Miami physician-entrepreneur Phillip Frost, long an investor in pharmaceutical industries, took a huge departure Tuesday in announcing that he and a group of close associates have organized the $80 million purchase of a Chinese outdoor advertising company.

``We are getting into an important part of the world's economy,'' said Frost, the billionaire who developed and then sold Key Pharmaceuticals and IVAX.

He described SearchMedia International Ltd. as the second-largest outdoor advertiser in China.

The company has 1,500 outdoor billboards as well as advertising in elevators and in Shanghai subways, said Steven D. Rubin, another member of the Frost Group, which consists of four former executives of IVAX.

``This is certainly a departure from what we normally do,'' Rubin said.

The origins of the complicated deal go back to August 2007, when the Frost Group set up a blank-check company, Ideation Acquisition, in which a veteran Hollywood movie producer and multimedia executive, Robert N. Fried, was brought on board to find a media company to buy.

Frost describes Fried as a ``distant relative,'' and they had long talked about doing a deal together. Blank-check companies are publicly traded entities that attract investors because they believe an expert in a particular field can make a profitable deal.

Fried has been executive producer of at least 15 films, according to the SEC filing, including Man of the Year and Collateral. He also produced Session Man, a short film that won an Oscar.

Rubin said Fried and Ideation had originally planned to find a digital media company, ``but that market fell apart, and so we went with something low-tech.''

China is unusual because of its thriving elevator advertising possibilities, Rubin said. Most are posters, but some elevators have electronic signs. On Tuesday, Ideation announced ts shareholders had overwhelmingly approved the purchase of SearchMedia. The deal is expected to close by the end of this week.

Ideation will change its name to SearchMedia and its stock will trade on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol IDI.

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