The Inside Story of Hanna-Barbera and Taft Entertainment with CEO Charlie Mechem

Former Taft CEO CHARLIE MECHEM shares a rare firsthand account of how his company acquired and partnered with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, how it affected their business, the creation of Kings Island and other parks—and his fateful meeting with Roy Disney.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Hanna
Barbera. Welcome to the fantastic world
of Hanna and Barbera, a celebration of Bill, Hannah,

(00:31):
Joe, Barbera and the thousands of people, past and present who
have shared in their entertainment tradition.
And now your host, Greg Airbar. Thank you Chris Anthony.
Welcome to the fantastic world of Hannah and Barbera.
I am Greg Airbar, author of Hannah Barbera, the recorded

(00:51):
history now on audio as well as e-book and book Book.
We have one of the actual executives who had a major role
participating in the Taft Hanna Barbera partnership.
And it really was a partnership.It wasn't so much an
acquisition. His name is Charles Meacham.
First, I just want to welcome you to the show, Charles.

(01:14):
My pleasure. And call me Charlie.
That's what most people call me.My mother is the only person
ever call me Charles. I am almost 95 years old.
But my mind, I think, is reasonably accurate and I'll
certainly hope to contribute to your work because I loved Bill
and Joe and everything about them.

(01:35):
I should be clear about this, too.
I was a lawyer for the company when we acquired we meeting TAP
Broadcasting. When we acquired Hanna Barbera,
I was a young lawyer representing TAP Broadcasting,
but a year later the founder andchairman of Taft was was killed

(01:59):
in a bizarre, tragic accident and I was asked to become a
chairman and CEO, which I did in1967.
So I went from the company lawyer to the CEO.
Wow. Yeah.
And that was a bizarre thing. It was like some sort of a gas
explosion in his house. Yeah.
He this is this kind of an interesting sidelight.

(02:21):
Those were the days when people were concerned about the
Russians lobbing missiles in from Cuba.
So anybody that had any nose forfor flying and Hobertaff Junior
did, many of these people built bomb shelters on their property
and Hub, everybody called him Hub.

(02:44):
Hub built a bomb shelter on his estate.
And one night he came home and nobody knows what happened but a
gas leak. The bomb shelter blew up and he
was killed in that. So he had no plan for
succession. And after, I don't know, maybe a

(03:05):
month, the Shaft and Ingles family families were the major
stockholders and they asked me to step in as CEO, which I did.
And I wasn't sure if I could do it.
I was there 26 years. Now the Hanna Barbera
acquisition had already taken place in December of 66,

(03:29):
correct? Right.
Taft originally was broadcastingand owned lots of stations in
the country and I guess that at the time there was only so much
that it could have station wise.And so instead of Hanna Barbera
going public, it was privately sold.
But there were other bidders, including Columbia.
Yes. And as a little bit of

(03:51):
background, Lloyd Taft who was one of the family members was
working then. I don't know if he's a partner
or not, but he might have been at low growth.
Then investment banker Lloyd called and told us that Hanna
Barbera was looking to be sold and he thought that we might

(04:12):
like to own it. And of course we jumped at it.
But that came about just straight from Lloyd Taft and we
made the deal. It was a stock deal.
From what I've read it was 14 and because Columbia would only
go as high as 12 they could kickthemselves later.
Because Charles Freeze. There's a YouTube video with him
interviewed and you can hear himsay we try tried to get an

(04:35):
equivalent studio from then on and we just couldn't do it.
And few years later along comes scooby-doo in addition to all
the other assets. And it really was a wise but a
risky move too. Yeah, of course.
I got to know Lou Wasserman pretty well because Universal
wanted to buy Hannah Barbera from us.
And every time I'd go to LA, he'd call and say, hey, come on

(05:00):
over, let's talk. But we've never even remotely
contemplated selling Hanna Barbera.
I remember at some point MichaelEisner when he was at Disney was
considering it too. Yeah.
Yeah, and writing the book, I saw so many parallels between
Disney and Hanna Barbera and that their first programs are

(05:20):
considered sort of the crown jewels, just like Walt Disney's
first several films, no matter how many wonderful ones came
later, are still sort of the foundation and could never be
replicated fully because of the talent and the the resources and
the times. So something with Hanna Barbera,

(05:41):
those first syndicated shows andthen the four primetime shows
were way over budget. That's why they were so good, of
course. The show The show didn't spend a
lot of time worrying about budget Bill, did it?
Yeah, so they way overspent. I think Johnny Quest was the

(06:04):
most expensive. And from what I'm gathering, the
last thing they did that was Screen Gems was Alice in
Wonderland. Or what's a nice kid like you
doing in a place like this? And then after the sale, there
was sort of a gap period becauseof Hub's death and, you know,
reshuffling, figuring out what to do.
And again, correct me if I'm wrong, but the budgetary issues

(06:28):
had to be addressed because thenthey went into the superhero
thing. And then Huckleberry Finn, which
we talked about in an earlier show, which was a massively
expensive show. Yeah.
And Jack and the Beanstalk, too.And so even though Hanna and
Barbera had developed economic ways of doing this, they still
needed to reformulate their processes, right?

(06:51):
True. Absolutely.
So when you first were involved,were you at the very first board
meeting on Bill Hanna's yacht? I was hubcapped and I.
Did he make you his famous troutdish or what?
Anything that Bill fixed was delicious, and Bud Rogers might

(07:11):
have been in that meeting, I just don't recall.
Bud Rogers is that Lawrence Rogers who wrote the book, the
article of which is in the book Hannah and Barbara
Conversations, Tyler Solomon Williams and Kevin Sandler,
which is also published by University Press of Mississippi
and of commercial. But there's even more to the

(07:31):
story than that. What happened at the meeting and
its subsequent things to get everybody on board with the
purchase? Everybody was on board with the
purchase. Everybody was excited about it.
There was no issue at all of that.
There was the issue of who wouldsucceed a hub task and as I

(07:52):
mentioned earlier, to my shock and horror they took me and I
wasn't sure I could do it, but Idid.
But you were operating still outof Cincinnati.
Yes. OK, so when this happened, and I
asked you this before the show, just for the record, as they
say, for the record, Hanna Barbera had a short lived record

(08:15):
company, which is sort of at theheart of my book.
And there are those who would say, well, maybe that was why it
folded. It had nothing to do with Taft
and you weren't even aware they had a record company.
I knew that Jess Morgan not being familiar to you.
Yeah, he's mentioned in LawrenceRogers article.
He and I became very close friends and I think he sort of

(08:36):
moved them out of Taft never really got involved in the
records. That ended in some time in 67,
and the whole thing hadn't quitegone.
From this article. It also said that Taft wasn't
just acquiring to acquire, and not just a holding company, but
a participating operation company.
How did Taft become involved with the creative and the

(08:59):
production at Hanna Barbera? Well, I, I, I don't think we
were brazen enough to be creative.
We encouraged Bill and Joe to keep doing what they were doing
and to do even more. We love those guys and I think
they come to really respect and care for us.

(09:19):
It was as easy a transition an acquisition.
I made many acquisitions as a asa lawyer.
This was the easiest one ever. The acquisition of one company
by another is more common now than ever.
In your case they did have to look at their budgets, but you
kept the creative and the production people in charge of,

(09:40):
like you said, what they did best.
Not always the case in in acquisitions.
Well, I was with a law firm of Taft, Statinius and Hollister in
Cincinnati, and I specialized inacquisitions.
So I saw a lot of them. Many acquisitions came a copper

(10:04):
because the acquiring company tried to to take it over and not
let the people who had done so well keep doing it.
And so we tried to to learn fromthat.
I tried to learn from that as a young lawyer.
Yeah, and Hanna Barbera had a history and a heritage, and you
not only respected that, but youalso expanded upon it because

(10:26):
the reach of the cartoons and the merchandise became more
worldwide. Yes.
And of course we used Hanna Barbera as a springboard
basically for our amusement parkoperations, which became a very
big part of our business. We ended up, I think, with five
major parks, the biggest of which was Canada's Wonderland

(10:48):
and Hanna Barbera was the motivator for the the theme park
business. You also mentioned before we
began that you had had a meetingwith Roy Disney about theme
parks. This is one of the most amazing
stories in my career. There was a law firm in LA
represented Hanna Barbera and I think Disney as well, Young Man,

(11:13):
Hungate and Leopold, and the senior partner was called Tubby.
Young Man, He wasn't Tubby, but he had been one time before I
knew it, my guest and I called Tubby and said do you know
anyone who could arrange a meeting for me with Roy Disney?

(11:34):
Well, of course passed away thenand he said I can.
So he set up this meeting with Roy.
I figured I'd get about 1/2 an hour.
I was waiting for over 3 hours and I think he really enjoyed my
reaching out to him to find out how we ought to get into the

(11:54):
amusement park business. And so we had a delightful
visit. And as I was leaving, I said,
Mr. Disney, I certainly thank you for your help.
Have I left out anything? And he kind of laughed and he
said, you know, it's funny that you'd be here talking to me
about amusement parks 'cause youhave the finest small amusement

(12:15):
park in the United States in Cincinnati, Coney Island.
This is the Coney Island in Cincinnati, now New York.
He said what you should do. He didn't say it in the
dictatorial wage. It's a helpful way.
He said what you should do is you should buy Coney Island in
Cincinnati and use that as a springboard, the management and

(12:39):
so forth to get into the amusement for our business.
Now, here's the ironic part. The senior partner in the law
firm that I had been with for about 10 years was the major
stockholder of Coney Island in Cincinnati.
His name was Charles Sawyer, quite a distinguished gentleman.
He'd been Secretary of Commerce under Truman and so on.

(13:02):
So I went to see Mr. Sawyer and I said, would you consider
selling Coney Island to that broadcasting to be a stock deal?
He loved it. And so that happened.
But think of the confluence of things that occurred at that
time with him being the major stockholder in Coney Island.
And according to Dennis Spiegel,who was on an earlier podcast,

(13:25):
Roy and Walt when they were traveling the world to see the
best in theme parks before Disneyland, the Coney Island
park was one of the ones that they visited and were impressed
by with its cleanliness and its staffing.
That's exactly what Mr. Disney told me, and that gave me a lot
of encouragement. And so we did acquire Coney

(13:48):
Island, importantly, because Charles Sawyer was a major
stockholder and we used the management of Coney Island for
the theme parks and went from there.
It was one of those situations where everything fell into
place. It could have gone off the rail
more than once, but it didn't. In the case of Coney Island, the

(14:12):
park existed before and I guess it was on the river and that's
one of the reasons it was moved to Kings Mills.
Yes, because it flooded every spring.
That was not only a nuisance butexpensive and time consuming.
So they really were anxious to move.

(14:33):
And of course, the Watch family,who were the operators, very
much wanted to build a major theme park and we gave them that
opportunity. I think I asked Dennis this as
well. Why was the Eiffel Tower chosen
as the icon? That was principally done by
Jerry Watts, who was the operating head of Coney, and it

(14:54):
was just this simple. He knew, and I agreed with him
completely, that we needed something big and recognizable.
And what's big and recognizable anymore than the Eiffel Tower in
the middle of corny country in southern Ohio?

(15:15):
Yeah, and you can still ride up to the top, right?
Oh yeah. In fact, that's where I stood on
opening day and I remember vividly thinking, suppose nobody
comes. Interestingly enough, nobody did
come until about the 4th of July.
And I think it was pretty simple.
As I talk to people, they said Oh no, there'll be huge crowds

(15:38):
and we don't want to get caught,we'll wait until the 4th of July
and then, and of course nobody did come and I was getting a
little nervous. But then on the 4th of July it
was like somebody unleashed the lions.
People came in droves, so I relaxed.
When Walt Disney World was beingbuilt and planned the presence

(15:59):
of Walt Disney at the New York World's Fair at 6465, one of the
reasons that happened was they weren't totally sure that the
East Coast would go for Disney attractions.
Yeah, yeah. And it ends up that Walt Disney
World is like Disney. It's mammoth.
It's a city in itself. This is interesting.

(16:20):
I think one day the treasurer ofour company, dot Murphy, dot
came into my office and closed the door and she said, Charlie,
we're out of money. And I said what he said, We
don't have enough money to finish the Park Keys island.
So what we did is we went out and made a couple of deals for a

(16:41):
couple of pieces of the park, I think a restaurant and a pizza
place. We sold those off to third
parties and we had. So we had enough money to finish
the apartment. And the pizza place is legendary
now. It is.
It was the most popular pizza place in all of southern Ohio.

(17:04):
We lucked out, but I had a heartattack almost.
But she said we don't have any money.
Well, one of the other things that was developed there were
seasonal events throughout the year which brought in people.
Differently. And we actually at one point
stayed open. Maybe they still do, I don't
know. A Christmas song.
Yeah, we had Andrea Canny, who'sboth a Kings Island and a Disney

(17:27):
stage performer, and she was there last year for the
Winterfest and sang in the contemporary choir.
She was the first Belle in Walt Disney World, before they even
had a Broadway show, Beauty and the Beast.
And she learned everything, all of the disciplines and things
about performing, really, because Kings Island Productions
was a benchmark for a lot of performers.

(17:50):
We had a great guide and Jack Rouse is in charge of all of our
live shows and he made a career out of it.
He was very good. Let's talk about the happy land
of Hanna Barbera, and the signature ride was the Enchanted
Voyage. Yes, a dark ride.
Did Bill and Joe participate in the design and the sketching and

(18:11):
the. Actively, yes.
Very actively great. Who would be dumb enough to
build something like that in thehappy land of Hanna Barbera and
not have them involved? So they were very involved.
Were they out there a lot seeingthe construction and at the not
a? Lot but enough, you know, they
had to come all the way from LA,so I didn't try to lean on them,

(18:33):
but they wanted it to be right. So everything that was built
there had their personal involvement and stamp.
Oh, yes, yes. And then, after Enchanted
Voyage, it became the Smurf Ride.
Right. Can I also, I asked, I know I
asked Dennis, for those of you who've listened to all the
episode, but I love talking about this.
OK? Do you have any stories behind

(18:54):
when The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch did their shows
there? Well, you got to remember,
Cincinnati is sort of remote from showbiz.
And when they came to the park, people went bananas.
They loved it and the people loved them.
So those were important things for us.

(19:15):
In fact, at the opening of the park, Earl Wilson.
Does that name mean any of you? Oh, he was a columnist, Yeah.
Yeah, he was a guest of the parkwhen we opened.
Wow, so he must have given it a nice write up.
Oh he did, and we knew he would.So one of my employees was a
good friend of his, so he arrested all.

(19:36):
For those of you who want to seewho Earl Wilson was, he was a
very renowned columnist. He has a cameo I think in Beach
Blanket Bingo, one of the beach party movies and his phrase was
that's Earl brother. He was big, he was really big,
so having him there as our guestwas very helpful to us.
And so it became not only one ofthe most popular parks in the

(20:00):
country, and especially in the region, but also a destination
for people who love roller coasters.
Including me. I've always loved roller
coasters. And the Wall Street Journal did
a column on me and then ended upon the front page of the Wall
Street Journal. And to my mixed delight and
horror, I was described as a roller coaster nut.

(20:25):
I thought, you know, I always wanted to be on the front page
of the Wall Street Journal, but now I said roller coaster nuts.
But I was, and you may or may not know this, but Canada's
Wonderland now is drawing 4 million people a year.
Today. Wow.
Beyond belief and one of the smartest things we ever did, we,
I mean, my colleagues who work with me, we were able at that

(20:49):
point to buy 200 acres of land just north of Toronto.
Can you imagine what that would cost today, if you could even do
it? Yeah, Yeah.
So. Then there's Canada's
Wonderland, King's Dominion in Virginia.
Dale Moore, the designer. He was on an earlier program he
did a lot of creative for, including Yogi's Cave.

(21:11):
Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then we own Carowinds in Carolina.
Oh, very renowned park. Yeah, and the one in Australia.
The only one that didn't work. Oh, really?
What's the story of that? I mean, that's.
Interesting. There is no story.
We could never. I guess it was just so alien.
Somebody said the Aussies are busy with their Sunday cook

(21:35):
house. Anyway, it wasn't a failure so
much as it wasn't strong enough to continue to invest.
Well, like the characters of Hanna Barbera are known there.
I mean, that's another guess, but the concept of a theme park
I guess is looked at differently.
Just kind of far away. Yeah, let's talk about the rest

(21:57):
of your career. I mean, all of these parks,
perhaps, except that one thrivedunder your watch.
And then Taft became sort of an empire into itself.
We did and we began expanding the company in a lot of ways.
In fact, we did too good becausewe made a major acquisition,
$750 million and bought 5 or 6, I forget now, major market

(22:23):
television stations. That was such a well received
acquisition that we became a hostile takeover target and that
was the end of the company. Yeah, well, it almost happened
to Disney and it did happen to filmation.
Same, same thing. Tom Sedo described that not long

(22:44):
ago and which is really sad. We couldn't fight back because
it was the Lindner family in Cincinnati and the Bass family
in Texas, and they both wanted it, wanted Taft.
And the result was that they sort of got into a bidding war
with themselves and we just couldn't compete in a financial
way. But it works out that I think

(23:06):
most if not all of our properties are still around in
some form. I wanted to ask you about Ruby
Spears. There's a confusion now because
when they reissue some of the cartoon series on video, they'll
put Hanna Barbera collection. But it was really Ruby Spears.
They were a separate company, and then they were like sister
companies. How did that work?

(23:26):
We just had an opportunity to buy Ruby Spears and thought it
would be an adjunct to the rest of the company.
So it was that simple. We liked Ruby Spears and we
thought they were good and and it was just a simple
acquisition. Were they 2 combined or did they
still exist separately? As I recall they were separate.
Because the Taff way of doing things was let people who know

(23:48):
what they're doing do what they do.
Exactly, and I think 2 of tried to merge Ruby Spears and Hannah
Barbera would have been a mistake for both of companies.
Yeah, well, Ruby and Spears, actually, those of you who want
to know about that, stewshow.comhas a huge archive of shows, and
they were actually interviewed and talked about that.

(24:09):
They started out as editors and then they became instrumental in
developing shows like Scooby-doo, Dynamite and then
work for ABC did an enormous amount.
I have very pleasant memories ofRuby Spears.
Did they still exist? Well, I think that all fell
under Ted Turner and under Warner.
I think Warner owns all of it. And then we lost both of them,

(24:30):
sadly, not all that long ago, OK?
And people who worked there, they loved working for those
guys. They were great guys.
I can't imagine. Yeah, I can imagine.
I remember that very well. So I guess then it was a great
America that had purchased. Was that what it was that took
to cover Taft? As I mentioned earlier, the
Lindner family and the Bass family competed, and when they

(24:55):
finally finished, they each tookpart of the Taft.
They divided it up in ways that I was not part of, obviously,
although I did suggest that maybe the most important piece
of Taft was Hanna Barbera. That's an important point too,
and that's a point we try to make here.

(25:16):
A lot was just what a foundationHanna Barbera was for the
industry and for theme parks andfor the development of animation
on television and just entertainment in general.
Barbera dominated Saturday morning television.
At one point, as if I remember right, we had something like
80%, or maybe it was 90% of, of Saturday morning animation.

(25:40):
Yeah. And very often one network would
compete with a another network with Hanna Barbera shows.
Absolutely. Joe was was just a brilliant not
only animator, but salesman, probably the biggest money maker
other than our broadcast properties that we own with
World Vision, the distribution company, yes, and that was a big

(26:05):
money maker for us. Yeah, you still see that
occasionally on the end of HannaBarbera cartoons, and that was
the original imprint on the VH SS when they came out.
Yeah. And that was Taft as well.
Correct. And also because I used to read
broadcasting magazines to see all the cool ads, World Vision

(26:25):
was distributing their shows allover the world.
They really weren't. They were the best.
It was a very competitive industry, but we did quite well.
This is something also, I don't know if this was in your area or
not, but now that they're rerunning a lot of the Hanna
Barbera shows on ME TV tunes, a lot of people are struck by how

(26:45):
some of the series have so few episodes.
But that's how networks bought in those days.
The budgets were super low for daytime, so they would buy 16 or
17 and then they'd rerun them like 6 times.
When you were distributing and syndicating them, I noticed that
they were often put into packages, maybe 5 shows

(27:05):
together, things like that. Was that successful for you?
Yes, it was, because everything World Vision did, frankly, was
successful. Kevin O'Sullivan was the head of
it and he was brilliant and tough and he turned World Vision
into a major asset of tasks. And gosh, I still see the WI,

(27:26):
can see the West in my head now,that little logo.
So what was life like after Taftfor you?
I've had a strange career, I guess.
I served for five years as the commissioner of the LPGA Ladies
Professional Golf Sources. Did you know Dinah Shore?
Very well, very well. We were really good friends and

(27:49):
she came to Cincinnati a couple of times at my request to do do
shows and so on. Played a lot of golf together.
I knew her well. When I served as the LPGA
commissioner in my last tournament, I ran into Arnold
Palmer, who's an old friend of mine, and he said, what are you
doing next? And I said, I don't, I'm

(28:12):
thinking about things. He said let's have a beer after
my round. Well, if Arnold Palmer asked you
to have a beer, you had a beer, so.
I'm just wondering why you didn't order Arnold Palmer's?
Oh, always. I'll even tell you how it
happened. He was in a restaurant at a golf
course one time. He played in an event and the

(28:32):
waitress said, sure, what were you having?
And he said, oh, just mix up a lemonade and iced tea.
So the waiter went to the next table, asked the lady what she'd
have. She said I think I'll have that
Arnold Palmer. That's how the names got
started. But he wanted me to become his

(28:54):
consultant and advisor and I didthat.
Shared his office at Bay Hill for 10 years and we became very
close friends and even had homesnext door to one another out in
La Quinta at his course out there.
So I've had like 5 careers if you want to count them.
Wow. You mentioned Bay Hill.

(29:15):
Are you Speaking of the Bay Hillin the Orlando area?
Yes, that's where his office was.
He had two offices, really. He had his Home Office in
Latrobe, PA, and then he had hiswinter office at Bay Hill in
Orlando. There was a Walt Disney World
tournament for years though. Oh yeah.
Absolutely. So that was a stomping ground,

(29:36):
too. You were familiar with what Walt
Disney World had as a theme parkperson.
Absolutely. As somebody who really knows the
inner workings of how you do a quality theme park and resort
complex, what were your impressions of Walt Disney
World? I was overwhelmed.
Brilliant. You know, that's why I want to
see Mr. Disney. I wanted to pick his brain.

(29:57):
And boy, he was so, so grace. Even though Walt Disney World
open and Roy was there at the dedication, he didn't live much
longer than that. But Walt Disney World really
was, you know, a brother helpinga brother and getting the dream
put together. That didn't seem possible when
Walt passed. And from what I've read in it

(30:18):
was in Jimmie Johnson's book whowas the head of the record
company, he said that Roy openedit almost kind of debt free
using debentures. He did, and he was very proud of
the fact that he was the money guy.
He didn't say this but it surrounded all of his comments
that he was the money guy because didn't know how to spend

(30:41):
money. Well, I guess the word is
parsimonious. Well, I think that's probably,
that's probably right. He did have to put the brakes on
Walt here and there because and.He was, he was very nice about
that. And then again, as somebody who
knows the finances, Walt Disney World is a tremendous profit

(31:03):
center to this day for Disney. Oh yeah, always will be, I
think. That is an international
destination as well as a domestic one.
Well, it is, and I might tell you this kind of an interesting
aside. I think before we built Kings
Island, we were strictly in radio and television.

(31:23):
And so we were followed by Wall Street analysts who were
broadcast analysts. And when I announced that we're
going into theme park business, I got about a dozen calls in an
hour saying, what are you doing?You're a broadcast company, why
are you getting in a theme park business?
I said just stay tuned. But I got beat up pretty good in

(31:45):
the beginning. And eventually, Kings Island
began to show the wisdom of not my, but our move.
It seems like a lot of the storyof this partnership is a long
range one, just like the Kings Island one, rather than a short
term gain. You know, OK, we're going to be
behind a little bit, but in the long run, yeah, we're crazy, but

(32:09):
just crazy enough to win. Well, exactly what I explained
to the analysts and overtime they understood it.
Theme park business is a good business.
It's a good cash flow business. I would say.
These guys, how many businesses do you know where you've got
your clients money before he even enters through the park?

(32:29):
It became very, very profitable for Taft.
Well, all of the proof is in thetheme park, and the legacy of
both Hanna Barbera and of Taft continues to prove itself, and I
would imagine that's among the things you're proudest of.
It really is, because once we bought Hanna Barbera, I
immediately begin to think abouthow can you maximize the value

(32:55):
of the Hanna Barbera churches. There's no better road map than
Disney, and that's why I want tosee Mr. Disney.
I'm sure you're looking on my wall had a little statuette of
Christian Al McGraw. The reason that happened is that

(33:15):
Forbes magazine once wrote an article about me and it was very
favorable. But at the end they said but
Charlie is a bit of a gunslinger.
They managed a compliment and I took it as a compliment.
So my theme park division came up with this little statue of
Christophe Agua Charlie the Gunslinger.

(33:37):
That's a good analogy for somebody again, who takes risks
and moves forward in that you have, you've always got the
Dalton Gang coming to tell you no and you can't do this.
And the Wild West of any new enterprise Oregon, any new
format or anything that is a Wild West.
So I can kind of see quick draw I'll.
Tell you, I'll tell you one of my favorite memories our our

(33:59):
major stockholder was David Ingalls, an old pal, much older
than I. He was a Rear Admiral in the
Navy and just quite an interesting gentleman.
He was the chairman of our boardwhen I first came into the
company and I was extolling the virtues of Kings Island.
Well, it was being built and when I finished, Mr. Ingalls

(34:23):
said Charlie, he said, as far asI can tell, the only you've
proven so far is you know how tospend money.
And I said I plead guilty. I would imagine you and your
colleagues at Taft always saw the value of not only the new
thing that had to keep things running, got to always make new
stuff to keep people working andall, but also the constant value

(34:46):
of the back catalog that keeps on giving.
Yes. And our fundamental business was
and still is broadcasting because it's a cash cow.
Yeah. And all that material sitting
there. And yeah, it can continue to
maximize profits as you say. Exactly.
Right now, the broadcasting business, even with the theme

(35:08):
parks doing well, the broadcast business was a strong part of
our company always. Well, Charlie, it's been a
pleasure talking to you. This is really, really exciting
history that you're brought to life for us.
So I'm very, very grateful that you took the time.
It's a great legacy and it's been a great pleasure to speak

(35:28):
with you. I thank you.
I could talk about Bill and Joe Ewo and the other people there
forever. What a great group of people.
Well, it sounds like that was too.
It, it was one of the nicest things.
I was walking to downtown Cincinnati and I ran into a
friend of mine and we had a nicevisit.
And he said, do you know, Charlie, that everyone wants to

(35:49):
work for your company? And I never forgot that because
it meant so much to me. I assume it was true, but it it
said a lot about the culture that we had.
I've been blessed and here I am,95, still talking.
You sound younger than me. I'm not sure I'm younger than
anybody, but I feel good. You know what I say to people?

(36:12):
People say how are you? And I say physically I'm fine.
Mentally, you should probably ask somebody else, but I think
I'm going to hang on. That's The thing is the great
memories and the good times and the era that you were blessed to
be part of, that's all a gift. It was a great time.
Well, we're delighted to have learned so much and to spend

(36:34):
some time with you. And so I want to thank you again
and also thank your daughter again because she made this all.
Happen. I'll tell her right away.
And I also want to thank everybody for listening.
Thank you all for subscribing, people have said nice things and
this is just a joy to do and it's been a joy.
Thank you all for listening and until next time, bye bye.

(36:56):
We hope you enjoyed the fantastic world of Hannah and
Barbera with Greg Airborne. Please join us again and Many
thanks for listening.