RKO General

RKO General (initially: RKO Radio Tele ) was an American holding company under which the conglomerate General Tire in 1955 organized his radio stations until 1981. Headquarters was New York City. Under the brand name of RKO Pictures, the company from 1981 to 1987 has also produced a number of feature films.

Under the later created the General Tire- holding company GenCorp is RKO General formally continued until today.

History

General Tire was in the radio business since 1943 and had been active in the 1950s in addition to numerous radio stations, seven television stations. In July 1955, the Company acquired for its subsidiary General Tele Radio that urged in the television market, for 25 million dollars, the danger of bankruptcy Hollywood studio RKO Pictures. RKO Pictures were merged with General Tele Radio with a single company RKO Radio Pictures Tele. A large part of the cost of resembled General Tire by immediately afterwards the rights to the RKO film assets for $ 15.2 million to the C & C Television Corp.. , A subsidiary of the conglomerate Cantrell & Cochrane resold. The historian William Boddy has called this selling the RKO holdings as " the trigger for a spate of films on television mid-1950s ."

In 1956, General Tire, another subsidiary, RKO Distributing, which was shopping in the Western Ontario Broadcasting Company and thus, among others, a television station in Windsor controlled, which was also important for the market in the Midwest. RKO Distributing later went on to RKO General.

The Tele RKO Radio Pictures produced two short documentaries - The Golden equator (1956) and Born to Fight (1956 ) - and a musical film starring Jane Powell, The Girl Most Likely (1958). In early 1957, production and distribution activities but was then abandoned. General Tire sold the studio facilities to Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, who used it for their own production company Desilu. A number of unpublished films were sold to other companies in the spring of 1959.

RKO Radio Tele was renamed RKO General and developed in the 1960s and 1970s, one of the largest broadcasting companies in the country. In the summer of 1962, RKO General created with WHCT the first television station in the country, which offered a subscription service for a long time. Until 1969 the station customers who had hired a special decoder unit supplied with commercial-free movies, sports and other entertainment programs.

In the 1960s and 1970s, RKO General came under pressure. Competitors brought the company because of its arrangements with advertisers several times in court. Since then, it became increasingly difficult for RKO General to renew expired licenses for its radio stations. The supervisory authority accused the company in 1977 a whole series of transgressions before. RKO General was pre Washington Court of Appeals and 1982 before the U.S. Supreme Court, but could not prevail.

1981 General Tire took an attempt to reactivate the brand names RKO Pictures, and co-produced and produced a series of films. Here is a selection:

1983 undertook the supervisory authority a further attempt to completely displace RKO General from the broadcast business. The company found a temporary solution by seeking new locations for its remaining television stations, then underwent but a comprehensive reorganization. Both General Tire and RKO General were subsidiaries of a new holding organization GenCorp. Since the pressure of the supervisory authority has not subsided, pulled RKO General in the late 1980s further and further behind in the radio broadcasting business. His last sold the company in 1991.

In September 1987, the Investment Company Wesray Capital Corporation acquired for 32 million U.S. dollars, the label RKO Pictures and all remaining exploitation rights for the RKO film stocks. Wesray completed this acquisition, then the theme park chain Six Flags into a new company RKO / Six Flags Entertainment together.

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