RKO General

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RKO General (initially: RKO Teleradio ) was an American holding company under which the conglomerate General Tire organized its radio stations from 1955 to 1981 . The company was based in New York City . The company also produced a number of feature films from 1981 to 1987 under the brand name RKO Pictures .

RKO General continues to exist formally to this day under the General Tire umbrella company GenCorp , which was created later .

history

General Tire had been active in the radio business since 1943 and owned seven television stations in addition to numerous radio stations. In July 1955, the company acquired the bankrupt Hollywood studio RKO Pictures for $ 25 million for its subsidiary General Teleradio , which was forcing its way into the television market . RKO Pictures were combined with General Teleradio to form a single company, RKO Teleradio Pictures . General Tire offset a large part of the acquisition costs by immediately transferring the rights to the RKO film inventory to C&C Television Corp. for $ 15.2 million . , a subsidiary of the conglomerate Cantrell & Cochrane , resold. Historian William Boddy has described this sale of the RKO holdings as "the trigger for a flood of feature films on television in the mid-1950s".

In 1956 General Tire founded another subsidiary, RKO Distributing , which bought into the Western Ontario Broadcasting Company and thus controlled, among other things, a television station in Windsor , which was also important for the market in the Midwest . RKO Distributing later became part of RKO General .

The RKO Teleradio Pictures produced two short documentaries -  The Golden equator (1956) and Born to Fight (1956) - and a music film with Jane Powell , The Girl Most Likely (1958). However, at the beginning of 1957, production and rental activities were given up. General Tire sold the studio equipment to Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball , which they used for their own production company Desilu . A number of unreleased films were sold to other companies in the spring of 1959.

RKO Teleradio was renamed RKO General and developed into one of the largest broadcasting companies in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. In the summer of 1962, RKO General created WHCT, the first television station in the country to offer a subscription service over a long period of time. Until 1969, the station supplied customers who had rented a special decoder with commercial-free films, sports and other entertainment programs.

In the 1960s and 1970s, RKO General came under pressure. Competitors brought the company to court several times over its arrangements with advertisers. Since then, it has become increasingly difficult for RKO General to renew expired licenses for its radio stations. The supervisory authority accused the company of a number of misconduct in 1977. RKO General went to the Court of Appeal in Washington, DC and in 1982 before the US Supreme Court , but could not prevail.

In 1981, General Tire made an attempt to reactivate the RKO Pictures brand name and co-produced and produced a number of films. Here is a selection:

In 1983, the regulator made another attempt to completely oust RKO General from the broadcasting business. The company found a temporary way out by looking for new locations for its remaining television stations, but then underwent a major reorganization. Both General Tire and RKO General became subsidiaries of a new holding organization GenCorp . Since the pressure of the supervisory authority did not decrease, RKO General withdrew further and further from the broadcasting business at the end of the 1980s. The company sold its last station in 1991.

In September 1987, the investment company Wesray Capital Corporation acquired the RKO Pictures label including all remaining exploitation rights for the RKO film stocks for 32 million US dollars . Wesray then merged this acquisition with the theme park chain Six Flags to form a new company RKO / Six Flags Entertainment .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lea Brilmayer, Jack Goldsmith: Conflict of Laws . Aspen, New York 2002, p. 464
  2. ^ William Boddy: Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics . University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago 1990, p. 138
  3. ↑ Ontario, South-Western Ontario  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.broadcasting-history.ca  
  4. ^ Dennis J. O'Neill, A Whale of a Territory: The Story of Bill O'Neil . McGraw Hill, New York 1966, p. 180
  5. ^ Show Business: Fee-Vee Time