Cox Enterprises

Founding

The company was founded in Dayton, Ohio, by James M. Cox, who purchased the Dayton Daily News in 1898. Cox became a member of Ohio's delegation to the United States House of Representatives and then the governor of Ohio. He was the Democratic Party candidate for president of the United States in the presidential election of 1920, running unsuccessfully on a ticket that included Franklin D. Roosevelt as the vice presidential candidate.

Telecommunications

In 1935, at the urging of Governor Cox's son, James M. Cox Jr., Cox entered the radio business starting with WHIO in Dayton. Governor Cox purchased The Atlanta Journal in 1939 as well as radio station WSB. On September 29, 1948, Cox's WSB-TV, later referred to as the "Eyes of the South", aired the first television broadcast in Atlanta. WHIO-TV in Ohio's Miami Valley soon followed, airing its first broadcasts on February 23, 1949.

In 1950, Governor Cox purchased The Atlanta Constitution, and in 1962 his son purchased three cable television systems in central Pennsylvania with a total of 11,800 subscribers. The two combined their broadcasting and cable businesses into the publicly traded Cox Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1964, though the newspaper business remained independent as Cox Enterprises.

In 1966, Cox expanded its holdings to purchase television syndicator Walter Schwimmer, followed in 1967 by the purchase of television production company Bing Crosby Productions. Cox subsequently sold off its syndication unit to a new production company, Telecom Productions, in 1970. Cox would reenter the television syndication business, when Cox's subsidiary, TeleRep, established Television Program Enterprises in the late 1970s, before merging with Rysher Entertainment in 1993.