Product Details
Great American Communications Company
Certificate TypeCommon StockDate IssuedOctober 6, 1987CanceledNoPrinterSecurity-Columbian/United States Bank Note CompanySignaturesMachine printedApproximate Size12" (w) by 8" (h)Additional DetailsNA
Historical Context
The Taft Broadcasting Company (also known as Taft Television and Radio Company, Incorporated) was based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The company was rooted in the family of William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States. In 1879, William Howard's brother, Charles Phelps Taft, purchased two afternoon newspapers in Cincinnati, The Times and The Cincinnati Daily Star, merging them into the Cincinnati Times-Star in 1880. It was during the tenure of the merged paper's second publisher, Hulbert Taft Sr., son of Charles and William Howard's half-brother, Peter Rawson Taft II, that the newspaper also became involved in broadcasting.
The company was the owner of such major media and entertainment properties as Hanna-Barbera Productions, Hanna-Barbera Pty, Ltd./Taft-Hardie Group Pty. Ltd., Worldvision Enterprises, Ruby-Spears Productions, KECO Entertainment and many television and radio stations. It also owned 50% of CIC Video's Australian operations, CIC-Taft Home Video.
In total, Taft owned 16 television stations:
- Birmingham-Tuscaloosa-Anniston, Alabama (WBRC-TV)
- Phoenix, Arizona (KTSP-TV)
- Washington, D.C. (WDCA-TV)
- Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Florida (WCIX)
- St. Petersburg-Tampa, Florida (WTSP)
- Lexington, Kentucky (WKYT-TV)
- Kansas City, Missouri (WDAF-TV)
- Buffalo, New York (WGR-TV)
- High Point-Greensboro-Winston-Salem, North Carolina (WGHP)
- Cincinnati, Ohio (WKRC-TV)
- Columbus, Ohio (WTVN-TV)
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (WTAF-TV)
- Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (WNEP-TV)
- Knoxville, Tennessee (WBIR-TV)
- Fort Worth-Dallas, Texas (KTXA)
- Houston, Texas (KTXH)
... and seven radio stations:
- Birmingham, Alabama (WBRC 960, WBRC-FM 106.9)
- Kansas City, Missouri (WDAF 610, WDAF-FM 102.1)
- Buffalo, New York WGR 550, WGR-FM 96.9)
- Cincinnati, Ohio (WKRC 550, WKRC-FM 101.9)
- Columbus, Ohio (WTVN 610, WTVN-FM 96.3)
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (KQV 1410, WDVE 102.5)
- Knoxville, Tennessee (WBIR 1240, WBIR-FM 103.5)
In 1987, Cincinnati-based businessman Carl Lindner, Jr. became Taft's majority stockholder in a hostile takeover and renamed the company Great American Communications following a major restructuring of its operations. The new name came from Linder's insurance company, Great American Insurance. The FCC considered this restructuring to be an ownership change, and told Lindner he could not keep both WTVN-TV and WKRC-TV. As a result, Great American spun off WTVN-TV to Anchor Media, a new firm composed of former Taft Broadcasting board members led by Robert Bass. The two stations later reunited under the Sinclair Broadcast Group, when cross-ownership ruleswere relaxed. Another new company, led by former Taft Broadcasting president Dudley S. Taft Sr., took the Taft Broadcasting name. This new company retained WGHP and later purchased another Philadelphia station, WPHL-TV.
In 1988, Great American Broadcasting sold Worldvision to Aaron Spelling Productions. Included with Worldvision were outright ownership of all of Great American's programming assets (including the remnants of Taft International Pictures and Taft Entertainment Television), except for the Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears libraries, which remained owned by Great American for the time being. However, Worldvision continued to hold syndication rights until the two animation studios found new owners.
In 1991, Hanna-Barbera, along with much of the original Ruby-Spears library, was acquired by Turner Broadcasting System, which became part of Time Warner in 1996. As part of this deal, syndication rights to the libraries were passed to Turner Program Services (via Turner Entertainment Co.) prior to Time Warner's purchase of Turner. Eventually, TPS was folded into Warner Bros. Television Distribution. The Ruby-Spears studio was spun off and bought back by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, and operated as an independent operation from then forward.
In 1992, KECO Entertainment, Great American's theme park division, was sold to Paramount Communications (the parent of Paramount Pictures; the parent company was formerly known as Gulf+Western) and became Paramount Parks, later to be acquired by Viacom. These parks were sold to Cedar Fair Entertainment Co. by CBS in 2006. Great American also reacquired WGHP from Dudley Taft.
In 1993, Great American filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy amid a shareholder revolt and SEC investigation over Linder's stock selling and asset swaps. The company emerged the following yeat and was renamed Citicasters Communications. It sold WKRC radio to Jacor and shut down Electra, a teletext service operated as a joint venture between Taft, Zenith, and Turner Broadcasting's WTBS (now WPCH-TV) in Atlanta.
In 1994, Citicasters sold most of its TV stations, including WDAF-TV and KSAZ-TV to New World Communications, and WBRC and WGHP to the News Corporation's Fox Television Stations unit, which would later acquire the New World chain. Around the same time, when two of the markets switched to ABC via Scripps, Citicasters agreed to a two-station deal with CBS to affiliate with WTSP and WKRC.
In 1996, Citicasters, by then the owner of two television stations, five AM radio stations and 14 FM radio stations, merged with Jacor, which became a subsidiary of Citicasters. Three months after the merger was completed, Jacor exchanged WTSP to Gannett in return for Gannett's radio stations in Los Angeles, San Diego and Tampa. In 1997, as a condition of the merger, Jacor sold WKRQ and the original WDAF-FM (by then KYYS, now KCKC) to American Radio Systems, which would become acquired by Infinity Broadcasting (later renamed CBS Radio) in 1998. Also in 1997, Jacor sold WDAF (AM) (now KCSP) to Entercom.
In 1997, the Worldvision properties that had previously been under Taft and Great American (with the exception of the Hanna-Barbera and most of the Ruby-Spears material) were incorporated into Republic Pictures (today part of CBS Studios).
In 1999, Clear Channel Communications acquired Citicasters and Jacor. The Citicasters name lived on as a holding company and licensee under the Clear Channel corporate structure; the two subsidiaries with the name were eliminated at the end of 2020 as part of a reorganization of iHeartMedia's subsidiaries.
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