Larry Finley
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Larry Finley (May 14, 1913 - April 3, 2000) was a late night broadcast pioneer as well a leader in the audiotape and videotape business.
Born and raised in Syracuse, New York, he became a nightclub manager in his hometown at age 18 before moving to Los Angeles in the 1930s and opening a chain of jewellery stores. In the 1940s, he became a business partner with musicians Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey in ownership of the Casino Gardens Ballroom in San Diego, where he also owned radio station KSDJ. He created his own TV production company, Finley Productions, Inc., the first such operation on the West Coast.
Finley produced and hosted radio and TV shows in Los Angeles, including The Larry Finley Show, broadcast nightly from his restaurant on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood; as well as Strictly Informal, Dinner At Eight, and Music is My Beat, the first TV shows to be kinescoped and aired by the Armed Forces Television Network to troops in Korea.
In the 1960s, Finley became President and CEO of the International Tape Cartridge Corporation (ITCC). He acquired the audio tape rights from 27 record labels and became the largest provider of entertainment on tape. In 1970, he founded the International Tape Association, which is now known as the International Recording Media Association (IRMA), at a time when audio tape products were still finding their market (IRMA now has the likes of Sony, Panasonic, JVC, BMG, Universal, Fuji, Eastman Kodak, Warner, and EMI among its 450 member companies).
Among the honors he received during his lifetime were: The Los Angeles City of Hope's Annual Torch Bearer Award in 1955, Time-Life Magazine's Man of the Decade Award in 1980, induction into the Video Hall of Fame in 1984, and in 1998 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Vision Fund of America.
Finley died April 2000, in Long Island, New York at age 86.
