for Central Scotland.

References

  1. "STV to sell Pearl & Dean for £1". 2010-04-21. Archived from the original on 2010-04-24. Retrieved 2018-06-14.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Day, Julia (28 June 2006). "Pearl & Dean's theme tune remixed for the digital age". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 7 January 2014. Retrieved 24 August 2010.
  3. Pearl & Dean's web page on Asteroid Archived 27 March 2006 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 26 April 2010