John Kluge, founder of Metromedia Inc., dies at 95

John Kluge, the billionaire pioneer in independent television-station ownership whose Metromedia Inc. stations formed the basis for News Corp.'s Fox network, has died. He was 95.

Kluge died Tuesday at his home in Albemarle County, Va., said University of Virginia spokeswoman Marian Anderfuren. She gave no cause of death. Kluge donated more than $63 million to the university during his lifetime, including his Albemarle estate, which was valued at more than $45 million in 2001.

Using a strategy of rerunning network situation comedies and low-budget movies, Kluge turned Metromedia into the nation's largest independent TV business. In the 1980s he sold Metromedia's stations to Rupert Murdoch for about $2 billion.

He invested in cellular licenses, laundromats, hotels, the Orion Pictures film studio and the Harlem Globetrotters, as well as restaurants. His privately held Metromedia Co. owned the Bennigan's and Steak and Ale restaurant chains, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008.

In March, Forbes magazine estimated Kluge's net worth to be $6.5 billion, ranking him No. 109 among the world's richest people.

"My whole thrust has always been going into a business that I would like," Kluge told Forbes in 1990.

"Young entrepreneurs should spend an awful lot of time thinking about what they want to go into," he added. "The last thing you want to do, unless it's a very unusual situation, is to invest money. You should have a fund of knowledge of something and out of that you make up your mind. Money is not a fund of knowledge."

.Kluge was born Sept. 21, 1914, in Chemnitz, Germany. He moved with his mother and stepfather to the United States as a child and lived in a poor Detroit neighborhood.

Kluge was divorced three times and is survived by his fourth wife, Maria Tussi Kuttner Kluge, and three children.

Kluge was divorced three times and is survived by his fourth wife, Maria Tussi Kuttner Kluge, and three children.