By TIM HUBER
The Associated Press

John Kluge, once listed as the wealthiest man in America, who built an investment in a radio station into a broadcasting empire that was the forerunner to Fox Television, has died. He was 95.

The University of Virginia said Wednesday that Kluge (pronounced KLOOG-ee) died Tuesday at his home near Charlottesville, Va.

In 1983, Kluge took Metromedia Co. private in a leveraged buyout and then sold off properties piecemeal for $4.65 billion, including the 1985 sale of seven big-city television stations to Rupert Murdoch for $2 billion. The stations, including ones in New York, Los Angeles and Houston, served as the basis for Murdoch's Fox television network.

Kluge personally netted more than $1.6 billion in the sales.

"I felt that television was going to change," Kluge told Forbes magazine. "I just thought that it was going to get more competitive."

The magazine in 1989, 1990 and 1991 labeled Kluge as the wealthiest man in America, with a net worth of more than $5 billion. Microsoft's Bill Gates knocked him off the top spot in 1992, but Kluge was still listed by Forbes as the 35th richest American in 2009 with an estimated net worth of $6.5 billion.

Kluge also owned the Ice Capades and the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, Playbill magazine and several other enterprises and was known for giving money away, donating to several causes, especially related to education.

In 2001, Kluge gave his 7,400-acre estate, including historic Morven Farm, 10 working farms and more than two dozen houses and modernized farm buildings, to the University of Virginia with the stipulation that he be able to live there until his death. The estate was valued at more than $45 million.

Kluge told the university to develop the core of the property for educational use and sell the surrounding properties to fund an endowment.

"He was one of the most charming and engaging individuals I have ever met. I was struck by his keen mind, his inquisitive nature and his extraordinary commitment to higher education," university President Teresa Sullivan said in a statement. "John Kluge was a rare visionary whose interests spanned the arts, aid for minority students and innovative health care and who used his many gifts to help make the world a better place."
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For all his wealth, Kluge, who had immigrated to the United States as a child, was known to friends and acquaintances as easygoing and someone who wasn't that interested in wealth. His late friend Alson H. Smith, a former member of the state House of Delegates, called him "just a regular guy" who would "talk about anything you want to talk about."

Kluge attributed much of his success to gambling and luck.