Showbiz Pizza Programs

Family Vision were a collection of monthly Betamax tapes released to Showbiz Pizza Place stores starting in 1986. The tapes would provide video entertainment to guests during the downtime between showtape segments. The videos would be projected onto a screen that would automatically come down once a show ended. The tapes themselves were charged at $55 a month once a store agreed into the program.

The tapes were produced by Sight & Sound Entertainment Corporation, under their Video Pool line. Video Pool had been around on Betamax tapes since March of 1984, published to other vendors, with Sight & Sound being an intermediary for handling the mass tape production and acquisition of copyrighted video material. Each tape would be around 30 minutes long, and were produced until Cyberstar fully took over all Showbiz locations in late 1989.

Showbiz Pizza Program was a music cassette collection released alongside Showbiz Pizza Place and Pizza Time Theatre showtapes as background music between segments. Similar to Family Vision, these would be a precursor to Cyberstar, and would be released until its full integration into Showbiz Pizza Place locations, despite Pizza Time Theatre locations continuing to use reels for another year.

These programs were still produced by Sight & Sound Entertainment Corporation, however the company would be merged into Audio Environments Inc., rebranding as AEI Music. Under AEI, the company would become specialized in creating music tape compilations for retail stores and airlines. This provided a specific mood tailored to the store, in which AEI describes to "-harmonize with the lifestyle of (the store's) patrons" The Showbiz Pizza Programs were specifically labeled as Inflight Audio Entertainment, and each gave the address of AEI Music Network Inc. at the bottom of the label.

It is currently known that Program 11 came with the Summertime shows for 1988, and that Program 15 came with the Christmas shows for 1988. Releases 11-18 line up correctly, with 18 being exactly alongside the last known Showbiz reel to be produced, though it isn't clear which releases matched up with 1-10.

It isn't clear what procedure was done for CEC tapes after the release of Program 18, as they would continue to use reels up to CEC September 1990 Show.