wfn.org | Odyssey Channel gets $100M investment from Hallmark, Henson

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

June 30, 1998        Contact: Tim Tanton*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.
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By United Methodist News Service

Hallmark Entertainment and the Jim Henson Co. have signed a letter of
intent to invest $100 million in the Odyssey Channel, for a 45 percent
stake in the religious network, partners in the deal have announced. 

With the investment, Hallmark and Henson will become partners with the
channel's founding group, the National Interfaith Cable Coalition
(NICC), and Liberty Media Corp., a subsidiary of Tele-Communications
Inc. The move was announced on June 29, but the effective date is
unclear. A press conference will be held in a few weeks, sources said.

The investment will give Odyssey the money necessary to make the channel
known, said Wil Bane, president of Vision Management Corp., NICC's
managing partner, and a staff executive with United Methodist
Communications in Nashville, Tenn. The deal will take the channel from
being relatively unknown to being competitive with other cable networks,
he said.

"It's our plan to be virtually universally carried in cable," Bane said.
Odyssey currently is available to about 30 million of  the 68 million
U.S. households that receive cable. It is carried by  1,500 cable
systems, the Primestar direct-to-home satellite service and the C-Band
dish system.

The investment will be in cash and programming. After the investment and
a related restructuring, Liberty will own 32.5 percent, and NICC,
Hallmark and Henson will own 22.5 percent each of the New York-based
faith and values channel.

Previously, NICC had owned 51 percent, and Liberty's stake was 49
percent.

NICC will continue to provide the entertainment and faith and values
programming for Odyssey. Hallmark and Henson will also produce
programming for the network.

Odyssey began talking with Hallmark and Henson about four months ago,
Bane said.

Hallmark and Henson had already been cooperating on projects, such as a
recent television production of "Gulliver's Travels." They had been
working together for several years, taking advantage of different kinds
of production capabilities that each had to offer the other, Bane said.

The two had just launched the Kermit Channel, an international network,
and were interested in having a domestic channel, Bane said.

"Both of them are mission driven," he said. They liked the idea of
teaming up with faith groups and felt that would give them something no
other channel had, he said.

Hallmark and Henson will be the managing partner, but the channel will
be governed equally by the four. A new chief executive officer, to fill
the void left by the late Gary E. Hill, will be chosen by all four
partners, Bane said.

NICC founded Odyssey in September 1988 as VISN (Vision Interfaith
Satellite Network). In 1995, NICC joined in a partnership with Liberty
in which NICC, through its VISN Management Corp., became the majority
and managing partner of the channel. NICC is a consortium of nearly 70
Protestant, Jewish, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and other faith groups.

Since becoming for-profit, Odyssey has broken even overall, posting a
profit one year and a slight loss another, Bane said. However, it has
made money by controlling spending instead of aggressively trying to
make the channel known, he said.

After a couple of years as a for-profit, "we realized we couldn't make
it soar," Bane said. NICC started seeking another partner who'd be
interested in the same type of programming.

The new deal gives NICC complete control over 30 hours of programming,
Bane said. Another 10 hours worth of faith and values programming will
be shared by the four partners. Odyssey has programming around the
clock, seven days a week.

"The United Methodist Church and other faith groups that are part of the
National Interfaith Cable Coalition will continue to find the
opportunity to produce and air programming that enables us to proclaim
our message of faith and to have a significant role in the management of
the network," Bane said.

Hallmark and Henson will contribute programming to the values portion of
the channel, rather than the faith side, Bane said. Both companies have
extensive film and program libraries.

Hallmark Entertainment, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards Inc., produces
and distributes miniseries and television movies. It owns Hallmark
Entertainment Network and Hallmark Home Entertainment. Jim Henson Co. is
a multimedia production company and publisher of children's books. It
includes Jim Henson Television, Jim Henson Pictures and Jim Henson's
Creature Shop.

United Methodist News Service
(615)742-5470
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