Word: teleradio
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Gasped Hollywood's Daily Variety: "The most amazing coup in the history of the film business." The cause of Variety's amazement was a large and lightning-quick profit turned for General Teleradio, Inc. by its canny President Thomas F. O'Neil...
Groundwork for the coup was laid six months ago, when Teleradio (subsidiary of General Tire & Rubber Co.) paid Industrialist Howard Hughes $25 million for RKO Radio Pictures and RKO's well-stocked film library (TIME, Aug. 1, 1955). In December, O'Neil got back more than half the investment by selling television and foreign rights on 740 feature-length movies, almost all RKO owns, and some 1,000 short films to Manhattan's C&C Super Corp. C&C paid $12.2 million in cash and agreed to pay $3,000,000 more over the next two years...
Hollywood's sellout to TV last week moved into the multimillion-dollar bracket. Thomas F. O'Neil, president of General Teleradio and new board chairman of RKO Radio Pictures, announced a $15 million deal with C & C Super Corp., which has taken a perpetual lease on 740 RKO features and 1,000 shorts. The features include such old favorites as Gunga Din, Citizen Kane, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Kitty Foyle, Stage Door, Having Wonderful Time, Once Upon a Honeymoon and eight Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. All the films in the package...
...Western radio stations. A year later, he got control of Manhattan's WOR and WOR-TV by buying out Macy's interest, and later got control of Mutual. At the same time, General Tire had been merging all its radio-TV holdings, which became General Teleradio in 1952, with Tom O'Neil as president of the new company. Says his father: "That Tom, he makes money...
They had more opportunity for "spot" commercials, could sell time on local rates, did not have to split fees with the networks. So far, General Teleradio's 30 rental films have grossed $2,100,000 for Mutual, more than $600,000 profit on the overall deal. O'Neil thinks this is just a beginning. With RKO's fully equipped studio he can make still more films, both for TV and movie theaters, can either produce and distribute the pictures himself or hook up with independent producers who need space and outlets for their films -a three...