Kluge, John W

1914-2010

Kluge was born to a Presbyterian family in Chemnitz, Germany, and emigrated to the United States in 1922. He earned his B.A. degree in economics from Columbia University in 1937.[4] Prior to attending Columbia University, Kluge went to Wayne State University for two years. He was of Scots-Irish, English, and German heritage.[5]

During World War II, Kluge served at the secret P.O. Box 1142 interrogation facility outside of Washington, D.C.[6]

Kluge's major move into media was by purchasing stock in the Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation in the mid-1950s. The Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation was the successor of the DuMont Television Network, which was spun off from DuMont Laboratories after the television network ceased operations in 1956. Metropolitan Broadcasting consisted of two stations, WABD in New York City and WTTG in Washington, D.C., both former DuMont outlets now operating as independent stations. Kluge joined the company as its board chairman and largest stockholder in 1958, acquiring the bulk of his shares from founder Allen B. DuMont for about USD $6,000,000.

After gaining control in 1959, Kluge began the company's expansion further into broadcasting, with holdings in television and radio.[7] In the early 1960s, Kluge bought an outdoor advertising firm, and in 1961 the company's name was changed to Metromedia to reflect the diversity of its interests.

Kluge in 1965
In 1986, Kluge sold the Metromedia television stations to 20th Century Fox (then controlled by News Corporation), for a reported US$4 billion. Those stations would later form the core of what would become the Fox television network (spun off from News Corporation/20th Century Fox with Fox Corporation decades later). The following year, Forbes placed Kluge at the top of its list as the richest man in America.

In retaliation for a lawsuit brought by Paul Winchell, who sought the rights to his children's television program, "Winchell-Mahoney Time", Metromedia management, under orders from Kluge, destroyed the video tapes. Winchell was later awarded nearly $18 million as compensation for Metromedia's capricious behavior.

Following the Fox disposal, Kluge's activities had been carried out through a private venture named Metromedia Company in which he was a partner with Stuart Subotnick. Metromedia's more recent activities have included Eastern European, Commonwealth of Independent States and China telecom/cable/radio ventures through Metromedia International Group and the ill-fated US telecom backbone operation Metromedia Fiber Network. In July 2008, the Metromedia Restaurant Group, part of the Metromedia Company, closed over 300 company-owned Bennigan's and Steak and Ale restaurants.[8] Kluge and partner Stuart Subotnick were also the original team operators of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars Major League Soccer franchise.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kluge

Billionaire John Kluge unveils his latest venture, a multi-million-dollar computerized billboard painting system that he says will revolutionize the outdoor advertising industry. The system uses computers to control a high-speed painting process that can paint a 50-foot billboard in six hours and save days of work (April 15, 1987).

Kluge, John unveils his latest venture, a multi-million-dollar computerized billboard painting system that he says will revolutionize the outdoor advertising industry, April 15, 1987

John W. Kluge ’37, the billionaire businessman who was Columbia’s most generous benefactor and the founder of the Kluge Scholars Program, died on September 7 at his home outside Charlottesville, Va. He was 95.

Kluge was born Johannes Kluge on Sept­ember 21, 1914, in Chemnitz, Germany. His father died in WWI, and after his mother remarried, Kluge was brought to America in 1922 by his German-American stepfather, Oswald Leitert, to live in Detroit. When Kluge was 10, Leitert put him to work as a payroll clerk in the family contracting business. But Kluge was focused on education and left home at 14 when his stepfather said he would not pay for further schooling. Kluge went to live with his typing teacher, Gracia Gray DaRatt, whom he considered his mentor. Kluge completed secondary schooling and then attended Detroit City College, later renamed Wayne State University. He transferred to the College, from which he earned a degree in economics, after he was offered a full scholarship and living expenses.

“If it hadn’t been for Columbia, my path would have been entirely different in life,” Kluge said at a celebration of his 90th birthday in Low Library. “Columbia gave me an opportunity, and the only way you can really repay that opportunity is for you to help someone else.”

Kluge, the longtime chairman and president of Metromedia, made a $400 million pledge to the University in 2007, the largest gift ever devoted to student financial aid. The donation provided $200 million in financial aid endowment for undergraduates at the College and $200 million for GSAS, the School of the Arts, the Journalism School and SIPA. It has been used in part to create matching programs, prompting millions in additional donations from alumni and friends. That gift brought Kluge’s philanthropy to Columbia to more than $500 million, including money for the Kluge Scholars Program, which provides financial aid and programming to high-ability students from underrepresented populations; the Kluge Presidential Scholars; the Kluge Faculty Endowment; and other programs.

“I want to help ensure that Columbia will always be a place where the best and the brightest young people can come to develop their intellect, make something of their own lives and give something back to our communities, our country and our world,” Kluge said.

Kluge often spoke fondly about his time at Columbia, saying that thanks to odd jobs and poker games with classmates, he arrived with $15 and left with $7,000. Joking aside, he cited his time at the College as a formative intellectual experience and credited lessons learned from professors and figures such as former University president Nicholas Murray Butler (Class of 1882). A number of anecdotes about Kluge’s time at the College, in his own words, are included in the 2009 book John Kluge: Stories. The collection was compiled by his son John Jr. ’05 and excerpted in CCT’s September/October “Columbia Forum” department.

Kluge accepts a framed class banner from Kluge Scholars Jessica Perez ’06 and Reginald Gossett ’06 at his 90th birthday celebration in Low Rotunda on October 1, 2004.PHOTOS: EILEEN BARROSOFollowing graduation, Kluge worked at a printing company in Detroit. During WWII he served in Army intelligence in the Aleutian Islands. He then ran a food-distribution company and next turned to broadcasting. In 1946, Kluge used his Army discharge money to buy his first radio station, WGAY in Silver Spring, Md., with a partner. He continued to buy and sell stations and invested in what became the Baltimore-based food wholesaler Kluge, Finkelstein and Co. In the 1950s, Kluge acquired radio stations in St. Louis, Dallas, Fort Worth, Buffalo, Tulsa, Nashville, Pittsburgh and Orlando. He also invested in real estate and expanded the New England Fritos Corp., which he had founded in 1947 to distribute Fritos and Cheetos in the Northeast. He added Fleischmann’s yeast, Blue Bonnet margarine and Wrigley’s chewing gum to the distribution network. Working with David Finkelstein, Kluge augmented his fortune by distributing the products of companies such as General Foods and Coca-Cola to supermarket chains.

The most satisfying day in his life, Kluge said, according to The New York Times, was the day Barney Balaban of Paramount told him, “Young man, you bring me $4 million and you’ll be able to have the Paramount stock in the Metropolitan Broadcasting Company.”

With that $4 million, Kluge got into the television business as chief executive of Metropolitan, which consisted of two stations — WNEW in New York and WTTG in Washington, D.C. — and two radio stations. He renamed the company Metromedia in 1961 because he intended to expand it beyond broadcasting.

Kluge had no patience for those he called “self-important corporation types cut out of the same cookie cutter” who tended to play it safe. He often took Wall Street by surprise, but as financial analyst Allen J. Gottesman said in 1986: “Whatever he does works out real well. You always assume there was a good reason, and you usually find out later that it was a good move.”

“I love the work because it taxes your mind,” Kluge said in an interview with the Times. “Years ago, I could have taken a few million dollars and joined the country club and gotten into this pattern of complaining about the world and about the tax law.”

Instead, Kluge grew Metromedia, the nation’s first major independent broadcasting entity, into a conglomerate that included seven television stations, 14 radio stations, outdoor advertising, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Ice Capades, radio paging and mobile telephones as well as syndicated rights to television shows and movies.

Kluge made his first billion in 1984, when he took Metromedia private in a $1.1 billion leveraged buyout and then liquidated the company, more than tripling his take. He sold the television stations for more than $2 billion to Rupert Murdoch, who was expanding his communications empire and forming the FOX Network.

Kluge’s sale of 11 radio stations brought close to $290 million. The outdoor advertising business went for $710 million. The Harlem Globetrotters and the Ice Capades, which together cost the company $6 million, brought $30 million. Kluge topped the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans from 1989 to 1991.

Upon selling his television interests, Kluge remained a businessman but increasingly turned his attention to philanthropy. He founded the John Kluge Scholars Program in 1987 to enable high-achieving students to attend the College by providing them with financial support and programming to help them flourish academically and develop fully their individual talents. The program has evolved and grown, with additional support from

Kluge, so that there is now a steady cohort of approximately 200 scholars in residence at any one time.

Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger recalled that Kluge “had a fresh and firsthand understanding of the catalytic effect a Columbia education could have on a young person’s life, as it did on his own. He was determined to ensure as many students as possible could benefit, as he did, from this kind of educational opportunity.”

The College recognized Kluge with a John Jay Award for distinguished professional achievement in 1982 and the Alexander Hamilton Medal, its highest honor, in 1991. He was presented an honorary doctorate from the University in 1988 and was an Alumni Medalist in 2004.

“John Kluge was a towering figure whose commitment to Columbia and to higher education sets a standard for us all,” said Dean Michele Moody-Adams. “He will be dearly missed, even as we continue to benefit from his generosity and his devotion to Columbia and Columbia students.”

Many institutions and charities have benefitted from Kluge’s philanthropy. He contributed to the restoration of Ellis Island and in 2000 gave $73 million to the Library of Congress, which established the Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanities.

In an obituary published on September 8, the Times noted that Kluge acknowledged that he had been ruled by his ambitions and traced them to the struggles of his boyhood. He recalled a conversation he had with friends in college about their aspirations. “One fellow said he wanted to be a lawyer, another a doctor,” he said. “I said one thing — that the only reason I wanted money was that I was always afraid of being a charity case and of being a ward someplace. That’s what really drove me all my life.”

In addition to his son John, Kluge is sur­vived by his fourth wife, Maria “Tussi” Kuttner; daughter, Samantha; stepchildren, Joseph Brad Kluge, whom he adopted, and Diane Townsend Zeier, Jeannette Townsend Brophy and Peter Townsend; and a grandson.

https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/archive/nov_dec10/around_the_quads1