GOING FOR VIDEO GOLD NBC SEES GREEN IN OLYMPICS.

Byline: Pam Park Staff Writer

NORTH HOLLYWOOD - ``Quest for the Gold'' is the name for soon- to-be-released NBC Olympics highlights videotapes and music, but it's also a business objective for a North Hollywood company.

Larry Moulton, owner and president of Moulton Logistics Management in North Hollywood, has locked into a warehousing, order fulfillment and distribution niche for catalogs, television infomercials, and more recently, e-commerce. As a result, his company's revenues have more than doubled since 1997, rising from $3.8 million to an expected $11 million to $12 million this year.

Moulton's latest contract will load his assembly lines with Olympics videotapes, courtesy of a long-term relationship with Ten Mayflower Productions, a Los Angeles producer, marketer and distributor of video programming.

``Fulfillment is full of peaks and valleys,'' Moulton said. ``This would be a nice peak.''

Ten Mayflower will produce two compact discs and 16 videotapes from masters supplied by NBC Sports. The videotapes include general Olympics, women's and gymnastics highlights, and 13 single-sport tapes on specialties such as archery, soccer and wrestling.

Ten Mayflower contracted with Moulton Logistics to handle all the order processing and customer service, box the videotapes and ship them to customers starting Oct. 23.

The Olympics tapes are available by phone order and through the NBC Web site, at nbctapes.com.

``The Web site is relatively new for us,'' Moulton said. ``This one is kind of neat because we're linking directly with NBC's Web site. That's a good sign for things to come.''

Mike McCarley, communications director for NBC Olympics, said in addition to the Olympics, tapes are available on baseball and basketball championships, and auto races are coming soon.

``We do a lot, but obviously the Olympics is the jewel in the crown,'' McCarley said.

The videotapes mark performances that NBC originally presented on videotape. The network was harshly criticized, especially by sports columnists, for presenting videotaped coverage of events each evening, rather than broadcasting the events live. NBC responded that some of the events would have been aired at 3 a.m. in the United States, and the ratings would have been dismal.

Although McCarley said about 185 million households watched NBC's Sydney coverage, that number did not come close to the network's projected viewership of 215 million.

Nevertheless, Sydney was the most-watched event on television since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, when about 209 million households tuned in, McCarley said.

``The person who would buy the tape would be the one who wants to relive the memories,'' McCarley said.

NBC produced more hours of coverage this year than in 1996. During the Atlanta Games, NBC produced 171.5 hours. By using more cable stations, NBC offered 441.5 hours from Sydney.

Derek Baine, senior analyst at Kagen & Associates in Carmel, said he thought NBC's Olympics highlights tapes would be more successful if individual tapes were produced to appeal to specific demographics - for instance, packaging on one tape several events young men might be interested in.

But whatever NBC makes on the tapes, ``It's all gravy, pretty much,'' Baine said. ``They've already made a profit on the Olympics, so they don't have a lot to lose.''

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(color) As part of a deal with Ten Mayflower Productions, Larry Moulton's Logistics Management company in North Hollywood will distribute NBC's Olympics videotapes.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer