William S. Paley

For more information on William Samuel Paley, visit Britannica.com.

Founder and chairman of the Columbia Broadcasting System, William S. Paley (1901-1990) was called alternately a broadcast programmer par excellence, an impresario, a super salesman, and the father of modern broadcasting. Because of his instinctiveunderstanding of what appeals to the popular taste, Paley was considered by many to be a genius of mass entertainment programming.

William S. Paley was born the son of a prosperous cigar manufacturer in Chicago on September 28, 1901. From an early age his father groomed him to take over the family business, the Congress Cigar Company. Determined that William would be prepared for his future role, Sam Paley sent his son to the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania and then had him work at every level within the company. William Paley quickly proved himself to be a knowledgeable tobacco buyer and a gifted salesman. While still a teenager he skillfully resolved a company strike in the absence of his father and uncle, who were away on a business trip.

During the summer of 1925 Paley was again left in charge of the business. This time he decided to experiment with radio advertising. He invested $50 of the company's money to sponsor the "La Palina Hour" on a local Philadelphia radio station, WCAU. A singer and an orchestra were included in the price. His uncle Jake was furious when he noticed the expenditure upon his return and abruptly canceled the sponsorship. Listener response to the cancellation was immediate, and a surprised Sam Paley decided to check the books. The sales of La Palina cigars, he found, had risen dramatically during the period that the advertisement had been on the air. The Congress Cigar Company became one of the largest advertisers on the station.

Building Up CBS Radio

By 1928 WCAU had become affiliated with a new and faltering radio network called the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). On the brink of bankruptcy, the CBS owners approached Sam Paley, who decided to buy into the network and secure a position in this promising field for his son. As the new president of CBS, William Paley found his fledgling company in disarray and began the task of reorganization. Paley faced formidable odds. His chief rival, the NBC radio network, was already quite powerful and could draw on the enormous resources of its parent company, RCA.

Unlike NBC, CBS did not own any stations and had only 16 affiliated stations in its network. For Paley the challenge was invigorating. In a brilliant business maneuver he offered stations an irresistible enticement to join his network - free programming. Previously both NBC and CBS had charged affiliated stations for all sustaining (non-sponsored) programs supplied by the network. Under the new contracts affiliated stations would receive these programs free of charge in return for making available to the network certain time blocks for sponsored programs. This disarmingly simple plan revolutionized station-network relations, and CBS doubled the number of its affiliated stations by the year's end. In addition, advertisers found the network's ability to guarantee a fixed lineup of stations for the airing of their programs very attractive.

Within a brief span of time CBS became a viable network, but William Paley would not be satisfied until his company surpassed all of its competitors, particularly NBC. He understood that to accomplish this goal he would need to create the best programs and to attract the best advertisers. His abilities as a salesman were impressive. Paley relentlessly courted George Roy Hill, a tobacco industry executive and one of the largest sponsors on radio at that time, to advertise on CBS. Hill found CBS much more open than NBC to direct advertising. Paley allowed advertisers to say what they wanted about their products, including mentioning prices. As NBC followed suit, radio grew quickly into a full-blown commercial medium.

Paley's powers of persuasion extended to entertainers as well. They soon began to flock to the network. Paley personally discovered and hired singers Bing Crosby and Kate Smith. Realizing the importance of those who represented his network on the air, he carefully cultivated the star system at CBS. He was always well-briefed on the needs of his stars before he met with them. Partly as a result of this lavish treatment, Paley was able to include such vaudeville comedians as Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and George Burns and Gracie Allen in his 1933 CBS lineup.

As a programming strategist, Paley had few equals. Intuitively he knew what would appeal to the general public. Paley also recognized, however, that government watchdogs would hold broadcasters accountable for serving the public interest. He shrewdly devoted a portion of the CBS schedule to developing informative and experimental programs. Since two-thirds of the network's time was unsponsored, this prudent move was not costly and did much to promote the prestige of CBS. Thus, under his stewardship CBS became the center of most creative activity in radio during the late 1930s. A regular program entitled Columbia Workshop led the way in generating technical innovations in sound effects and the use of filters. It also produced some of the most critically acclaimed radio dramas of the time, such as Archibald MacLeish's Fall of the City, a verse play on the rise of fascism.

Developing the CBS News Team

Since CBS could not for the moment hope to overtake NBC in entertainment programming, Paley gradually built up the CBS news and public affairs division. He sensed that area would be a potential minefield for the network. Biased coverage of the news or the expression of strongly worded opinions on controversial topics might open the door to government intervention. Thus in 1930 Paley hired Ed Klauber, a former newspaperman, to help him define and enforce broadcast news standards. Aside from stressing the importance of objectivity and balanced news reporting, they asserted that reporters were to be news analysts, not news commentators. Paley did not want his news people to express their opinions. As he saw it, their job was to clarify the news, giving equal weight to both sides of every issue. These high standards became the guidelines governing broadcast news coverage in the United States, and upon this basis CBS was able to build a reputation that lured some of the period's most talented journalists to join its news team. Later on, however, these same standards were to prove a source of endless contentions between the network and newspeople who argued that some issues were not always equally balanced.

As World War II broke out in Europe, the popularity and prestige of such exceptional CBS reporters as Edward R. Murrow, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, and Eric Sevareid raised the CBS image to new heights. Paley's support for his news division was seemingly boundless. When he went to England in 1944 as the chief of radio broadcasting with the Psychological Warfare Division he became a close personal friend of Murrow. Following the war, Paley strongly encouraged Murrow's pioneering efforts as he virtually invented the television documentary. The result was See It Now, a program which permitted Murrow to explore a different issue every week. The Murrow-Paley friendship waned as Murrow took on a growing number of controversial topics. When Murrow went after Senator Joseph McCarthy, Paley did not intervene, but was careful to distance himself from the broadcast. By 1957 Paley decided to edge the program out. It occupied a valuable time slot, and he told Murrow that he could not take the stomach pains it gave him anymore. After the game show scandals of 1959, Paley moved to repair the tarnished CBS image by scheduling a similar program called CBS Reports. This time, however, Murrow was out. Paley would not allow a strong voice like Murrow's to man the helm again.

The climate of broadcasting had changed after the war and so had Paley. At CBS the number of sponsored programs had doubled by 1945. Commercial considerations slowly became paramount to Paley. He hired Frank Stanton from the audience research arm of CBS to become its new president, and Paley was named chairman. In 1949, as the shadow of television loomed over radio, Paley raided the NBC Sunday night lineup of stars, a coup which finally gave him the lead in the ratings he had long desired. The news division went into a slow decline at CBS as it was forced to take a back seat to entertainment programs.

Paley also moved to protect his network on other fronts. With the onslaught of the communist scare in the early 1950s, Paley instituted a loyalty oath among his employees. He was the first network executive to bow to the pressures from advertising agencies to establish a blacklist of performers and other artists believed to be communist sympathizers. During this period the agencies were extremely powerful, since they produced a sizable portion of television programs. Paley disliked this dependence on the agencies and was gradually switching the burden of production over to the network. The other networks soon followed his lead.

Success in Television and Recordings

A man with refined taste, Paley collected paintings and art objects from all over the world. He served as president and later chairman of the Museum of Modern Art. When CBS headquarters - or Black Rock, as it is known - was constructed in the mid-1960s, Paley became deeply involved in the choice of materials and the details of design. The dark granite structure later won several architectural awards. In programming, CBS offered some of the most outstanding dramas and documentaries on television and broke new ground in the early 1970s with such daring situation comedies as All in the Family and Maude. Yet Paley never allowed his personal taste to interfere with his business sense. He believed that the public taste would only accept a limited number of high quality programs. A large percentage of CBS programs, therefore, were aimed at what has been termed the "lowest common denominator, " a concept developed by a CBS programming vice-president. The strategy was an enormously successful one, as CBS consistently outdistanced its rivals in the ratings until the mid-1970s when Paley became remote from the details of programming.

Under Paley's leadership CBS Inc. grew from a floundering company in 1928 to a giant corporation that surpassed $4 billion a year in revenue when he retired as chairman in 1983. Acquiring more than 40 other companies during his 50-year tenure as chief executive officer, CBS branched out into various fields of communication and education. Only two years after taking over CBS, Paley formed the Columbia Concerts Corporation, a talent and booking agency that also helped recruit performers for its radio programs.

In 1938 he bought the American Record Corporation, which was to become his most lucrative venture outside of broadcasting. The record company, later known as CBS/ Records, received a tremendous boost in its rise to the top of the industry when CBS Laboratories developed the revolutionary 33-1/3 long-playing album in 1948. CBS diversification increased rapidly in the 1960s after Paley agreed to expand the company's base beyond broadcasting as a precaution against government intervention. After that its interests included manufacturing television sets, publishing books and magazines, distributing toys, and for a time CBS owned the New York Yankees baseball team. After his retirement in 1983 Paley continued on as a director and chairman of the executive committee of CBS. His stock holdings in the company amounted to nearly two million shares in 1985. After a corporate shakeup the following year, Paley returned to CBS as interim chairman of the board.

By 1987 Paley's health was failing and his CBS empire was shrinking. The network was losing about $20 million a year and its program ratings were in last place. Laurence Tisch took firm control of the network in January 1987 when he became chief executive officer. Although Paley was infirm, he was determined to remain active at CBS. Until the end of his life he continued to make public appearances and report to his office at Black Rock headquarters.

William S. Paley died of a heart attack on October 26, 1990, at the age of 89. After learning of Paley's death, CBS news anchor Dan Rather said of him, "He was a giant of 20th-century business, a man committed to excellence."

Further Reading

Paley's contribution to broadcasting is best understood within the context offered by the most complete account of the development of radio and television, Eric Barnouw's three volume masterwork A History of Broadcasting in the United States (1966, 1968, 1970). For more in-depth biographical information, two books with divergent judgments on many of his decisions as chairman of CBS are David Halberstam's The Powers That Be (1977) and William Paley's As It Happened (1978). In addition, Fred Friendly's Due To Circumstances Beyond Our Control … (1967) and Les Brown's Television: The Business Behind the Box (1971) are recommended for their insight into television programming at Paley's CBS. An insightful look at Paley and his network is in Lewis J. Paper, Empire: William S. Paley and the Making of CBS (1987).

Additional Sources

Smith, Sally Bedell, In All His Glory: The Life of William S. Paley (1990).

Macleans (November 5, 1990).

Bibliography
• Dawkins, R. (1986). The Blind Watchmaker.

This article is about the broadcasting executive. For the philosopher, see William Paley.

William Samuel Paley
Born	September 28, 1901(1901-09-28) Chicago, Illinois
Died	October 26, 1990 (aged 89) New York City
Education	The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Spouse(s)	Dorothy Hart Hearst (1908-1998) (m. 1932–1947) «start: (1932)–end+1: (1948)»"Marriage: Dorothy Hart Hearst (1908-1998) to William S. Paley" Location: (linkback:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Paley) Barbara "Babe" Cushing Mortimer (1915-1978) (m. 1947–1978) «start: (1947)–end+1: (1979)»"Marriage: Barbara "Babe" Cushing Mortimer (1915-1978) to William S. Paley" Location: (linkback:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Paley)
Parents	Samuel Paley

William Samuel Paley (September 28, 1901 – October 26, 1990) was the chief executive who built Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) from a small radio network into one of the foremost radio and television network operations in the United States.^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Broadcasting pioneer 3 Other interests 3.1 Philanthropy 4 Personal life 4.1 Marriage to Dorothy Hart Hearst 4.2 Marriage to Barbara Cushing Mortimer 4.3 Other affairs 4.4 Death 5 In popular culture 6 Honors 7 Works 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

Early life

Paley's father, Samuel Paley, a Russian Jewish immigrant, ran a cigar company and, as the company became increasingly successful, the new millionaire moved his family to Philadelphia in the early 1920s. William Paley received his degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in expectation that he would take an increasingly active role running the family cigar business.

The younger Paley's career took a fateful turn in 1927 when his father and some business partners bought a struggling Philadelphia-based radio network of 16 stations called the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System. Samuel Paley's intention had been to use his acquisition as nothing more than an advertising medium for promoting the family's cigar business, which included the La Palina brand. Within a year, under William's leadership, cigar sales had more than doubled, and, in 1928, the Paley family secured majority ownership of the network. Within a decade, Paley had expanded the network to 114 affiliate stations.

Broadcasting pioneer

During World War II, Paley served in the psychological warfare branch in the Office of War Information, under General Dwight Eisenhower, and held the rank of colonel. It was while based in London, England, during the war when Paley came to know and befriend Edward R. Murrow, CBS's head of European news.

Paley quickly grasped the earnings potential of radio and recognized that good programming was the key to selling advertising time and, in turn, bringing in profits to the network and to affiliate owners. Before Paley, most businessmen viewed radio stations as stand-alone outlets or, in other words, as the broadcast equivalent of local newspapers. Individual stations originally bought programming from the network and, thus, were considered the network's clients.

Paley changed broadcasting's business model not only by being a genius at developing successful and lucrative programming but also by viewing the advertisers (sponsors) as the most significant element of the broadcasting equation. Paley provided network programming to affiliate stations at nominal cost, thereby ensuring the widest possible distribution for both the programming and the advertising. The advertisers then became the network's primary clients and, because of the wider distribution brought by the growing network, Paley was able to charge more for the ad time. Affiliates were required to carry programming offered by the network for part of the broadcast day, receiving a portion of the network's fees from advertising revenue. At other times in the broadcast day, affiliates were free to offer local programming and sell advertising time locally.

Paley's recognition of how to harness the potential reach of broadcasting was the key to his growing CBS from a tiny chain of stations into what was eventually one of the world's dominant communication empires. During his prime, Paley was described as having an uncanny sense for popular taste^[2] and exploiting that insight to build the CBS network. As war clouds darkened over Europe in the late 1930s, Paley recognized Americans' desire for news coverage of the coming war and built the CBS news division into a dominant force just as he had previously built the network's entertainment division.

In 1946, when Paley promoted Frank Stanton to president of CBS, broadcasting would never be the same. CBS expanded into TV early through Paley's strong, some would say ruthless, maneuvering. He rode the post-World War II boom in that medium to surpass NBC, which had dominated radio. Paley became the best-known executive in network television, personifying the control and vision which marked the industry through its heyday of the 1980s.

CBS long-owned the Columbia Record Company and its associated CBS Laboratories. Columbia Records introduced the 33-1/3-rpm long-playing vinyl disc to successfully compete with RCA Victor's 45-rpm vinyl disc. Also, CBS Laboratories and Peter Goldmark developed a method for color television. After much bare-knuckled lobbying in Washington, D.C., by RCA President David Sarnoff and Paley, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the RCA color system as the standard, and CBS sold the patents to its system to foreign broadcasters as PAL SECAM. CBS was the last of the three broadcast networks to adopt color television, having to buy and license RCA equipment and technology. (PAL or Phase Alternating Line, an analogue TV-encoding system, is today a television-broadcasting standard used in large parts of the world.)

Paley was respected not only for building CBS into an entertainment powerhouse but also for encouraging the development of a news division that went on to dominate broadcast journalism for decades, but is a shadow of its former self today.

"Bill Paley erected two towers of power, one for entertainment and one for news," 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt claimed in his autobiography, Tell Me a Story. "And he decreed that there would be no bridge between them.... In short, Paley was the guy who put Frank Sinatra and Edward R. Murrow on the radio and 60 Minutes on television." (Hewitt diplomatically omits reference to Stanton who ultimately approved all the programming.)

The relationship between Paley and his news staff was not always smooth. His friendship with Ed Murrow, one of the leading lights in the CBS news division and by then a vice president of CBS, suffered during the 1950s over the hard-hitting tone of the Murrow-hosted See It Now series. The implication was that the network's sponsors were uneasy about some of the controversial topics of the series, leading to Paley worrying about lost revenue to the network as well as unwelcome scrutiny during the era of McCarthyism. In fact, in 1955, Alcoa withdrew its sponsorship of See It Now, and eventually the program's weekly broadcast on Tuesdays was stopped, though it continued as a series of special segments until 1958.

In 1959, James T. Aubrey, Jr., became the president of CBS. Under Aubrey, the network became the most popular on television with shows like The Beverly Hillbillies and Gilligan's Island. However, Paley's personal favorite was Gunsmoke; in fact, he was such a fan of Gunsmoke that, upon its threatened cancellation in 1967, he demanded that it be reinstated, a dictum that led to the abrupt demise of Gilligan's Island, which had already been renewed for a fourth season.

During the 1963–1964 television season, 14 of the top 15 shows on prime-time and the top 12 shows of daytime television were on CBS. Aubrey, however, fought constantly with Fred W. Friendly of CBS News, and Paley did not like Aubrey's taste in low-brow programming. Aubrey and Paley bickered to the point that Aubrey approached Frank Stanton to propose a take-over of CBS. The takeover never materialized, and, when CBS's ratings began to slip, Paley fired Aubrey in 1965.

In 1972, Paley ordered the shortening of a second installment of a two-part CBS Evening News series on the Watergate based on a complaint by Charles Colson, an aide to President Richard M. Nixon. And later, Paley briefly ordered the suspension of instant and often negatively critical analyses by CBS news commentators, which followed the Presidential addresses.

Over the years, Paley continued to sell portions of his family stockholding in CBS and diversified his portfolio. At the time of his death, he had owned less than nine percent of the outstanding stock. In 1995, five years after Paley's death, CBS was bought by Westinghouse Electric Corporation and, in 1999, by Viacom, which itself was once a subsidiary of CBS. Today, CBS is owned by the CBS Corporation, after being spun off from Viacom in 2006, though National Amusements is still the majority owner of the CBS Corporation and the "new" Viacom.

Other interests

In the 1940s, William Paley and Dr. Leon Levy formed Jaclyn Stable that owned and raced a string of thoroughbred race horses. Paley formed a modern art collection with as many as 40 major works, and he enjoyed photographing Picasso in Cap d'Antibes. Like Picasso, Paley drove an exotic French Facel Vega Facel II, the fastest four-seater car in the world in the early 1960s.^[3]

In 1964, CBS purchased the New York Yankees from the Del Webb Company and, in 1973, sold the franchise to Cleveland shipbuilder George Steinbrenner and a group of investors. Acting on behalf of CBS, Paley sold the team at its low ebb for $8.7 million. In April 2006, Forbes Magazine estimated that the Yankees were worth $1.26 billion. To be fair, it was from 1964 under CBS stewardship that the dominant baseball team fell into mediocrity, not making the playoffs during that stretch.

Philanthropy

Encouraged by Paley's avid interest in modern art and his outstanding collection, he became a trustee of the Rockefeller family's Museum of Modern Art in the 1930s and, in 1962, was tapped by then-chairman David Rockefeller to be its president. In 1968, he joined a syndicate with Rockefeller and others to buy six works by Picasso for the museum from the notable Gertrude Stein collection. He subsequently became chairman, stepping down from the museum post in 1985.^[4]

The Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles and New York City was founded by Paley in 1976, when it was known as the Museum of Broadcasting. From 1991 to 2007, it was known as The Museum of Television and Radio; its new location was known as the Paley Building.

In 1974, Paley dedicated the second building at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He also personally dedicated the library at Temple University named in honor of his father, Samuel L. Paley.

Personal life

Marriage to Dorothy Hart Hearst

Paley met Dorothy Hart Hearst (1908–1998) while she was married to John Randolph Hearst, the third son of William Randolph Hearst. Paley fell in love with her, and, after her Las Vegas divorce from Hearst, she and Paley married on May 12, 1932, in Kingman, Arizona.^[5]

Dorothy called on her extensive social connections acquired during her previous marriage to introduce Paley to several top members of President Franklin Roosevelt's government. She also exerted a considerable influence over Paley's political views. She later said: "I can’t believe he would have voted Democrat without me."^[2]

Dorothy began to become estranged from Paley during the early 1940s because of his constant womanizing. They divorced on July 24, 1947, in Reno, Nevada, and she retained custody of their two adopted children, Jeffrey Paley and Hilary Paley. In 1953, Dorothy married stockbroker Walter Hirshon; they divorced in 1961.^[5]

Marriage to Barbara Cushing Mortimer

Paley married divorcée, socialite and fashion icon Barbara "Babe" Cushing Mortimer on July 28, 1947. She was the daughter of renowned neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing. Paley and his second wife, in spite of their successes and social standing, were barred from being members of country clubs on Long Island because he was Jewish. As an alternative, the Paleys built a summer home, "Kiluna North," on Squam Lake in New Hampshire and spent the summers there for many years, routinely entertaining their many friends, including Lucille Ball, Grace Kelly and David O. Selznick. The house was later donated to Dartmouth College and converted to use as a conference center; Squam Lake was also the setting for the 1981 Mark Rydell film On Golden Pond. The couple had two children, William and Kate.

Other affairs

As noted, Paley was a notorious ladies' man who was adored by women his whole life. Indeed, his first marriage to Dorothy ended when a newspaper published the suicide note written to Paley by a former girlfriend. Resulting from another relationship, he provided a stipend to a former lover, actress Louise Brooks, for the rest of her life. In his later years, he enjoyed keeping company with a coterie of devoted lady friends.

Death

Paley died of kidney failure on October 26, 1990. He was 89.^[1]

In popular culture

In the 1986 television movie Murrow, Paley is played by Dabney Coleman. In the 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck, Paley is played by Frank Langella.

Honors

• Croix de Guerre with Palm, 1946
• Legion of Honor
• Legion of Merit, 1946
• Peabody Award, 1958 and 1961
• Mr. Paley was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1984.

Works

• As It Happened: A Memoir (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979)

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "William S. Paley, Builder of CBS, Dies at 89.". New York Times. October 27, 1990. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2DB1E31F934A15753C1A966958260. Retrieved 2008-04-25. "William S. Paley, who personified the power, glamour, allure and influence of CBS Inc., the communications empire he built, died last night at his home in Manhattan. He was 89 years old." 
2. ^ ^{a b} Bedell Smith, Sally (1990). In All His Glory. The Life of William S. Paley. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-61735-4. 
3. ^ " ... they have a place at Squam Lake in New Hampshire, where Paley tears up the back roads at 80 m.p.h. in his Facel-Vega": Time, Jan. 31, 1964
4. ^ MoMA and the Stein collection - see David Rockefeller, Memoirs, New York: Random House, 2002. (pp.450-58)
5. ^ ^{a b} "Dorothy H. Hirshon, 89, Dies; Socialite and Philanthropist". New York Times. January 31, 1998. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E6D7123AF932A05752C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2008-04-26. "Dorothy Hart Hirshon, a glamorous figure in New York society from the 1920's through the 40's who later became active in social, human rights and political causes, died Thursday in an automobile accident while driving near her home in Glen Cove, on Long Island. She was 89." 

Further reading

• Museum of Broadcast Communication's page on William Paley
• Business Week article about William Paley, June 1, 2004
• Paper, Lewis J. Empire: William S. Paley and the Making of CBS (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1987)
• Sally Bedell Smith (1948- ), In All His Glory: the Life and Times of William S. Paley and the Birth of Modern Broadcasting (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1990) 782 pages

External links

• Papers of William S. Paley (1944, 1969), Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
• William S. Paley at Find a Grave

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