Wometco Enterprises

Wometco Enterprises (also known simply as Wometco) is an American company headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida; a suburb of Miami. It was once a large media company with diversified holdings, but slowly sold off its assets during the early 1980s, and owned the Miami Seaquarium until it was sold in 2014.

History

Mobile truck for the Wometco-owned WTVJ in front of the Miami Herald building in downtown Miami, circa 1950.

Wometco was founded in 1925 as the Wolfson-Meyer Theater Company, a movie theatre chain based in Miami. The company's co-founders were brothers-in-law Mitchell Wolfson (1900–1983) and Sidney Meyer.[1] The first movie theater opened by the firm was the Capitol Theater in downtown Miami, built in 1926. Over the years the company built up the largest chain of movie theaters in South Florida, and adopted the portmanteau name of Wometco sometime in the 1950s.

In 1949 Wometco moved into broadcasting with the founding of WTVJ in Miami, Florida's first television station. The station signed on in March 1949 from studios inside the Capitol Theatre, which was renovated for television. Wometco was also a founding partner of WFGA-TV (now WTLV) in Jacksonville, Florida, which signed on in September 1957 with Wometco holding 20 percent ownership; though it would gradually decrease its stake over time, Wometco remained the station's primary stockholder until WTLV was sold to Harte-Hanks Communications in 1975.

Wometco purchased a majority interest in WMTV in Madison, Wisconsin in June 1957,[2] but sold its shares less than a year later to Lee Enterprises, in April 1958.[3] Also in 1958 the firm purchased controlling interest of WLOS-AM-FM-TV in Asheville, North Carolina, and KVOS-TV in Bellingham, Washington was added in 1961. In 1976 Wometco bought WTVG (now WFUT-TV) in Newark, New Jersey, and in 1978 acquired WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1977 Wometco launched a nationwide, over-the-air subscription television service called Wometco Home Theater, using WTVG as its flagship station.

Wometco expanded its non-entertainment holdings in 1955, with the opening of the Miami Seaquarium. It bought the Blue Circle hamburger chain, based in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1966, but sold it in 1974.

Transition and sale

Wometco co-founder Mitchell Wolfson died in January 1983, survived by two children: son Mitchell Wolfson, Jr., and daughter Frances Wolfson Cary. (Mitchell Wolfson was widowed when wife Frances Meyer Wolfson died in 1980; eldest son Louis Wolfson, II died a year earlier.) The elder Wolfson left no succession plans in his will, and as a result Wometco quickly unraveled, making it a ripe takeover target. Investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts took over Wometco in 1984 in a deal worth $1 billion, the largest corporate buyout ever to that date.[4] Assets included 45 movie theaters, three television stations, 47 cable TV systems, the Miami Seaquarium, the Citrus Tower, the vending machine division, and the soft drink division, one of the largest Coca-Cola bottlers in the nation[5] In 1994 Cobb Theatres bought out the Wometco movie theatre chain. The Cobb chain would later merge into Regal Entertainment Group.

Wometco today still owns a franchise of Baskin-Robbins/Dunkin' Donuts stores in Miami, the Caribbean and Puerto Rico.[6]

In March 2014, The Miami Seaquarium was sold to Palace Entertainment, a California-based company.[7]

Former Wometco-owned stations

Television stations

Stations are arranged alphabetically by state and city of license.

City of license / Market	Station	Channel TV (RF)	Years owned	Current ownership status
Jacksonville, Florida	WFGA-TV/WTLV ^1	12 (12)	1957–1975	NBC affiliate owned by Tegna
Miami - Fort Lauderdale	WTVJ **	4 (now 6 (31))	1949–1984	NBC owned-and-operated (O&O)
Grand Rapids - Kalamazoo - Battle Creek, MI	WZZM-TV	13 (13)	1978–1984	ABC affiliate owned by Tegna
Newark, N.J. - New York City	WTVG/WWHT	68 (30)	1976–1984	UniMás affiliate, WFUT-TV, owned by Univision Communications
Smithtown, New York	WSNL-TV (satellite of WWHT)	67 (23)	1980–1984	UniMás affiliate, WFTY-TV, owned by Univision Communications
Asheville - Greenville - Spartanburg	WLOS-TV ^2	13 (13)	1958–1984	ABC affiliate owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group
Bellingham, WA - Vancouver, B.C. (Bellingham is nominally in the Seattle-Tacoma market)	KVOS-TV	12 (35)	1961–1984	Heroes & Icons owned-and-operated station (O&O), owned by Weigel Broadcasting
Madison, Wisconsin	WMTV	33 (now 15 (19))	1957–1958	NBC affiliate owned by Gray Television

Radio stations

AM Station

FM Station

Market	Station/ Frequency	Years owned	Current status
Asheville, North Carolina	WLOS-1380	1958–1969 ^1	WKJV, owned by International Baptist Outreach Missions
	WLOS-FM-99.9	1958–1984 ^1	WKSF, owned by iHeartMedia

Notes:

• ** WTVJ was the only station which was built and signed on by Wometco;
• ¹ Wometco held a controlling (47 percent) share of Florida-Georgia Television Co., founding owner of WFGA-TV/WTLV, at the station's launch in 1957. Wometco's share was reduced to a minority (11 percent) stake in 1971. Wometco and its other partners were bought out by Harte-Hanks Communications in 1975;
• ² Wometco operated the Asheville stations under a subsidiary, Wometco-Skyway Broadcasting, after purchasing majority control of WLOS-AM-FM-TV in 1958.

References

Notes

1. Parks 1981. p. 211
2. "KCOP (TV), WMTV (TV) are sold" (PDF). Broadcasting - Telecasting. June 3, 1957. p. 68. Retrieved January 26, 2019.
3. "Changing hands" (PDF). Broadcasting - Telecasting. April 7, 1958. p. 76. Retrieved January 26, 2019.
4. Wayne, Leslie. Wometco Agrees To Buyout New York Times, September 22, 1983.
5. Birger, Larry. New Wometco to Sell Its Theaters The Miami Herald, March 12, 1984.
6. Wometco Enterprises Bloomberg BusinessWeek
7. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article2087768.html

Bibliography

• Parks, Arva Moore. Miami: The Magic City. Tulsa, OK: Continental Heritage Press, 1981. ISBN 0-932986-17-X.