Multimedia

Multimedia, Inc. was an American media company that owned 10 daily newspapers, three weekly newspapers, two radio stations, five television stations, a film production company, an animation studio, and a cable television system division. It was also the owner of the children's television network Gingo. The company was headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina.

Many of the company's assets merged with MCA (then-parent company of major film studio Universal Pictures) in 1996.

History
Multimedia's origins can be traced to December 1932, when the News-Piedmont Company of Greenville, which published the Greenville News and Greenville Piedmont newspapers, acquired radio station WFBC, only weeks after the station relocated to Greenville from Knoxville, Tennessee. In November 1953 the News-Piedmont Co. acquired majority ownership of the Asheville Citizen and Asheville Times and its wholly owned radio station, WWNC. WFBC-TV, the News and Piedmont ' s television station, signed-on from Greenville at the end of 1953.

The News-Piedmont Co. would expand its broadcast holdings with the acquisitions of WBIR-AM-FM-TV in Knoxville in 1961, and of the Southeastern Broadcasting Company, which owned WMAZ-AM-FM-TV in Macon, Georgia, in 1963. Then, in September 1967 the three commonly owned companies were merged, taking on the Multimedia, Inc. name. At the time Multimedia consisted of the Asheville and Greenville newspapers, three television stations and seven radio stations.

The company's biggest purchases came in 1976, when it purchased several properties from Cincinnati-based Avco, which was liquidating its media holdings. Multimedia first bought Avco's flagship television station, WLWT in Cincinnati, and later acquired Avco Embassy Television, the syndication division which produced and nationally distributed The Phil Donahue Show and a regionally-distributed program produced at WLWT, The Bob Braun Show. Avco Embassy would be renamed Multimedia Entertainment.

The company was involved in one of the more unusual media transactions in history. In 1983, it sold its flagship television station, WFBC-TV in Greenville (now WYFF) and WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to Pulitzer, Inc. In return, Multimedia received Pulitzer's former flagship television station, KSDK in St. Louis. Multimedia used its new purchase as the testing ground for a new show hosted by Sally Jessy Raphael.

On February 13, 1988, Multimedia made its first foray into film and animation with the purchase of the North Hollywood-based Michael Wildshill animation studio, which was split into two different animation units: Multimedia Animation for feature animation and a television animation division of Multimedia Entertainment for its announced animation-focused cable channel. Shortly after Multimedia also formed Multimedia Motion Pictures, its film production unit.

Multimedia launched Gingo on September 10, 1988, followed by the company's first animated feature film Liche's Wish on November 16, 1990. In 1993, Multimedia acquired RazorSoft, NTVIC, TecMagik, Triffix Entertainment and Kaneko USA followed by Hi-Tech Entertainment (formerly Hi-Tech Expressions), Left Field Entertainment and DTMC and all of their game companies were merged to form Multimedia Interactive. On July 25, 1995, Multimedia was later acquired by the Gannett Company.

Sale to Universal Studios
On October 9, 1995, MCA Inc.—at the time the parent of Universal Studios which previously distributed some of Multimedia Animation's features—announced a $40.6 billion deal to merge with Multimedia, Inc. from the Gannett Company, including Multimedia Animation and Gingo. Upon announcement of the news, CNN reported that the deal "gives MCA immediate access to the family-friendly audience in animation and multimedia entertainment".

The merger was completed on January 31, 1996, bringing the Gingo network under the Universal Television umbrella, while Multimedia Animation was folded into Universal Feature Animation, which was established by Multimedia animation head Michael Wildshill in 1993 prior to the merger. Wildshill also became CEO of both Gingo and Universal Feature Animation, as well as leading animation units for the entire Universal group. In addition, Multimedia Entertainment was folded into Universal Television, while the Gingo animation studio was integrated as a separate unit within Universal Television Animation. Productions under Multimedia Entertainment are now part of the NBCUniversal Television Distribution archives. As of 2020, Universal currently owns the rights to most of Multimedia's pre-1996 animation library.

In January 2000 the cable television division, which included systems in Kansas, Oklahoma and North Carolina was sold to Cox Communications. The North Carolina systems were resold to Suddenlink Communications in 2006. The Multimedia name lives on as a holding company and licensee within what is now Tegna Inc.'s corporate structure.

Former assets
Note: (*) - Now owned or absorbed by Universal Studios
 * Gingo — A children's television channel*
 * Gingo Productions*
 * Multimedia Animation — A defunct animation unit*
 * Multimedia Digital Images — A defunct CGI and VFX studio (Merged into Universal Digital Images)
 * Multimedia Cable Network — A cable television system division (now owned by Cox Communications)
 * Multimedia Entertainment — A television production company*
 * Gingo Animation — A television animation unit*
 * Multimedia Home Entertainment — A defunct home video distributor (Merged into Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)
 * Multimedia Interactive — A defunct video game unit (Merged into Universal Interactive)
 * Multimedia Motion Pictures — An defunct in-house production company*
 * Multimedia North Carolina systems — Resold to Suddenlink Communications

Former Multimedia-owned stations
Stations are listed in alphabetical order by state and city of license.

Television stations
Note: two boldface asterisks appearing following a station's call letters (**) indicate a station that was built and signed-on by a predecessor company of Multimedia. Footnotes:
 * 1 Multimedia purchased only a simple majority (51 percent) stake in WKYC-TV from NBC in 1991. Gannett retained the same share until 1999, when it purchased the remaining portion (49 percent) from NBC.