Kinney National Services, Inc. was formed in 1966 when the Kinney Parking Company and the National Cleaning Company merged. The new company was headed by Steve Ross.
Kinney National expanded in 1967 by acquiring National Periodical Publications (more commonly, but not yet officially called DC Comics), Hollywood talent agency Ashley-Famous, and then Panavision. Ted Ashley (from Ashley-Famous) suggested to Ross that he buy out the cash-strapped film company Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, which had purchased Atlantic Records that same year. When the acquisition of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts was completed in 1969, Ashley-Famous was sold because of anti-trust laws prohibiting a company from owning both a production studio and a talent agency. Ted Ashley was put in charge of the movie studio. Beginning with the unexpected success of the concert documentary Woodstock (1970), the company started scoring box office hits again, reestablishing Warner Bros. as a major studio. In 1970, Kinney National bought Jac Holzman's Elektra Records and Nonesuch Records.
Due to a financial scandal over its parking operations, Kinney National spun off its non-entertainment assets in 1971 (as National Kinney Corporation) and changed its own name to Warner Communications Inc. with Steve Ross as the company's sole CEO, president and chairman. Directors included Charles A. Agemian, the CEO of Garden State National Bank.
Famous quotes containing the words national and/or company:
“The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation.”
—French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (Sept. 1791)
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)