Network Ownership

[sctvman]

Today, television network ownership is well-known compared to 30 or 20 years old. I know that Fox and MyNetwork TV are owned by News Corporation, CBS is owned by Viacom (but some may say that CBS is owned by CBS Corp. because Viacom was split into two companies), NBC is owned by General Electric, ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Company and the CW network is owned by CBS and Warner Bros.

In 1985, Capitol Cities purchased ABC and General Electric aquired RCA, which owned NBC.


My questions are this:

Before 1985, who owned ABC? Was it a group of investors?

Before Westinghouse took over CBS in 1995, who owned the network? I think it was a group of investors that owned CBS before 1995. Is that true?

 

[Tim-In-Houston]

Leonard Goldenson, who had bought Paramount's theatre chain when the government forced the movie studios to divest them, bought ABC from its founder, Edward J. Noble (creater of Lifesavers candy) in 1953. Goldenson ran the network until selling to Capital Cities in 1986. (Mark Gunter: The House That Roone Built, p. 34).

[edited to add:] Noble had purchased the NBC Blue Network in 1941 when the FCC ordered RCA to divest one of its two radio networks. So, technically speaking, ABC at one time was owned by NBC.

William S. Paley founded Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) as a radio network and ran it until 1986 when control was given to the investor Larry Tisch (who had bought up about 25% of CBS' outstanding stock), in a bid to thwart Ted Turner's hostile takeover attemp. Tisch ran the network until selling to Westinghouse in 1995. Paley died in 1990, Tisch in 2003. (source).

 

[Ultimajock]

Leonard Goldenson, who had bought Paramount's theatre chain when the government forced the movie studios to divest them, bought ABC from its founder, Edward J. Noble (creater of Lifesavers candy) in 1953. Goldenson ran the network until selling to Capital Cities in 1986. (Mark Gunter: The House That Roone Built, p. 34).

[edited to add:] Noble had purchased the NBC Blue Network in 1941 when the FCC ordered RCA to divest one of its two radio networks. So, technically speaking, ABC at one time was owned by NBC.

...under Noble's ownership, ABC's Chicago O&O, WENR-TV/7, shared studio space with NBC's WNBQ/5 at the NBC-owned facility in the Merchandise Mart. In 1954, because Paramount's theater chain, known locally as Balaban & Katz, already owned the Chicago CBS affiliate, WBKB/4, Channel 4 was sold to CBS (and renamed WBBM-TV on Channel 2) and ABC moved Channel 7 to the Lake Theater Studios under the retained WBKB call sign...

 

[Tim L]

the two largest original FOX Owned and Operated Stations, WNEW-5 (Now WNYW) New York City and WTTG-5 Washington, DC were bought by Fox from Metromedia in the mid 1980's Metromedia had owned these stations since the early 1960's..in the meantime acquiring other stations to form the basis of what would eventually become the Original FOX Network (1986-94)

WNEW and WTTG along with WDTV-2 in Pittsburgh were the hub of the DuMont Television Network from 1947-1955 when DuMont sold KDKA (Formerly WDTV) to Westinghouse and threw in the towel as a Network in 1956..WNEW/WTTG were finally sold to Metropolitan Broadcasting (MetroMedia) in the early 1960's..So the present Fourth Network, FOX is a descendant of the previous Fourth Network (DuMont)