Ransom Productions is a Project SANDMAN-funded corporation designed to the new public face of SANDMAN North American memetics operations. By 1974, new venues in media and broadcasting (cable television, pay television, consumer-facing satellite networks, home recorders and players, and increased syndication opportunities thanks to the fin-syn rules and more independent UHF stations throughout the US) have resulted in a need for broadcast content in the form of older films, network series reruns, and production facilities nationwide. Ransom Productions is esmologically placed to be at the center of all of these new broadcast venues, ready to buy, sell, facilitate, and produce television content for clients, all while inserting SANDMAN- (and, secretly, URIEL-) provided memetics.

President (Rank 3)

Archie Ransom is President of the company. His adjutant and Creative Director is science fiction author Andrew Krane. Security Chief for Ransom Productions is Jocasta Menos.

Sandmen (Rank 2)

On the “top” floor of Ransom Productions work a cadre of approximately twenty “buzz boys,” Project memeticists and esmologists who help spread the Corruption of treating the American viewing public as nothing more than a bunch of drones. Most are young (in their twenties), nominally “hip,” and part of the first generation in human history to be raised with the help of television. These Sandmen give directives to the rank-and-file staff (the agents, sales personnel, market researchers, lawyers, and other professionals) on key media properties to be brokered, bought, or sold.

Staff (Rank 1)

Ransom Productions needs a contingent of 30 to 50 mundane staff members to run properly: there is a creative division featuring writers and artists (including the members of Venture Toons who came over to Ransom Productions), entertainment lawyers, advertising and rights sales staff, market researchers (not clued in to esmology), and a small core of technological advisors (mostly in cable, satellite, and videotape technology)

Workers (Rank 0)

Ransom Productions also has a small contingent of 10 or so low-level, low-skill workers in mundane security, janitorial, and other services.

Facilities

Ransom Productions occupies the top three floors of the Hollywood Western Building, former home of both the Hays Office and the MPAA, as well as Central Casting. It had lay dormant since the mid-’60s when Central Casting moved out, being used as mostly since then as TV shooting space, musician practice rooms, and home to several fly-by-night B- and blue movie companies. SANDMAN purchased the building in summer of 1974 and Ransom Productions quickly moved in from the former headquarters in the old Venture Toons building in Tarzana. The bottom floor and basement tenants remain Toppy’s Coffee Shop and Hollywood Billiards, Los Angeles’s oldest pool hall and bowling alley. There is also a small drug store on the first floor.

Timeline

• August 1973: Archie and Marshall meet Jack Kelly and Nicky Nickolich of Venture Toons while investigating Agrigenics. They discover Nickolich has connects to cheap animators in Yugoslavia.

• October 1973: Archie forces Dr. Frank Stanton to retire after the collapse of Operation ALLOCHTHON; one of his conditions is that Archie receive the job of head of North American memetics.

• November-December 1973: Archie commutes back and forth between San Francisco and Los Angeles while setting up Ransom Productions in the Venture Toons building (a temporary home).

• April 1974: The events of the Symbionese Liberation Army’s bank robbery and eventual capture. Archie (with Dr. Marshall Redgrave’s help) successfully brokers Ransom Productions’ first movie deal: a script credit for Andrew Krane on Bob Redford and Nic Roeg’s upcoming adaptation of Jack London’s The Star-Rover.

• May 1974: Beth Cole, the Voice of Control, visits Archie and promises him a new more esmologically centrally-located headquarters building. While Archie is in New York at the network ‘74 upfronts, SANDMAN purchases the Hollywood-Western Building. The move in begins immediately.