Pacific Bell forms Entertainment Unit; Sales, Marketing, and R&D team dedicated to booming industry.

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 1996--In response to increasing demand for tools that bring greater efficiencies to the business-to-business process, Pacific Bell has formed a separate unit devoted to the sales, marketing, and product development of high-quality, high-speed voice, data, and video services for the entertainment industry in California.

The market represents a $250-million-per-year opportunity for Pacific Bell by the year 2000, according to a study by the Boston Consulting Group.

The announcement, concurrent with NAB '96, is made by Larry Kunke, executive director of Pacific Bell's FasTrak Video Services, and Bill Powers, vice president of Sales, Priority Accounts-South.

Increasingly, development of film, television, and video productions is the product of collaborations between a variety of specialized companies. As these companies take on increasing prominence, the need for advanced communications tools also has increased.

The Entertainment Market Business Unit, as the new Pacific Bell Group is named, addresses these needs by providing the benefits of the company's infrastructure and expertise in voice, video, and data networks to offer optimal bandwidth and cost-effective access among studios, production houses, and post-production houses.

"One intent of the Entertainment Market Business Unit's formation is to align sales and marketing approaches in a more focused manner," Kunke said. "Another is to increase our understanding of the industry's need for faster and more affordable technical applications."

Using the wide array of data and video services, content providers establish networks to quickly and efficiently transfer files between the various entities involved in a production.

"Pacific Bell's FasTrak Video Services enables professionals in the process of developing entertainment content to have access to each other and to their projects from their studios, production houses, and even from their homes," Kunke said. "Producers, directors, musicians, graphic artists, and special effects experts may collaborate on a project separately, even when they are at different locations."

Kunke and Powers developed the new business unit after conducting an analysis of the entertainment arena and identifying the industry's need for the company-branded FasTrak Video Services and FasTrak Data Services (e.g., ATM, Frame Relay, SONET, SMDS, and ISDN). The pair targeted content developers after recognizing the opportunity to enable new efficiencies in the production process using the latest in telecommunications technology.

"Until this year, we saw the opportunity but didn't have the organizational structure in place to approach this market aggressively," Kunke said. "Now, the time is right and we have the necessary people and resources."

A 40- to 50-person team based in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area will pursue an industry that represents the second-largest export business in the United States. Evident of the importance of the industry in California, a report released in February by the Center for the New West said the state is adding two jobs in entertainment-related businesses for each job lost in aerospace.

Approximately 70 percent of the production industry's output comes from Los Angeles, prime territory for Pacific Bell.

Pacific Bell is a subsidiary of Pacific Telesis Group, a diversified telecommunications corporation based in San Francisco. -0-

NAB-attending media: Please visit Pacific Bell at Booth No. M3854 inside the Sands Expo & Convention Center.

CONTACT: Pacific Bell, Los Angeles

David A. Dickstein, 213/975-4074; pager: 213/307-6454

E-mail: [e-mail]