History
The company was founded by Norman J. Pattiz in 1976. At the time, he was a former advertising sales executive with KCOP-TV, a Los Angeles TV station. He was listening to a local radio station doing a Motown weekend, and decided to syndicate The Sound of Motown to radio. The show was a success. He added several more shows during the 1970s, including Dr. Demento and Mary Turner's "Off The Record.". In 1981 Norm Pattiz started recording live concerts for broadcast with a Chuck Berry recording in January of that year, the company was a leader in live broadcasts and concert recordings for radio, until May 2011 when Westwood stopped recording live concerts. By 1982, Pattiz was distributing his radio shows via satellite through an arrangement with idb Communications in Culver City. Pattiz took Westwood One public in 1984, and with the money raised by the IPO, he purchased the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1985, and the NBC Radio Network in 1987. Other highlights in the late 1980s include the purchase of three radio stations, the trade paper Radio & Records, and the hiring of Casey Kasem from ABC. Although Pattiz long remained a major shareholder and board chairman, control and management shifted to others in the early 1990s. First, in 1993, it was to radio station group owner Infinity Broadcasting, headed by Mel Karmazin, who also took over direct management of Westwood. With Infinity already owning and managing competing Unistar Radio Networks (formerly known as the RKO Radio Networks and later as United Stations Radio Networks, which merged with Transtar in the late 1980s), the two companies were combined under the Westwood name in 1994 (later spinning off Transtar in 2006). After the sale of his Infinity Broadcasting to Westinghouse, then parent of CBS, Karmazin went on to become COO of CBS and under his control, CBS took over management of Westwood. CBS also had a significant ownership stake in Westwood, which then purchased Metro Networks in 1999 in a three-way merger involving Metro Networks, Copter Acquisition Corp. and Westwood. On August 30, 2010, Pattiz stepped down from the board and was succeeded as chairman by Mark Stone, Senior Managing Director of the Gores Group, which by then was majority owner and controlled Westwood. A Westwood press release said Pattiz signed a new contract as a company consultant.
Read more about this topic: Westwood One
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