Founding The company was founded in
Dayton, Ohio, by
James M. Cox, who purchased the
Dayton Daily News in 1898. Cox became a member of Ohio's delegation to the
United States House of Representatives and then the
governor of Ohio. He was the Democratic Party candidate for president of the United States in the
presidential election of 1920, running unsuccessfully on a
ticket that included
Franklin D. Roosevelt as the vice presidential candidate.
Telecommunications In 1935, at the urging of Governor Cox's son,
James M. Cox Jr., Cox entered the radio business starting with
WHIO in Dayton. Governor Cox purchased
The Atlanta Journal in 1939 as well as radio station
WSB. On September 29, 1948, Cox's
WSB-TV, later referred to as the "Eyes of the South", aired the first television broadcast in Atlanta. WHIO-TV in Ohio's Miami Valley soon followed, airing its first broadcasts on February 23, 1949. followed in 1967 by the purchase of television production company Bing Crosby Productions. Cox subsequently sold off its syndication unit to a new production company, Telecom Productions, in 1970. Cox would reenter the television syndication business, when Cox's subsidiary, TeleRep, established Television Program Enterprises in the late 1970s, before merging with
Rysher Entertainment in 1993. As the cable business expanded, it was eventually consolidated and spun off into the new privately owned Cox Cable Communications (CCC) in 1968, which quickly became the second-largest cable TV company. Upon Jim Cox Jr.'s death in 1974, he left his two sisters,
Anne Cox Chambers and
Barbara Cox, in control of 95% of the privately owned company. Over the ensuing decades, Cox made pioneering investments and became the first company to bundle telephone, highspeed internet and digital cable television over a single broadband network.
Automotive Cox entered the
automotive industry in 1965 with the purchase of
Black Book. Three years later,
Manheim was purchased by Cox as well. In the 1980s, Manheim acquired its first non-U.S. auction in
Toronto, Canada, making Cox an international company. In 1997,
Autotrader.com was founded revolutionizing the way people buy and sell used cars. In 2014, Cox Enterprises brought its automotive-related businesses (which by then included and NextGear Capital) together under the Cox Automotive name. ==Subsidiaries==