The (Somewhat Short) History of Shout! Factory
Some of us here at Shout! are refugees from the Rhino Records label, where we managed to unleash an ungodly number of music compilations, retro-TV re-issues and a few movies of dubious distinction on an unsuspecting public.
We had an amazing run at Rhino. My brother Richard, Harold Bronson, Gary Stewart and several others deserve the bulk of the credit: 25 years for Richard, 15 years for me, and about the same for our partner, Bob Emmer. Bob was Rhino's head of Business Affairs and the man responsible for putting us together with Atlantic in 1992.
Just when the same unsuspecting public thought it were safe, we launched Shout! Factory.
In 2003, it was time to move on; Richard decided to put together a new label, got Bob involved, and then, brought me in. The optimist that he is, he thought it was a great time to launch a new entrepreneurial, independent audio and video company. It turned out that our timing wasn't so good in the music business, but the DVD business was on the rise. We jumped on the opportunity, while also keeping one hand in the music biz.
We were fortunate to maintain a great relationship that we started at Rhino: one with PBS and star producer TJ Lubinsky. We've released numerous DVDs and audio box sets from multi-artist music specials (Superstars Of '70s Soul, Magic Moments and Disco Explosion, to name a few).
We really got rolling in 2004. We released the amazing TV show Freaks And Geeks, packed with an absurd amount of bonus content and commentaries. We did the same with the infamous Canadian sketch comedy show, SCTV. Both of these legendary shows had not made it to video or DVD because of complex music rights issues that we were able to navigate through, thanks to our music business background.
On the music side, we got the rights to the Marshall Tucker Band catalog and began our extensive and very successful reissue program. We also released our Grammy-nominated Lenny Bruce box set, as well as our New Orleans box. We were fortunate to call on William Shatner around the same time that Ben Folds offered to produce an album with him; that collaboration, Has Been, came together in a way that's a testament to their unique brilliance.
In 2005, we began our relationship with Dick Cavett, starting with a three DVD set entitled Rock Icons. We released films with groundbreaking rock bands - The Sex Pistols' Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle and a documentary on the amazing Flaming Lips - Fearless Freaks.
On the music side, we were fortunate that Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss trusted us to reissue the Tijuana Brass catalog. We began with an album of previously unreleased tracks from the classic TJB period - Lost Treasures and then released deluxe versions of each of the classic albums. We produced a new album with the legendary Solomon Burke, produced by Don Was, which was nominated for a Grammy. We also put out a boxed set of baseball moments, music and related audio recordings, The Baseball Box, packaged to look like a base.
Shout! gained the rights to several classic TV shows in 2006 and released them in a celebratory fashion. First came the classic PBS kids' show The Electric Company. We managed to assemble many cast and crew members, including Rita Moreno, to do commentaries and on-camera interviews. We subsequently co-produced a PBS special on this historic show that premiered in December. Also, we gained the rights to the groundbreaking show, That Girl with Marlo Thomas. We released That Girl: Season One in the Spring to great critical and fan response.
On the music side we helped two of our favorite artists, Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, come up with a great album of '60s covers; next year they'll release a second album of '70s covers. We made an important album with The Dirty Dozen Brass Band - their version of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album, released on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. We made a country album with Solomon Burke, produced by Nashville great Buddy Miller.
We've got a lot of great music and video to come in 2007. We've landed the rights to the Emerson, Lake and Palmer catalog and we'll start putting reissues out early in the year. We've got the rights to the Vee Jay Records catalog and collections from Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker and others. We have several new albums in the works that will be announced soon.
For video, we're thrilled to release the TV classic McHale's Navy; we just got Ernest Borgnine, Tim Conway and other cast members together for a reunion interview. We'll also be putting out Ironside with Raymond Burr and lots more (that we can't announce just yet).
We've grown Shout! quickly, adding several divisions that complement our core physical product content business. We now have a film and TV licensing business, Natural Energy Lab, run by Danny Benair. And, in 2006 we acquired a music television production company, Blaze, run by Conor McAnally, who produces Direct TV's CD USA show, as well as many live music shows. We'll produce numerous concerts from this year's SXSW festival and believe this is a big growth area for us. We're looking to do mostly music-based original production for television and DVD release.
Finally, as you can see, we've put together a completely new and different website. This is the beginning of what we think is a bright future for us in the digital world. We're starting with our website and working on a number of strategies to translate our skills (as non-digital as they may be) into the digital world.
Please let us know what you think about our products and our new website. We want to keep doing this as long as possible. Your feedback helps us know more about what's working and what's not.
Garson Foos
President
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