Westwood One

The company was founded by Norman J. Pattiz in 1976. At the time, he was a former advertising sales executive with KCOP-TV, a Los Angeles TV station. He was listening to a local radio station doing a Motown weekend and decided to syndicate The Sound of Motown to radio. The show was a success. He added several more shows during the 1970s, including Dr. Demento and Mary Turner's Off The Record. In 1981, Pattiz started recording live concerts for broadcast with a Chuck Berry performance that January. The company was a leader in live broadcasts and concert recordings for radio until May 2011. By 1982, he was distributing his radio shows via satellite through an arrangement with idb Communications in Culver City. Pattiz took Westwood One public in 1984 and with the money raised by the IPO, he purchased the Mutual Broadcasting System the following year and the NBC Radio Network in 1987. Other highlights in the late 1980s include the purchase of three radio stations, the trade paper Radio & Records, and the hiring of Casey Kasem from ABC.

Although Pattiz long remained a major shareholder and board chairman, control and management shifted to others in the early 1990s. In 1993, operations were shifted to radio station group owner Infinity Broadcasting, headed by Mel Karmazin, who also took over direct management of Westwood. With Infinity already owning and managing competing Unistar Radio Networks (formerly known as the RKO Radio Networks and later as United Stations Radio Networks, which merged with Transtar in the late 1980s), the two companies were combined under the Westwood name in 1994 (later spinning off Transtar in 2006). After the sale of his Infinity Broadcasting to Westinghouse, then parent of CBS, Karmazin went on to become COO of CBS and under his control, CBS took over management of Westwood. CBS also had a significant ownership stake in Westwood, which then purchased Metro Networks in 1999 in a three-way merger including Copter Acquisition Corp. and Westwood.

On August 30, 2010, Pattiz was succeeded as chairman by Mark Stone, senior managing director of the Gores Group, which by then was the majority owner and controlled Westwood. A Westwood press release said Pattiz signed a new contract as a company consultant. Pattiz has now started "PodcastOne," providing a hub for listeners to find their favorite radio personalities.

Purchase of Mutual and NBC

In 1985, Westwood One purchased the Mutual Broadcasting System, one of the "Big Four" of the 1940s in American radio, continuing to operate it as a separate network into the 1990s. Thereafter, Mutual became a brand name for certain programming provided by Westwood One. CBS-run Westwood One retired Mutual in April, 1999 dropping it in favor of CNN Radio, to which Westwood One had syndication rights following its 1994 merger with Unistar.

Two years after the Mutual purchase, in 1987, Westwood One acquired the NBC Radio Network and licensed the use of the name NBC Radio Network News (later shortened to NBC Radio News) from General Electric, which was divesting all of the NBC radio properties of its former owner RCA. Like Mutual, NBC ceased operating as a radio network and merely became a brand name, even to the point of being merged into Mutual itself. NBC's other services, The Source and NBC Talknet, would eventually be retired in the late 1990s.

Until the Dial Global merger, the NBC Radio brand was still occasionally used, including twice daily at the halfway point and conclusion of the early morning news magazine First Light (which has since revived the NBC branding throughout the program). In 2003, NBC News began contracting with Westwood One to produce a new radio news service, NBC News Radio, consisting of one-minute updates written by Westwood staffers and read by NBC News talent. Westwood One also distributed Meet the Press, monologues of NBC's late night programming, CNBC radio reports, and localized forecasts for The Weather Channel, which effectively united all of NBC's programming under one network.

Westwood One provided operational, sales, and marketing support for the CBS Radio Network, whose properties were owned by the CBS Corporation. In turn, CBS managed production of Mutual and NBC Radio newscasts from 1998 until the retirement of the original NBC Radio top-of-the-hour newscasts in June 2004. The CBS Radio news and sports broadcasts (the latter specifically branded as "from Westwood One") were distributed from the CBS/Westwood One Master Control at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City.

Westwood One also provided alternate feeds of NFL football games to Sirius Satellite Radio.