William S. Paley
- This article is about the broadcast executive. For the philosopher, see William Paley.
William S. Paley (September 28, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois – October 26, 1990 in New York, New York) was the chief executive who built CBS from a small radio network to the dominant radio and television network operation in America.
Paley's father Samuel, a Ukrainian 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 studied at the University of Chicago and later the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce 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 a medium for advertising 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.
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 standalone outlets — in other words, the broadcast equivalent of the local newspaper. The individual stations originally bought programming from the network and were thus considered the network's clients.
Paley changed broadcasting's business model, not only by being a genius at developing successful and lucrative programming, but 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 not only for the programming but 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 take 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 building 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, and exploited that taste to build the CBS network. As war clouds darkened 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 built the network's entertainment division previously.
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 during the war that Paley came to know and befriend Edward R. Murrow, CBS's head of European news.
In the 1940s, William Paley and Dr. Leon Levy formed Jaclyn Stable, that owned and raced a string of thoroughbred race horses.
CBS expanded into TV and early through Paley's strong, some would say ruthless, maneuvering rode the post-World War II boom in that medium to pass 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.
Paley sold the New York Yankees in 1973 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 also under CBS stewardship (from 1964 onward), that the dominant Bronx Bombers fell into mediocrity, not making the playoffs during that stretch.
Paley was respected not only for building CBS into an entertainment powerhouse, but for also encouraging the development of a news division that went on to dominate broadcast journalism for decades.
"Bill Paley erected two towers of power, one for entertainment and one for news," 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt said 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.
The relationship between Paley and his news staff was not always smooth. Paley's friendship with Ed Murrow — one of the leading lights in the CBS news division and by then a vice president — 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, See It Now lost its Alcoa sponsorship in 1955 and eventually its weekly Tuesday time slot, though it continued as a series of specials until 1958.
In 1972, Paley ordered the shortening of a second installment of a two-part CBS Evening News series on Watergate — after he was contacted by Charles Colson, an aide to President Richard M. Nixon. And later, Paley briefly ordered the banishment of instant analysis by his news people following Presidential addresses.
CBS was bought by Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1995, and by Viacom Inc. in 2000.
Paley died of kidney failure on October 26, 1990. He was 89.
Trivia
- The Museum of Television & Radio hosts an annual panel series, with casts and crews from new series, that is named after Paley. The museum itself was founded in 1976 as the Museum of Broadcasting, partly with Paley's help. Its main building on West 52nd Street in Manhattan is named after the longtime CBS chief.
- Paley married the divorced socialite and fashion icon Barbara "Babe" Cushing-Mortimer on July 28, 1947. His first wife, Dorothy Hart, was the former wife of William Randolph Hearst, Jr.
- Paley and his second wife, Babe, despite their success and social standing, were barred from country clubs on Long Island because he was Jewish. Instead, the Paleys built a summer home on Squam Lake in New Hampshire and summered there for many years, routinely entertaining friends like Lucille Ball and Grace Kelly. Squam Lake was the location for the 1981 Mark Rydell film "On Golden Pond" starring Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda. The house was donated to Dartmouth College and was converted to use as a conference center.
- Paley was a notorious ladies' man. His first marriage ended when a newspaper published the suicide note written to Paley by a girlfriend. He provided former lover Louise Brooks a stipend for the rest of her life.
- When Paley said , he was a fan of CBS' Gunsmoke, viewers knew Matt Dillon aka James Arness was protected. Paley, in humor, called NBC chief David Sarnoff, "The 5th Cartwright" of Bonanza.
- In the 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck., he is played by Frank Langella.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Museum of Broadcast Communication's page on William Paley
- Business Week article about William Paley from June 1, 2004
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