RKO and General Teleradio

overview

This page deals with RKO and General Teleradio - former film production, broadcasting and cable television groups - and the Mutual Network.

It covers -

* RKO
* General Tire & Rubber
* studies

RKO

The Radio Keith Orpheum film group - more commonly known as RKO and distinguished by its radio transmission tower logo - integrated feature film production, distribution and exhibition at the height of the 'studio system'.

RKO was formed in 1929 when RCA merged its film interests with the Film Booking Office (FBO) studio and KAO. It had acquired a stake in FBO in 1927, essentially to reinforce its position as a competitor of Western electric in provision of recording equipment for the new talkies.

FBO was controlled by speculator Joseph Kennedy (father of the future US president), who had taken a stake in the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) cinema chain that year. Kennedy had previously gained control of Pathe-Exchange, the distribution group that had spun off France's Pathe and subsequently been driven by stockbroker Charles Merrill (father of today's Merrill Lynch financial group).

Merrill and associates sold out of Pathe Exchange after deciding that the cost of building or acquiring an exhibition chain was too expensive. KAO dated from the beginning of the century, bringing together theatres in vaudeville circuits that had later become cinemas.

RKO absorbed Pathe Exchange in 1930 and became the distributor for Disney. It enjoyed some success during the thirties and early forties: highlights included King Kong and Flying Down To Rio (1933), Bringing Up Baby (1938),The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) and Citizen Kane (1941). In 1948, amid jitters about dismantling of the studio system (in particular the Paramount Consent Decree highlighted elsewhere on this site) and demands for investment in television, RCA sold a controlling stake to Howard Hughes (1905-1976).

Hughes exited in 1955, splitting RKO into RKO Pictures (a production and operation operation) and RKO Theaters (real estate and cinema operations). RKO Pictures was sold to General Teleradio, an arm of conglomerate General Tire & Rubber, for US$25 million.

General Tire & Rubber

In 1959 it was rebadged as RKO General Inc, exploiting its film library (with many features ultimately acquired by Ted Turner) and selling its studios to Desilu Productions.

General Tire & Rubber moved on to expand into the emerging cable television industry.

studies

The major history of RCA is Robert Sobel's RCA (New York: Stein & Day 1986). Benjamin Aldridge's The Victor Talking Machine Co (New York 1964) offers a view of RCA's roots. Context is provided by The Global Jukebox: The International Music Industry (London: Routledge 1996) by Robert Burnett, An International History of the Recording Industry (London: Cassell 1998) by Pekka Gronow & Ilpo Saunio and Timothy Day's A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 2000). Margaret Graham's RCA & the Videodisc (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1986) considers why RCA dropped the ball, influencing Sony's decision to create both content and hardware.

RKO features in Douglas Gomery's superb The Hollywood Studio System (New York: St Martins 1986), and Thomas Schatz' The Genius of the System (New York: Simon & Schuster 1988). There's more specific treatment in The RKO Story (New York: Arlington House 1982) by Richard Jewell & Vernon Harbin.

Context is provided by Donald Crafton's The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926-1931 (New York: Scribner's 1997) and Scott Eyman's The Speed of Sound: Hollywood & the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1997).

For perspectives on finance and regulation see in particular Movies & Money: Financing the American Film Industry (Norwood: Ablex 1982) by Janet Wasko and Michael Conant's Antitrust in the Motion Picture Industry: Economic & Legal Analysis (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1960). The 1940s crisis and beyond is explored in Hollywood in the Age of Television (Boston: Unwin Hyman 1990) edited by Tino Balio and Janet Wasko's concise Hollywood in the Information Age: Beyond the Silver Screen (Oxford: Polity Press 1994).

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