RKO General - History - Early Days

Early Days

General Tire entered broadcasting in 1943, when it bought a controlling interest in the Yankee Network, a regional radio network in New England. The Yankee Network owned and operated four stations: flagship WNAC in Boston; WAAB in Worcester, Massachusetts; WEAN in Providence, Rhode Island; and WICC in Bridgeport, Connecticut. With the Yankee Network purchase, General Tire also picked up its contracts with 17 independently owned affiliates and acquired a stake in the Mutual Broadcasting System, a cooperatively owned national radio network.

On June 21, 1948, the Yankee Network launched New England's third television station: Boston's WNAC-TV went on the air just days after WBZ-TV, also in Boston, and WNHC-TV, licensed to New Haven, Connecticut. The TV station's transmitter site also served a new FM outlet, the first and only station to be established under General Tire ownership. While the Yankee Network had been operating experimental FM stations since 1939, WNAC-FM was the first that would survive past the early 1950s.

In December 1950, General Tire purchased the Don Lee Broadcasting System, a long-standing West Coast regional network, for $12.3 million. This brought three more leading stations into the General Tire stable—KHJ (with its simulcasting sister, KHJ-FM) in Los Angeles, KFRC in San Francisco, and KGB in San Diego. The acquisition also expanded the company's holdings in the Mutual Broadcasting System. Under the terms of the deal, the Columbia Broadcasting System acquired Don Lee's Los Angeles television station, KTSL. In 1951, General Tire acquired its own station in the city when it bought KFI-TV from Earle C. Anthony, changing the call letters to KHJ-TV.

In 1952, General Tire purchased the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, owner of WOR-AM-FM-TV in New York, from R.H. Macy and Company. Bamberger itself was a division of General Teleradio Inc., a Macy's subsidiary. In the deal, General Tire acquired the rights to the name General Teleradio, under which the company merged its broadcasting interests as a new division. The deal also gave General Tire majority control of the Mutual Broadcasting System. The company moved into Memphis, Tennessee in 1954 with its purchase of WHBQ radio and WHBQ-TV. Exiting two mid-sized urban markets that same year, General sold off WEAN to the Providence Journal and KGB to the San Diego station's general manager, Marion Harris. On the evening of July 8, 1954, WHBQ disc jockey Dewey Phillips introduced a song called "That's All Right (Mama)", the first ever recording to air on the radio by a local singer named Elvis Presley.

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