It seems as far back as 1965, RKO General was facing numerous investigations over its business and financial practices. Then, in 1969, the company applied for license renewal for its Boston television property, WNAC-TV. For some reason, the F.C.C decided to base the renewals of all of RKO's other stations on the outcome of the WNAC proceeding.
Through numerous hearings and appeals, the issue lingered into the 1970s and was ultimately decided in 1981. December 4 of that year, the Appeals Court ruled against RKO on WNAC-TV's license renewal. Things got worse. While all this was going on with the F.C.C, the Securities and Exchange Commission had also been entertaining complaints and was considering allegations against RKO for securities fraud.
General Tire, a subsidiary of RKO, admitted to financial irregularities. It seems the company was trying to hide illegal political contributions and bribes it had paid to foreign officials. The situation became even more volatile because RKO General had been denying these same allegations to the F.C.C. Naturally, the F.C.C. got pretty pissed off and subsequently ruled RKO unfit to be a broadcast licensee, stripping it of all its TV licenses. In addition, RKO was ordered to dispose of all its other broadcast properties.
RKO's lawyers managed to tie up the divestiture process for eight more years with legal and procedural actions until 1990, when its final station, KHJ-TV, was sold, thus ending the RKO broadcast media empire.
I assure you; I was not given this history lesson during my job interview.
Radio is an oddly convoluted entity which doesn't always operate by any known rules of business. If the renowned physicist, Albert Einstein, had been a deejay, he might have suggested the theory that Radio was the “black hole” of all media, slowing sucking in any vestige of common sense.
So, it seemed the station I was about to start working for was basically on life-support and RKO was ready to pull the plug as soon as it
