Westinghouse Broadcasting Company
Westinghouse Broadcasting Company 1920-1995
The Westinghouse Broadcasting Company’s roots lie in the radio station KDKA (then 8ZZ), which began broadcasting in 1920, and itself was based on point-to-point radio transmission experiments carried out by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company during the First World War.
It entered television in 1948 with the opening of WBZ-TV in Boston, an NBC affiliate. It proceeded to buy other stations, reaching a total of 7 at peak, and in 1963 began to use the name ‘Group W’.
In 1994, Group W announced plans to merge with CBS, causing a shuffling of station ownership. It then bought CBS outright in 1995, and changed its name to CBS Corporation. In 1999, the new CBS merged with Viacom – Viacom having been spun off by CBS in 1971. Viacom then took the CBS name and spun off a new company named Viacom. These two companies then remerged in 2019 to form ViacomCBS, which is almost 80% owned by National Amusements, the owner of the original Viacom.
