J. Richard Munro, the previous chairman and CEO of Time Inc. who led the storied writer’s 1989 merger with Warner Communications and was a driving power within the early success of HBO, has died. He was 93.
His son, Mac, advised The New York Occasions that Munro died August 11 in Naples, FL.
As Chairman and CEO, Munro is finest recognized for crafting the merger with Warner Communications, creating what on the time was the world’s largest media and leisure firm. Within the go-go M&A atmosphere of the late ’80s, it took Munro and his crew — which included future Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin — two years to search out the precise accomplice. All of the whereas, they had been below strain from shareholders to fend off competitors from international conglomerates resembling Bertelsmann AG and Information Corp.
Even once they discovered the precise match, the deal virtually was scuttled by a hostile bid from Paramount and objections to then-Warner CEO Steven Ross’ big paycheck. However Munro noticed it by, working the corporate with Ross as co-CEOs and co-chairmen for a 12 months after the settlement was consummated. Munro retired in 1990. He thought-about the deal his main legacy on the firm.
Munro was born on January 26, 1931, in Syracuse, NY, the place he grew up. After highschool, he joined the Marines and was wounded thrice through the Korean Battle.
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“My ft had been badly damage,” Munro recalled in a 1990 interview. “They had been injured by a grenade that went off at my ft. I spent a few 12 months in a Navy hospital. I used to be discharged, I believe, in 1953, and went again to school.” He graduated in 1957 and went to work for Time Inc. that very summer season.
“My first actual job was at Sports activities Illustrated in 1960,” he later stated. “I went over to that journal to turn out to be its assistant enterprise supervisor, which principally meant I did the budgeting and saved observe of the {dollars} and all of that. I spent a complete decade at Sports activities Illustrated … labored there from 1960 to someday round ’70. Finally, rose to turn out to be the writer of that journal, and was there simply because it was starting to show a revenue after a protracted string of losses.”
Within the early ’70s, Munro left the publishing facet of Time and bought concerned in what had been then the corporate’s fledgling video efforts.
“I used to be being requested to return in and take over one thing that was, I believe, at finest a relatively confused lot of enterprise. HBO was then only a gleam in our eye and we had Manhattan Cable Tv which was then Sterling Cable which was an enormous drain on us. It was sort of a catastrophe. Then we had a cable tv operation which we weren’t terribly happy with, I imply a broadcast operation the place we owned plenty of broadcast stations and that was one thing we weren’t terribly proud of. So, I bought thrown into one thing I knew little or no about, and I used to be totally confused for a minimum of the primary a number of months of that task, perhaps the primary 12 months.”
It was not lengthy thereafter that Munro, Levin and soon-to-be cable magnate Chuck Dolan started to create what would turn out to be HBO.
“I credit score Chuck with having had the dream and the idea,” Munro stated. “However I credit score my colleagues at Time Inc., notably Jerry Levin, with the wherewithal and the stamina and the power to take a dream and make it a actuality which is what Time Inc. did with HBO. I bear in mind these days relatively vividly. … I believe lots of people actually by no means absolutely appreciated the magnitude of what may occur.”
Key to the fledgling community’s success was the pioneering step of offering HBO’s pay-for-view content material to cable firms by satellite tv for pc, changing microwave and phone line supply.
“After all, it began off as a terrestrial microwave community, going alongside phone traces. It was Jerry Levin, I believe, who was primarily chargeable for placing HBO on the satellite tv for pc,” Munro recalled. “After all, that was the revolutionary step that put HBO on the map, in addition to everybody else on the map. We had been the pioneer when it comes to satellite tv for pc transmission. I consider all of the issues that HBO stood for, and all of its success, that clearly was far and above the rest HBO has completed to place them on the map.”
Together with son Mac, Munro’s survivors, embrace Carol, his spouse of 61 years; sons Mac, John and Doug; six grandchildren; and his brother, Invoice; The Occasions reported.
