In 1971, Hanna-Barbera was owned by Taft Broadcasting. Taft Broadcasting purchased Coney Island, and a whole bunch of land north of Cincinnati. We all know what happened to the land North of Cincinnati.
Taft Broadcasting retained Coney Island, but spun off the park business into Kings Entertainment Company. Through the same kinds of spin-offs, the Hanna-Barbera library eventually ended up in the hands of the North American Financial Group, which, if I remember correctly, is another name for Carl Lindner.
Eventually, North American Financial bought Kings Island, but retained Kings Entertainment (KECO) under a management contract.
Along came Paramount. Paramount purchased KECO, then purchased Kings Island. At about the same time, North American sold the Hanna-Barbera properties to Turner Broadcasting, which resulted very quickly in the creation of the Cartoon Network.
Next, in the (at that time) largest media merger in history, Time-Warner bought Turner Broadcasting. At that time, Six Flags was owned by Time-Warner. With the Time-Warner acquisition of Turner, they also picked up Hanna-Barbera as part of the deal. The result, of course, was to place Scooby Doo in both the Paramount (thanks to a legacy license) and the Six Flags (Time-Warner) parks.
This all happened before Viacom bought Paramount, and before Viacom got bought by Blockbuster. :)
Now...since Citicasters has been swallowed up by Clear Channel...does Clear Channel now own Coney Island? Or did Citicasters spin that off before they got bought?
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
RideMan said:
This all happened before Viacom bought Paramount, and before Viacom got bought by Blockbuster. --Dave Althoff, Jr.
Blockbuster didn't buy Viacom...it was the other way around. Viacom bought Blockbuster from Wayne Huizenga during Sumner Redstone's buying spree of 1994. Last year, Viacom spun off Blockbuster in its own IPO, fearing that slow growth in the unit was holding down VIA's stock. After selling Blockbuster, Huizenga went on to start Extended Stay America hotels, which has since been bought by the Blackstone Group (which owns 50% of Universal Orlando, and at one point owned 50% of Six Flags!)
Here's a great timeline of who owned what and when in Viacom/CBS/Parmaount/Blockbuster history...
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/viacom-timeline.asp
Joel
*** Edited 5/28/2005 1:12:14 PM UTC by JZarley*** *** Edited 5/28/2005 1:40:55 PM UTC by JZarley***
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