Frank Batten
| Frank Batten | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Frank Batten February 11, 1927 |
| Died | September 10, 2009 (aged 82) |
| Alma mater |
University of Virginia (undergraduate) Harvard (MBA) |
| Occupation |
Chairman and CEO, Landmark Communications |
| Net worth | US$2.3 billion (2007) |
| Spouse(s) | Jane Batten |
| Children | Frank Batten, Jr. Dorothy Batten Mary Elizabeth Batten |
| Parent(s) | Frank Batten Dorothy Martin Batten |
Frank Batten (February 11, 1927 – September 10, 2009) was a co-founder of the first nationwide, 24-hour cable weather channel, The Weather Channel. His media company, Landmark Media Enterprises, owns nine daily newspapers, more than 50 weekly newspapers, television stations in Las Vegas and Nashville, and a national chain of classified advertising publications.
Batten assumed leadership in 1954 of two newspapers, The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in Norfolk, Virginia, parlaying those papers into a media conglomerate by acquiring other newspapers, radio stations, and television stations and establishing a cable outlet as well as the national cable weather channel. Until 2008, the company, Landmark Communications, now Landmark Media Enterprises, was one of the country’s largest privately held media companies.
Batten sold TeleCable (a multi-system cable TV company) in 1995 to TCI for $1 billion and the Weather Channel in 2008 to NBC Universal and two private equity firms for nearly $3.5 billion.
Batten served as chairman of the Associated Press from 1982 to 1987.
Batten was born on February 11, 1927 to Frank Batten, a bank auditor, and Dorothy Martin Batten, the daughter of a wealthy Norfolk family. After the death of his father the following year, Batten and his mother moved in with his aunt and uncle, Fay and Samuel L. Slover. A Jewish native of Tennessee, Slover had taken ownership of a newspaper in Newport News, Virginia, which he sold in 1907 to buy what would become the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch. Themselves childless, the Slovers raised young Frank as their own son.
Batten attended the Culver Academies, a boarding school in Indiana, to graduate in 1945 and later attend the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He then received his MBA from Harvard in 1952.
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