Shout! Factory Buys Apps, Enters Video Time Machine

Shout! Factory, in partnership with entertainment industry veteran Fred Seibert, has acquired the wildly popular Video Time Machine iOS app from Original Victories Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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Created by Justin Johnson, Matt Capucilli and Delbert Dean Shoopman III, Video Time Machine collects more than a century of movie clips and trailers, commercials, TV broadcasts and other forms of video into one app that now goes for $2.99 on iTunes. Users access the material by selecting a year of origin plus a genre (from movies, music, television, news, sports, games or advertisements).

Two months after it launched in June 2011, VTM bumped the Angry Birds app out of the top spot as the most downloaded iPad app.

The Shout! Factory deal also includes two other apps: Political Time Machine, which features video content like candidate’s speeches, and Holiday Time Machine, which offers holiday-themed clips, commercials, animation and music.

Shout! Factory’s mission statement is a devotion to “uncovering, preserving and revitalizing the very best of pop culture,” so the acquisition of the three Time Machine apps makes perfect business sense, Shout! Factory co-founder and president Garson Foos told THR.

“We think this can go in a lot of different directions, and probably not in any that we’re thinking about right now,” he said. “We want to get into it and start introducing new slices and dices and see where it takes us.

“We also think that they’ll be other revenue opportunities going forward — maybe sponsorship, branded Time Machines, etc.”

Shout! Factory plans an application that supports the Android platform as well.

Seibert, a former MTV executive and president of Hanna-Barbera, is founder, president and executive producer of Frederator Studios, the company behind such Nickelodeon series as The Fairly OddParents and Fanboy & Chum Chum.

“We go way back with Fred and have always wanted to find things to do together,” Foos said. “We’re kindred spirits in our passion for pop culture, and we’ve admired his amazing marketing mind through the years.”