THE group that owns the rights to Basil Brush and Postman Pat last night struck a deal to launch DVDs featuring cartoon strongman He-Man.

Shares in Entertainment Rights were beefed up yesterday by the deal with distributor BCI Eclipse to target 100 million homes in the US with the cartoon hero.

Entertainment picked up the rights to He-Man following a deal in March to buy the Filmation library of cartoons from Hallmark.

In a separate move, Entertainment said it had agreed for Postman Pat to air on the Nickelodeon channel in Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The popular postman is now appearing in 65 countries.

Entertainment added that trading had been in line with expectations and that it anticipated an extremely successful 2005.

Since 1999, when Entertainment owned rights to only 50 hours of programming, the group's lib-rary has grown to more than 1,800 hours of children's and family char-acters and brands.

Annual rev-enues have also increased, from £1.8m in 1999 to £29.5m in 2003.