How it started
History
The company began in 1972 as Hanna-Barbera Pty Ltd (Australia), an Australian division of Hanna-Barbera (which was founded by Kevin Weldon). In 1974, the Hamlyn Group's Australian division managed by Kevin Weldon acquired 50% of Hanna-Barbera Australia and appointed Neil Balnaves as managing director. In 1978, James Hardie acquired the Hamlyn Group, and in 1979, Balnaves was promoted to managing director of the entire Hamlyn Group.
In 1983, James Hardie and Hanna-Barbera corporate parent Taft Broadcasting reorganised the division as Taft-Hardie Group Pty Ltd. In 1984, the company established a division in Los Angeles known as Southern Star Productions, founded and headed by Buzz Potamkin. Programs produced by this division would be animated at Hanna-Barbera's studios in Sydney, and carried the name Southern Star/Hanna-Barbera Australia. It co-owned CIC Video's Australian video unit called CIC-Taft Video and launched a video label, THG Video, in 1984, then renamed to Taft Video in 1987. In 1987, it made a $42 million bid for Communications and Entertainment Limited, but it never realised.
In 1988, Neil Balnaves led an A$11 million management buyout of Taft-Hardie, reorganising the company as Southern Star Group. The home video division was renamed to Southern Star Video in 1989. The Sydney animation facilities were also sold to The Walt Disney Company who turned it into Disney Animation Australia, while the Los Angeles division continued to operate until 1991 when it was sold to Turner Broadcasting System.
In October 1995, Southern Star Entertainment had entered the interactive software publishing business and expanded into the American operations and the North American multimedia software market by reuniting with former parent & American broadcasting & radio network company Taft Broadcasting to jointly form Southern Star's new interactive publishing arm based in Manhattan, New York City and to develop multimedia CD-ROM software & publish Southern Star's properties & develop gaming software in-house, entitled Southern Star Interactive, the new interactive publishing division will focus on adapting classic literature into multimedia computer games and educational tools, releasing titles on PC and Mac CD-ROM with Jeff Hixon serving as president & creative director of Southern Star's interactive arm Southern Star Interactive. But however two years later in December 1997 due to steep financial losses and the decline of the CD-ROM market, Southern Star Entertainment announced it had exited the interactive software publishing business by closing its New York City-based American interactive publishing division Southern Star Interactive in order for Southern Star to focus on its core television production and distribution business, however they'll start to license its intellectual properties to outside third-party publishing companies and game developers.
In August 2000, Southern Star Entertainment had teamed up with Dutch entertainment production & distribution outfit Endemol Entertainment by merging Southern Star's unscripted, light entertainment & infotainment production divisions into formed a joint venture production division entitled Southern Star Endemol, that would produce & adapt Endemol's programming such as Big Brother and Deal or No Deal into the Australian production markets while Endemol would distribute them internationally.
From Wikipedia’s article on Endemol Australia, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2