UAV Entertainment

Sterling Entertainment Group (formerly United American Video Corporation, and more commonly known as United American Video, UAV Corporation or UAV Entertainment), was an entertainment company founded in 1984 as a small local company originally located in Nashville, Tennessee, then Charlotte, North Carolina starting in 1991. Its headquarters would later relocate to Fort Mill, South Carolina in 1996. UAV was also the longtime competitor of GoodTimes Entertainment, Anchor Bay Entertainment and Celebrity Home Video and many other sell through home entertainment companies.

United American Video began in 1984, with four employees, 50 public domain titles and 200 professional grade VHS and Betamax recorders. The founders changed the name a few years later to UAV Corporation to better reflect its entry into the prerecorded music and PC software businesses. In 1992, UAV relocated from Charlotte to Fort Mill into a custom built 100,000 square feet headquarters housing manufacturing, distribution and all sales and marketing functions. In late 1998, UAV changed the name of its home entertainment division to Sterling Entertainment Group. In 1999, UAV added 210,000 additional square feet to its headquarters with over 250 associates. In 2002, UAV was sold to a private equity firm.

On June 14, 2006, the private equity firm lost control of the company to the lenders and UAV filed, laying off over 300 employees, claiming payroll funding had been cut by its lenders. A week later, the total number of layoffs had increased to approximately 400 employees. On June 30, ContentFilm announced its intent to acquire Allumination Filmworks as well as certain assets from UAV Corporation and UAV Holdings. The acquisition was completed in September 2006. Currently, the films that Sterling once released on video are now in the hands of other distributors such as Lionsgate, Phase 4 Films and Mill Creek Entertainment.

Most of the products produced by Sterling Entertainment were VHS and DVD videos of movies, cartoons and TV shows that are in the public domain, original productions and exclusive licenses, as well as a full line of music and computer software. Sterling also distributed original production animated fairy tale adaptations, often released around the time of more popular and widely known theatrical releases by Disney or other major studios. Notable releases featured a 1993 Canadian English re-dub of Osamu Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion (originally shown in Japan in 1965), The Secret of the Hunchback, The Secret of Anastasia, Young Pocahontas, The Secret of Mulan, The Amazing Feats of Young Hercules, and Moses: Egypt's Great Prince. UAV also had the exclusive licenses for the entire MTM Enterprises library which included The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Hill Street Blues, The White Shadow and The Andy Griffith Show. They also distributed many public domain episodes of TV shows, including The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Lucy Show.

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