Media General Communications, Inc History

During the 1857 Uprising—the so-called Indian or Sepoy Mutiny—the Muslim press came out openly against the British occupation of India.

Meanwhile, several publications began in what is now Bangladesh: The outstanding Amrita Bazar Patrika came out from Jessore in 1868.

In 1896 the Bryans bought the Richmond Leader, and seven years later they merged it with a competing newspaper to create the News Leader.

1903: Richmond Leader merges with rival newspaper to form News Leader.

The first known radio program in the United States was broadcast by Reginald Aubrey Fessenden from his experimental station at Brant Rock, Mass., on Christmas Eve, 1906.

Among the leading personalities of this early period was David Sarnoff, later of the Radio Corporation of America and the National Broadcasting Company, who first, in 1916, envisaged the possibility of a radio receiver in every home.

The first successful broadcasting of the human voice, from a transmitter in Ireland across the Atlantic in 1919, led to the erection of a six-kilowatt transmitter at Chelmsford, Essex.

Nevertheless, about 4,000 receiving-set licenses and 150 amateur transmitting licenses issued by the Post Office by March 1921 were evidence of growing interest.

14, 1922; the station call signal was 2MT. Shortly thereafter an experimental station was authorized at Marconi House in London, and its first program went on the air May 11, 1922.

In 1926 the National Broadcasting Company purchased WEAF in New York and, using it as the originating station, established a permanent network of radio stations to which it distributed daily programs.

Radio arrived in Pakistan with the establishment of a broadcasting station in Peshawar in 1936.

In 1937 the company started an AM radio outlet in Richmond.

By 1940 the company's newspapers had the widest circulation in Virginia, and the Dispatch Co. changed its name to Richmond Newspapers Inc.

In 1949 an FM radio station was also launched.

Alan S. Donnahoe, a former statistician and research director who had been with Richmond Newspapers since 1950, was appointed president of Media General.

Umberto Eco in his 1962 essay Opera Aperta (The Open Work) introduced the concept of openness, focusing on plurality in art.

In 1964, the company began an $8.3 million three-year modernization program.

In 1966 the company went public and set about transforming itself from a small newspaper publisher into a media conglomerate.

1969: Media General, Inc. is formed as a holding company for Richmond Newspapers and the Tribune Co.

In 1970 the new company bought New Jersey's Newark News and Garden State Paper's newsprint recycling plants from Richard B. Scudder for $50 million in Media General stock.

In 1971 the company decided that it could use that data to start a strictly financial newspaper.

The first wave of this research is ably summarized in Leo Bogart's Age of Television (1972). Historians, except for those tied to programs focusing on the film or journalism, have all but avoided the medium, despite its immense popularity and seeming influence.

Garden State Paper was contributing 20 percent of Media General's revenue, and in mid-1973 the firm announced plans to boost its recycling capacity 25 percent to 325,000 tons a year.

In 1977 Media General, along with Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Inc. and Cox Enterprises, Inc., built a $125 million newsprint mill in Dublin, Georgia.

Media General earned $18 million in 1978 on sales of $243.7 million.

In 1980 the firm bought Golden West Publishing Corp., a chain of weekly newspapers in southern California, for $8 million.

In 1982, newspapers and publishing accounted for 42 percent of company profits, newsprint accounted for 45 percent, and broadcasting accounted for 13 percent.

In 1983, William Tanner was charged with income tax fraud, mail fraud, and accepting kickbacks, and federal law enforcement agents searched Tanner's premises for documents relating to the charges.

In 1985 the company ceased publication of the afternoon Winston-Salem Sentinel.

After the stock market crash of 1987 a group of investors led by Hollywood producer Burt Sugarman bought about ten percent of Media General's stock.

In 1988, the company sold Media General Broadcast Services to its management.

The company made $20.7 million in 1989 on sales of $595 million.

Although in 1990 the company decided to sell Garden State's recycling mill in Garfield, New Jersey, as part of a strategy to concentrate on its communications properties, management soon changed its mind and took the mill off the auction block before it was sold.

In May 1992 publication of the 104-year-old Richmond News Leader ceased.

In 1995 Media General embarked on a series of acquisitions and divestitures designed to redirect the company's energy into its holdings in the Southeast.

In the meantime, the Korean government in October 1998 launched a plan to fund the broadcasters in an effort to “boost the broadcasting industry which includes extending financial support to the nation's wobbly independent studios,” as reported in the Korea Herald.

In April 1999 it sold its Fairfax County cable TV holdings to Cox Enterprises for $1.4 billion, officially exiting the cable industry.

In February 2000 Gabelli again attempted to nominate two new members to the board, but because his letter of intent failed to explain his interests in the nomination, as required in the company's bylaws, his nominations were once again ignored.

The controversies swirling around the 2001 tax probes of more than 20 media companies in Seoul illustrate the Kim Dae Jung government's willingness to use various legal mechanisms to “correct[] the market's failure to achieve a democratic media” in South Korea.

As of February 2002, more than half of Korea's 15 million households had broadband service.

By the year 2005 up to 12 million homes, or over 75% of all 16 million Korean households, will access the broadband Internet.