>>150454987
Well, since you asked...
Prior to 1948 Warner Bros., like the other majors, in addition to producing movies, owned theaters that showed their movies and forced other owners to purchase all these other movies, cartoons, etc to get the movies they wanted
Very profitable for WB but illegal and sort of unfair
Feds say they can't do that, so WB has to sell their theaters and end block booking, combined with the rise of TV this takes a major hit to WBs profits. The pre-50 WB library and pre-48 cartoons are sold to AAP in 1958, budgets are cut (which is why the later WB shorts sucked so much), and like the rest of the majors Warner never reaches those highs again
Jack Warner, by then the last actual Warner brother, sells his share in the company to the much smaller 7A (run by Eliot Hyman of AAP) in 1967, which I heard someone say was a bad deal but actually was alright
Didn't matter because Kinney Parking would buy them in 1969, which only failed because Kinney had ties to the mafia and got in legal trouble
Kinney spins off their entertainment assets (including DC and EC) and Steve Ross becomes head of Warner Communications, probably the best period of WB since the 40s, profitable and innovative, but Steve Ross dies in 1990 and they merge with Time Magazine, which can be argued was the root of the hole they're in
