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sense of commitment to the community that a lot of broadcasters didn't have. And that's borne out by the trading that's going on even today in television and radio properties, unlike anything that goes on in newspapers. Although even in newspapers today there's much more activity than there was at the period I'm talking about.
So, all of those things made me lean in that direction. I couldn't make it fly. I guess that's as close as I ever came to a strategic plan for the development of our company-owned stations. Once that happened, I retreated to --
That was about in what period? In the early fifties?
That had to be in the early fifties. Maybe late forties.
That sent me -- I say me, it sent my -- my organization, my staff people to the job of looking at where we could get our foot in the door to either acquire or make some kind of an operating relationship, which would ultimately give us an option to acquire part of the property.
Case in point: The Los Angeles Times, I believe because it missed the boat in radio, and because it came to realize the importance of radio in the dissemination of news, was an early applicant for a television station. They got a license -- I believe it was Channel 9 in Los Angeles -- absolutely didn't know what to do with it. Norman Chandler who was the Chief Executive of the Times Mirror group, had lunch with me one day, and said, “I'll give you an option to acquire ninety percent of KTTV, “ which is, I think, the call letters of this place, “if you'll take over the operation,
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