Palisades Sparks.

Palisades Media Group Inc. has bagged another studio contract. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio Inc. hired the Westside firm to oversee media buying and planning for the revamped studio's domestic theatrical distribution division.

MGM spent $88.6 million in measured media last year, according to TNC Media Intelligence, but that's likely to grow since MGM just announced that it would distribute at least 20 films from the Weinstein Co. and other independents. That includes the April 7 release of the Bruce Willis thriller, "Lucky Number Slevin."

MGM is the second film company to move its account to Palisades since last summer, when Palisades won the account for New York-based Weinstein Co. MGM's new chief operating officer, Rick Sands, worked with the 10-year-old media firm when Sands was chief operating officer for Bob and Harvey Weinstein's previous studio, Miramax.

The new accounts have enabled Palisades to expand by 25 employees to 82 over the past year, said Chief Executive Roger Schaffner, who anticipates that billings will grow to at leas $650 million from last year's $550 million. In addition to Weinstein and MGM, the firm's major clients include Electronic Arts Inc. and Lion's Gate Entertainment Corp.

As time-shifting products such as digital video recorders grow in popularity over the next five years, Schaffner said he expects large media buys in network broadcast will continue to decline in favor of smaller niche buys in cable television and new media.

"If you're a Coca-Cola, you might not care as much if your advertising is time-shifted, but for movies and politicals, you've got a real short window in which you need to go from zero to 60," he said. "We're going to have to buy a lot more little reaches to get the big reach we used to get."