Word: kluge
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Preparations for the couple's arrival in the U.S., meanwhile, were spiked with a bit of scandal. Originally it had been announced that the co-chairman of the $10,000-a-couple Palm Beach charity ball would be Pat Kluge, the dishy wife of Billionaire John Kluge, chairman of Metromedia, Inc. Last week the British press uncovered a part of her past that had eluded the careful perusal of Buckingham Palace. In the 1970s the former Patricia Rose had posed as a full-frontal nude for the raunchy British skin magazine Knave. It transpired that Mr. and Mrs. Kluge will...
...motion the negotiations that would alter his empire (not to mention his passport) is March 28, 1985. Murdoch was paying his first visit to the Hollywood studios of 20th Century-Fox, half of which he had just bought from Denver Oil Tycoon Marvin Davis. As it happened, John Kluge, the billionaire chieftain of Metromedia Inc., was also on the lot that day to attend an investment conference...
Murdoch and Kluge, already friends, exchanged pleasantries; before long, Kluge was sounding out Murdoch and Davis about selling them Metromedia's string of television stations. A discussion over dinner led the following day to serious talks, which eventually led to marathon meetings in Kluge's apartment in New York's Waldorf Towers. As the hard-driving Murdoch described the complex bargaining that followed, "You find things you don't expect, you shout, you scream...
...Metromedia sale was engineered by Kluge in great secrecy; even some of his top executives did not know about it until talks were well under way. A German immigrant who came to America at age eight, Kluge bought a controlling interest in a small broadcasting company in 1959 and built it into a $500 million-a-year telecommunications firm. Kluge took Metromedia private last year, but the maneuver left it $1.3 billion in debt. Realizing that he could not handle all that red ink, Kluge decided last January to sell at least some of the TV stations...
...time Kluge talked to Murdoch and Davis, he had agreed to sell the Boston outlet to Hearst. Murdoch did not mind losing out on that station (among other things, it would have forced him to sell his Boston Herald). The major sticking point was Kluge's reluctance to include New York's WNEW-TV in the deal. "It justified the whole package to us, that New York was there," Murdoch told TIME. When Kluge relented and agreed to give up WNEW-TV, "normal negotiating," as Murdoch calls it, commenced...