Further expansion
In 1967, the MCA Records label was established outside the United States and Canada to issue releases by the MCA group of labels. Decca, Kapp, and Uni were merged into MCA Records at Universal City, California in 1971; the three labels maintained their identities for a short time but were soon retired in favor of the MCA label. The first MCA Records release in the US was former Uni artist Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" in 1972. In 1973, the final Decca pop label release, "Drift Away", a No. 5 pop hit by Dobie Gray, was issued.
MCA had two failed mergers in 1969. Initially, it planned a merger with Westinghouse Electric Corporation but that collapsed in April, and in July, they announced a proposed merger with the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, but this too was called off in September.[22]
In 1973, Stein stepped down from the company he founded and Wasserman took over as chairman and chief executive officer, while Sidney Sheinberg was appointed president and chief operating officer of MCA.[23] Other executives within MCA were Lawrence R. Barnett, who ran the agency's live acts division during its glory agency years in the 1950s and 1960s, and Ned Tanen, head of Universal Pictures. Tanen was behind Universal hits such as Animal House, and John Hughes's Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club.
MCA issued soundtrack albums for most films released by Universal Pictures.
In 1975, the company entered the book publishing business with the acquisition of G. P. Putnam's Sons.[24] In 1979, it acquired ABC Records along with its subsidiaries Paramount Records, Impulse! Records, and Dot Records. ABC had acquired the Paramount and Dot labels when it purchased Gulf+Western's record labels in 1974, then the parent company of Paramount Pictures.
From 1983 to 1989, Irving Azoff was chairman of MCA Records and is credited for turning around the fortunes of the label.[25]
The Chess Records catalog was acquired from the remnants of Sugarhill in 1985. Motown Records was bought in 1988 (and sold to PolyGram in 1993).[26] GRP Records (which became for some years MCA's jazz music label and thus began managing the company's jazz catalogue) and Geffen Records (which served as another mainstream music subsidiary) were acquired in 1990.[27]
MCA also acquired other assets outside of the music industry. It became a shareholder in USA Network in 1981, eventually owning 50% of the network (the other half was owned by Paramount).[28] In 1982, its publishing division, G. P. Putnam's Sons, bought Grosset & Dunlap from Filmways.[29] In 1984, MCA bought Walter Lantz Productions and its characters, including Woody Woodpecker. In 1985, MCA bought toy and video game company LJN.[30] It also bought a TV station in New York City, WWOR-TV (renamed from WOR-TV), in 1987, from RKO General subsidiary of GenCorp, which was in the midst of a licensing scandal.
In 1982, MCA decided to start out its video game unit, MCA Video Games, led by technicians of the MCA DiscoVision unit.[31]
In 1983, MCA Videogames, the video game division of MCA itself and video game developer/publisher Atari Inc. entered into a partnership to start out Studio Games, a joint venture that would develop video games based on MCA's film and television properties, most notably from then-sister Universal Pictures, and decided that they would give them access to all motion picture and television properties coming from the unit.[32]
In 1990, MCA hired Hanna-Barbera executive Jeff Segal to start out its MCA Family Entertainment arm (aka Universal Family Entertainment) and had Universal Cartoon Studios as its subsidiary.[33][34]
