by Robert Bryce What do Roger Kintzel and Robin Leach have in common? Yes,
they’re both middle-aged, white guys with receding hairlines. And yes, both
have risen to lofty positions in their professions. But Kintzel, the publisher
of the Austin American-Statesman, and Leach, the cloying host of the TV
show, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, have another thing in common:
they both work for The Sisters.
The Sisters, Barbara Cox Anthony and Anne Cox Chambers, may
be the world’s richest women. In addition to owning the local daily and a
television production company that employs Leach, they own Cox Enterprises, the
12th largest media conglomerate in the U.S. The Atlanta-based company has $3
billion in annual revenues, employs 37,000 people, owns 18 daily newspapers and
seven weekly papers. The Sisters also own Cox Communications, the third largest
cable provider in the country, with 40 cable TV systems and 3.1 million
subscribers. Throw in six TV stations, 14 radio stations, and the world’s
largest auto auction company, and you get an idea of the Cox empire.
By any standard, The Sisters are Big Rich. In 1993,
Forbes put their combined net worth at $4.8 billion. By 1994, that had
climbed to $5.8 billion. But don’t expect to see them chatting it up with Leach
on the small screen anytime soon. $5.8 billion buys a lot of privacy. Photos of
the sisters are rare. Cox Enterprises, one of the largest privately-held
companies in America, refuses to release any biographical information about The
Sisters.
“They are not in management positions,” explains Meg
Opdycke-Lamme, a Cox spokesperson. “We do not send out bios or photos because
they want the focus to be on the management and the boards.”
How much of the company do the sisters own? Opdycke-Lamme was
evasive. “The way the company is structured and because it is privately held,
we don’t go into that. The best thing to say is that they are the principal
owners.”
Barbara Cox Anthony divides her time between a villa in
Honolulu and another in Australia. Last October, Forbes magazine put her
net worth at $2.9 billion, tied with her sister as the 19th richest American.
Although she is chairman of Dayton Newspapers, another Cox subsidiary, she
keeps a very low profile. In a rare 1991 interview, she told Fortune magazine, “The more anonymous you can be, the better. Why, then you can just do
whatever you want.” Press reports put her age at 71 or 72.
Her sister, Anne Cox Chambers, has been much more visible.
Chairman of Atlanta Newspapers, another Cox subsidiary, which owns the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chambers lives in Atlanta. She used some
of her fortune to help former President Jimmy Carter get to the White House. In
1977, she got a political plum when Carter made her ambassador to Belgium. In
his book, Paper Tigers, about the barons of the newspaper business,
Nicholas Coleridge described Chambers as “a pin-thin socialite who has never
allowed her allegiance to the Democrats and her long friendship with Jimmy
Carter to overshadow her parallel passions for her villa in Provence, her
Atlanta estate, Rosewood, her duplex on Sutton Place, her 12,000 acre
plantation in South Carolina or the Gulfstream jet in which she flies between
New York, Washington and Georgia.” Press reports give her age as 74. She has
been divorced twice.
Here in Texas, The Sisters own cable systems in Midland,
Lubbock, and Texarkana, and newspapers in Austin, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, and Waco
(the Waco Tribune-Herald gained notoriety for its coverage of David
Koresh and the Branch Davidians just before the federal assault on the
compound). The Sisters also own the Nine Bar Ranch near Hempstead and auto
auction operations in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio.
The Sisters were born rich. Their father, James M. Cox, began
his march toward moguldom in 1898, when he bought the Dayton Evening
News for $26,000. A few years later, Cox got into politics and became
Ohio’s first three-term governor. In 1920, he was the Democratic nominee for
president (Franklin Roosevelt was his running mate), but lost to Warren G.
Harding. In 1957, Cox was succeeded by his son, James Cox, Jr., and the company
began moving into the television business. In 1964, the company’s stock began
trading on the New York Stock Exchange, but in the mid-1980s The Sisters
decided they didn’t want the hassles of a publicly traded company, so they took
the company private in a $1.2 billion deal. In 1988, James Cox Kennedy,
Anthony’s son, became chairman, and the company continued moving into all
facets of the communications business.
Last year, The Sisters put a
big wager on wireless services. Cox, Sprint,
Tele-Communications, Inc., and Comcast Corp., agreed to invest more than $2
billion in licenses and infrastructure that will allow them to provide wireless
phone and information services. The alliance, which will be marketed under the
Sprint name, will soon launch services in Southern California. Company
officials plan to cover about 75% of the U.S. with the new service.
While Cox pushes wireless communications with its partners,
the company is also developing plans to offer phone service to its cable
subscribers, and moving rapidly to expand its cable operations. Earlier this
year, Cox announced a $2.3 billion deal with The Times Mirror Company (parent
company of the Los Angeles Times) to expand its cable operations. The
deal increased the number of Cox’s cable customers from 1.9 million to 3.2
million, but forced Cox to allow some of its stock to be publicly traded. Thus
Cox Communications – 80% of which is owned by Cox Enterprises – began trading
again on the New York Stock Exchange in February. Cox Enterprises’ CEO, James
C. Kennedy, is chairman of the newly-public company.
On April 4, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cox
will spend more than $100 million this year as it tries to break into the movie
business with its subsidiary, Rysher Entertainment. And last month, Cox bet
heavily on the Internet when it joined the New Century Network, a group of
newspaper chains cooperating in efforts to put daily papers online. The new
group includes Cox, Hearst Corp., Gannett, Times Mirror Co., Tribune Co.,
Knight-Ridder, Inc., and the Washington Post Co.
Not all of Cox’s attempts at alliances have gone well. In
April, a proposed $4.9 billion deal between Cox and Southwestern Bell fell
apart. The two companies had planned to build an interactive cable TV system,
and blamed the deal’s failure on federal regulations.
As for Cox’s newspapers, the
idea seems to be, “make waves, but not too many.” In Paper
Tigers, Coleridge quotes a newspaper executive who says Cox’s attitude is,
” `Whatever the reader wants, we let ’em have it.’ That’s why the Cox company
has no voice. It’s a chameleon. In one place they’ll say this, in another
they’ll say that. It’s like a waffle house or ice-cream soda chain. If the
reader wants syrup, give him syrup, as much syrup as he can pour down his
throat… There’s no overview at Cox. Maybe that’s a strength, but sure as
hell, it’s dull.”
Keeping things dull and profitable seems to be The Sisters’
strategy. In the late 1980s, Cox was searching for a new editor for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They hired Bill Kovach, the former
Washington bureau chief for The New York Times. Kovach immediately began
aggressive coverage on the local and international fronts, and within a year,
the paper was nominated for five Pulitzer prizes. The Sisters were unimpressed.
In 1988, Kovach was asked to resign.
Coleridge describes the current version of the Atlanta paper
in a manner that may remind readers of the local daily: “Much of the design
makes you think of a menu at a hamburger restaurant: islands of words, two or
three lines long describing dressings and relishes, immured in brightly
coloured boxes.”
Here in Austin, Kintzel is The Sisters’ lead burger flipper.
He disdains the idea that the American-Statesman has devolved into a
soft news rut. And he says The Sisters and other Cox executives have a
hands-off attitude when it comes to marketing, hiring, firing etc. “We make all
the decisions here about how to market the paper, how to design the paper.”
The booming real-estate market has been a boon for the
Statesman, which has enjoyed a huge circulation increase over the past
six months. During a period when the New York Times saw its circulation
drop 1.3% and the Los Angeles Times experienced a 4.1% decrease, the
local daily saw its numbers jump 2.5%. Cox doesn’t release figures on the
profitability of its operations, but the Statesman is clearly making
money. Judging from other papers with comparable markets and circulation, the
local daily is probably worth in excess of $300 million.
So don’t expect Cox to move Kintzel back to Arizona any time
soon. “I plan to stay here a long time,” says Kintzel. As long as he keeps
making money for The Sisters, they’ll probably let him stay.
This article appears in May 26 • 1995 and May 26 • 1995 (Cover).