[12] On the evening of July 8, 1954, WHBQ disc jockey Dewey Phillips introduced a song called "That's All Right (Mama)", the first ever recording to air on the radio by a singer from Memphis named Elvis Presley.

In 1953, he tried to buy the film library of RKO Radio Pictures—including many of the most famous movies made by Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, and Cary Grant—but was rebuffed by the studio's then owner, Howard Hughes.

However, after Hughes failed in a bid to acquire total control of the RKO Pictures Corp. holding company, he sold the studio to General Teleradio for $25 million in July 1955.

"[16] On the broadcasting front, RKO Teleradio briefly owned WEAT-AM and WEAT-TV in West Palm Beach, Florida; they were sold off before the company's next reorganization in 1959.

Gambling, the "easy listening" show was broadcast out of an innovative high-fidelity studio where, according to reports, "each clean new record was touched by a needle only one time.

After the Canadian government tightened rules on foreign ownership of radio and television stations, RKO General was forced to sell off the Windsor group in 1970.

[23] In the mid-1970s, RKO sought to dispense with the FM outlets it had established in some of its oldest markets, while maintaining its presence on the AM dial: San Francisco's KFRC-FM was sold in 1977; around the same time, WHBQ-FM in Memphis was divested as well.

In 1965, the FCC declared the 1956 trade null and void, effectively reversing the swap, and denied the proposed license transfers on what would prove to be the ironic ground that NBC would enter the Boston market as the product of its dishonesty in the Philadelphia/Cleveland transaction.

Consultants Bill Drake and Gene Chenault, who had devised the restrictive programming style, soon brought it to RKO's AM stations in San Francisco, Boston, and Memphis, also with great success.

[25] Before long, many non-RKO broadcasters around the country were hiring the Boss Radio consulting team to convert them to the format, or simply imitating it on their own.

[26] As WOR-FM and its later incarnations, rock-formatted WXLO and urban WRKS-FM, RKO's New York FM station pioneered a number of styles, including a more oldies-heavy version of Boss Radio and, later, so-called rhythmic formats.

[28] In 1981, the network began transmitting what has been claimed as the first national talk show delivered by satellite—the six-hour-long America Overnight broadcast out of Los Angeles and Dallas, Texas.

Until January 31, 1969, the station aired movies, sports events, concerts, and other live performances at night without commercial interruption through the Phonevision subscription service operated by RKO's partner, Zenith Electronics.

[32] During its final decade as a significant business entity, the company would reenter the movie industry that had given it its name, reviving the RKO Pictures brand in 1981 for a series of co-productions and then its own independent projects.

[34] The first person who found the disc jockey and fulfilled a specified condition, such as answering a question correctly or wearing a certain item of clothing, would receive a cash prize and be interviewed live.

[35] On July 16, 1970, two teenagers, who were following a KHJ disc jockey in separate cars, drove at speeds up to eighty miles per hour so that they could be closest to him when the next contest was announced.

Defendant could have accomplished its objectives of entertaining its listeners and increasing advertising revenues by adopting a contest format which would have avoided danger to the motoring public.

[40]The California Supreme Court's ruling in Weirum v. RKO General, Inc. became a touchstone decision on the subject of the duty of care in tort law.

Later, and more seriously, Fidelity claimed that General Tire conditioned its dealings with certain vendors on the basis that they would in turn buy advertising time on RKO stations.

[44] On June 21, 1974, an administrative law judge renewed the WNAC-TV license despite finding that General Tire and RKO had engaged in reciprocal trade practices.

In December 1975, Community Broadcasting, one of the companies competing for the Boston station, asked the FCC to revisit the case, alleging that General Tire bribed foreign officials, maintained a slush fund for U.S. political campaign contributions, and misappropriated revenue from overseas operations.

On July 1, 1977, however, in settling an action brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), General Tire admitted to an eye-popping litany of corporate misconduct, including the bribery and slush fund charges.

[46] Factors in the decision were the reciprocal trade practices of the 1960s, false financial filings by RKO, and the gross misconduct admitted to by General Tire in non-broadcast fields.

In the course of the WNAC hearings, RKO had withheld evidence of General Tire's misconduct, including the fact that the SEC had begun an investigation of the company in 1976.

The FCC consequently found that RKO had displayed a "persistent lack of candor" regarding its own and General Tire's misdeeds, thus threatening "the integrity of the Commission's processes.

Among other things, he found that RKO misled advertisers about its ratings, engaged in fraudulent billing, lied repeatedly to the FCC about a destroyed audit report, and filed numerous false financial statements.

[60] The FCC warned RKO that any appeal would almost certainly be denied outright, and advised them to sell off their remaining stations to avoid the indignity of having their licenses stripped.

[61] GenCorp, then battling a hostile takeover bid by an investor group, was hungry for cash as a result of paying a premium on its own shares to stave off the attack.

Fidelity then transferred the license to The Walt Disney Company, which then bought KHJ-TV's non-license assets, including its studios and intellectual property, from RKO.

By the turn of the decade, RKO's last significant media holdings were the WHBQ TV and AM radio stations in Memphis and KFRC-AM in San Francisco.