ENT Ltd, standing for Examiner-Northern TV Ltd, is a private shell company owned by WIN Corporation. In its heyday, ENT was a publicly listed Australian media company based in Launceston, Tasmania. It was run by major shareholder Edmund Rouse until 1994, when a bribery scandal led to Rouse stepping down as managing director and it was taken over by WIN Corporation.
TasTV
The Six Network (later VIC Television)
Filmpac Holdings was a film and video distributor. ENT acquired a 40 per cent stake in 1988 from its purchase of Victoria-based media company Associated Broadcasting Services.[1] From 1986 to 1990, Filmpac released a total of 69 films theatrically making it the country's largest independent mainstream theatrical distributor. The company collapsed in 1990 with its film library purchased by Village Roadshow, along with certain assets from another defunct distributor Seven Keys.[2]
It was originally known as Filmways Australasian Distributors, and it was originally formed by the founders of Dendy Theaters, Mark Josem and Robert Ward in 1971 to release movies in the box office to the Australian market.[3] [4] Mark Josem died in 1986 after a series of heart attacks from a surgery the previous year.[5] The company would soon be renamed to Filmpac Holdings.
The company also had a home video division on its own under the name Filmways Home Video, starting with a deal with Video Classics,[6] then as a partnership with Video Tape Center under the name Filmways VTC, with K-TEL Video distributing the titles from 1984 to 1985,[7] and Vestron Video International distributing titles by Filmways Home Video/Filmpac from 1985 to 1988 before it became an independent video distributor for two years. Ironically enough, both Vestron and Filmways were Video Classics members before the K-TEL alliance.[8]
ENT's 1988 annual report described the company's principal activities as television, newspapers, radio, commercial printing, motels, travel agencies, picture theatres, property development and investment.