Steve Ross (Time Warner CEO)

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Steve Jay Ross (September 17, 1927 - December 20, 1992) Former CEO of Time Warner Inc, Warner Communications, and Kinney National Services, Inc.

Contents 1 Early life and Career. 2 Warner Communications. 3 Visionary. 4 Soccer. 5 Personal Life. 6 Death. 7 References. 8 See also.

[edit] Early life and Career.

Steve Jay Ross was born on April 5, 1927 in Brooklyn. He was the son of a Jewish immigrant family. Mr. Ross’ original last name was Rechnitz but his father, who lost all his money during the Depression, decided to change the last name to Ross to find work with fewer struggles.^[1]

Mr. Ross attended Paul Smith's College for two years and joined the Army for a brief period of time. After College and the Army his first job was at his uncle’s store in Manhattan. ^[1]

At the age of 26, he married Carol Rosenthal. Her father, Edward Rosenthal, owned a funeral home in Manhattan called the Riverside. At his father-in-law's funeral home Mr. Ross began showing promise as a businessman. ^[1]

Mr. Ross' enthusiasm for new ventures led him to help his father in-law with the funeral home as well as to start his own company. In the late 1950’s with a loan from the bank Mr. Ross started a company called Abbey Rent a Car. This company merged later with Kinney garage business. That merge led to other merges with an office-cleaning business, owned by a cousin of Mr. Rosenthal, and Mr. Rosenthal’s funeral-home. This group was called Kinney National Services and was taken public in 1962. Its market valuation was $12.5 million.^[1]

Kinney National Services, Inc. moved from downtown Newark to 10 Rockefeller Plaza in November 1962, Steve J. Ross became the company’s president. Ross was the co-CEO of Kinney National Services from 1969 to 1972. ^[1]

In 1969, Kinney paid $400 million for the ailing Warner Bros.-Seven Arts film studio and record business. Two years later Kinney National Services renamed itself Warner Communications^[1]

[edit] Warner Communications.

Mr. Ross became the CEO, president and chairman of Warner Communications in 1972. Under Mr. Ross' leadership, Warner Communications grew from a troubled movie studio into a huge entertainment business.

As CEO of Warner Communications he introduced incentive-based compensation and put the right people at the right place. In Hollywood he inspired loyalty with good payments as well as his commitment to employees during both good and bad times. Many remember Steve Ross as a person who wanted to make his employees happy. "It's your company," he would say to executives who worked for him. Further more some employees saw him as a father figure, "Steve was very much what I wish my father was," Steven Spielberg said.^[2]

In the early 1980s Warner Bros. needed a partner to help finance its cable television business. Ross found American Express and sold its executives on the potential of selling AmEx credit cards to the wealthy Warner cable TV customers. The gambit worked brilliantly and Warner-AmEx Cable was born. The cable TV business became the cornerstone of Time Warner until the 2009 spin-off of the businesses. ^[3]

Since 1976 Warner Communications owned Atari and had great success with Atari 2600 consoles but in 1983 Atari collapsed and this left Warner Communications vulnerable. Rupert Murdoch tried to buy Warner but Ross was able to impede it by selling 20 percent of Warner to Chris-Craft Industries. “Ross created Time Warner, and as much as a single person can be responsible for merging a multi-billion dollar world-wide media conglomerate, the credit has to go to him. Ross sought to create an American company that could stand up to Japanese conglomerates Sony and Matsushita, then buying into Hollywood and taking over other media businesses in the United States. The merger was advertised as a combination of equals and at first Ross and J. Richard Monro of Time, Inc. were listed as Co-Chief Operating Officers. But this "sharing of power" proved short-lived; within a year Ross stood alone atop his media colossus.”^[4]

Steve J. Ross’ $14 billion deal with Time Inc. in 1989 was the last big deal of the 1980's. This deal created the biggest media and entertainment company at the time. In 1989 Time Warner owned: Time, People and Sports Illustrated magazines; the Warner Brothers studio in Hollywood; the Warner, Atlantic, Elektra and Asylum record companies; Warner Books; DC Comics; Home Box Office and some of the country's largest cable television systems.

[edit] Visionary.

Steven Ross can be considered a man ahead of his time. Mr. Ross moved before many of his competitors to bet heavily on the worldwide potential of cable television, records, videos and other experiments. Some of his ideas were successful and others failed but he definitely influenced the development of media and entertainment with his ideas. "If you're not a risk-taker," he once said, "you should get the hell out of business."^[1]

Mr. Ross special interest in cable helped him envision narrowcasting - cable channels created for specific audiences – MTV and Nickelodeon were created to serve young audiences as well as children’s. Today these two channels are still very successful and cable television is filled with channels specialized in thousands of topics.

Other projects that Mr. Ross supported were not as successful as MTV and Nickelodeon but certainly left a mark in television and helped shape the TV we are enjoying today. The most important project was Qube. Qube was launched in 1977 in Columbus, Ohio and was Mr. Ross vision of how television could become interactive. Although this trial was not successful this was an important step for what we call today advanced television. In many ways the Qube project failed because it was ahead of its time. Qube lead to further attempts by Warner to integrate more services to cable television probably the most important after Qube was the Full Service Network that was launched in 1994 in Orlando, Florida. Also Mr. Ross supported Atari from 1977 to 1983. Taking the first video game console to many homes around the world. Atari was a very lucrative business for Warner Communications but in 1983 it collapsed. Although many of Mr. Ross Projects failed they are still important because they shaped to today’s video game and cable industries.

[edit] Soccer.

Mr. Ross is also known for creating the New York Cosmos soccer team in an attempt to bring interest to soccer in USA. Mr. Ross was also responsibly for bringing Soccer super stars Giorgio Chinaglia and Pele to the New York Cosmos.^[5]

Since 2003 he is part of the USA National Soccer Hall of Fame, as one of the founders of the New York Cosmos.

[edit] Personal Life.

First Marriage. Carol Rosenthal Married 1953 – Divorced 1978. Two sons, Toni and Mark.

Second Marriage. Amanda Burden. Married 1980. Divorced 16 months later.

Third Marriage. Courtney Sale Ross. Married in 1982. One daughter, Nicole.

[edit] Death.

Mr. Ross died on December 20, 1992. His death was caused by complications arising from his prostate cancer from which he suffered for several years. ^[1]

[edit] References.

[edit] See also.

• Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner by Connie Bruck (Simon & Schuster, 1994)

• Once in a Life Time – The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos. (Paul Crowder and John Dower, 2006)