wcop 400 million dollar sound

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:06:29 -0400, "Doug Drown" <revdoug1@verizon.net> said:

> History trivia time:  Your mentioning Plough's ownership of WCOP (which I
> remember: "A Radio Service of Plough, Incorporated") has made me wonder what
> other major manufacturing companies used to own broadcasting stations but
> have gotten out of the business.  GE exited in the '80s but went back in;
> Westinghouse evolved into CBS; Avco/Crosley owned WLW.  Does anyone know of
> any others?  I know Plough was a pharmaceutical company, but I'm using the
> term "manufacturing" broadly.

It was quite common and is now much less so.  GE is as much a
financial-services company as a manufacturing company these days, and
other than the way its ownership is structured, NBC is really not much
different from, say, Clear Channel (now that the shareholders have
approved the takeover by a couple of private-equity firms -- although
the new deal actually leaves the public with a 30% stake in the
company).  Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff was perhaps the last of the
"old-school" manufacturing/broadcast combinations.

For a while, it seems to me that broadcasting was considered a "safe"
(meaning good return on capital) way of diversifying a business.  Wall
Street doesn't like that sort of corporate structure any more (unless
you're GE or Berkshire Hathaway); diversification is for mutual funds.
So you had insurance companies (Nationwide, Jefferson Pilot, and many
others), manufacturing companies (GE, Westinghouse, General Tire &
Rubber, etc.), and retailers (Shepard, Outlet, and Cherry & Webb in
Providence alone) all involved in broadcasting.  (RCA is a special
case since it was, after all, the *Radio* Corporation of America.)

-GAWollman