MCA DiscoVision

Cash Box
March 31, 1979

Capitol's Menon Ready To Meet Market Demand

Bhaskar Menon, chairman of the EMI Music Group Worldwide, notes, "I think that the whole idea of audio-visual application is very important. I think it will be even more important than video tape cassettes because it has a familiar consumer use and in the long run, will be far more inexpensive.

"As far as we're concerned as software producers in the tradition of Capitol Records, we will produce our software in any viable form that the consumer demands."

Commenting on the future ties of music and video, Menon says, "The visual and the audio arts are natural allies and this new innovation will bring them much closer together. This general human perception has very seldom used one sense to the exclusion of the other. There is a conjoint human experience to be served.

"Now we're talking about software which can be retailed in the same way that we retail our products, not distributed in the way that television and motion pictures have traditionally been. So, we think that the video disc is a much closer product to the record industry's traditional merchandising, production and distribution concepts."

Will video disc be used for promotional purposes in retail outlets?

"No questions about it," says Menon. "As a matter of fact, over a year ago, we started an audio visual unit right here at Capitol Records. It is engaged full-time in filming our artist for films, in-store displays and television spots. Video discs are the natural outcome for what is becoming a visually -oriented public.

"I think that the static merchandising items that have traditionally been a part of record stores will be tremendously overshadowed, if not totally supplanted, by audiovisual displays inside the stores.

Menon does not feel that the onslaught of video technology will necessarily change the face of the music industry. "I think it will enhance it, but I don't see this a threat to the music business. It will also create an environment for the growth of a new kind of creative effort and people from a number of different industries, including film, music,educational, institutional, advertising and many others.

"My own personal confidence in this system's future is further enhanced and enriched by what I know is the tremendous support it enjoys from the visions of a man such as Lew Wasserman (MCA, Inc. chairman of the board), whose judgement and guidance have been a conspicuous part of the program's development from the beginning.

"Like many others within this industry, I believe he is a man who has put his money where his mouth is."

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