Herbert, who contended that he was libeled in a "60 Minutes" broadcast that aired in In CBS finally began to divest itself of some of its diverse holdings, selling at least one business every year for the next few years. He was replaced by Thomas H. Wyman, who had been a vice-president at Pillsbury. The case was the beginning of a long-running battle between CBS and retired U.
The dispute ended several years later when Westmoreland withdrew his charges on a promise from CBS that the network would publicly attempt to restore his character.
By Tri-Star had released 17 full-length films, nine of which it also produced, and in CBS sold its interest in the company. Another experiment was Trintex, a commercial electronic service that allowed people access to news, weather, and sports information; financial and educational data; and home shopping and banking from a personal computer terminal.
Tisch had previously served as the chairman of Loew's Corporation, which owned nearly 25 percent of CBS stock at the time. Paley returned as chairman of the board and Wyman was forced to resign. Although Tisch was originally to serve only as interim chief executive officer, within four months it was clear that the job was his. He immediately began cutting costs at the network. Tisch was soundly criticized for selling the number one record company in the industry at a time when the music business appeared to be healthy, and for trying to cut television programming costs when cable TV and other pay services were seducing viewers with a broader and higher quality selection.
CBS's prime-time hits were getting old; in the network came in last in the Nielsen ratings. To make matters worse, CBS viewers tended to be older than the audience advertisers were trying to reach. In Tisch, under fire from the CBS board and affiliate stations for lacking any long-term strategy, appointed year-old Kim LeMasters to head the network's entertainment division. LeMasters' task was to find new programming that would appeal to younger audiences. CBS entered the s absent Paley, who died in The company soon experienced a pleasant jump in the ratings but was still coping with slumping revenues.
In CBS, like other companies dependent on advertising, saw its income drop precipitously as the country remained stuck in a recession, and prospects for an economic recovery seemed bleak as a war in the Persian Gulf threatened to erupt. CBS enjoyed a moral, if not financial, surge in , as the broadcaster's ratings--last among the networks for the previous four years--jumped to number one, the most dramatic recovery in television history.
CBS boasted five of the top ten programs, including the number one "60 Minutes,' which became the only show ever to rank first in three separate decades. Although executives from other networks claimed that special events, such as coverage of the World Series and the Winter Olympics, accounted for the coveted ratings trophy, CBS pointed out that it had beat the competition in regularly scheduled programming and had consistently led NBC and ABC in the weekly ratings races.
Industry observers credited this victory to a better stock of shows on CBS as well as an aggressive self-promotional and marketing campaign that outpaced those of the rival networks. Even controversy played to CBS's favor. When U. Vice-President Dan Quayle accused the show "Murphy Brown,' the third highest rated show on TV, of irresponsibly celebrating unwed mothers and the breakup of the traditional American family, CBS executives believed the political storm would only lead to greater viewer and advertiser interest.
But financial woes overshadowed these successes. Although the networks collectively did their worst business in 20 years, as total ad spending in the country declined for the first time in 30 years, was considered a banner period for television. However, CBS was not able to coast on these spectacles. As in , the company racked up huge losses in its sports divisions, proving to some observers what had always been suspected: the network had grossly overpaid for its baseball and football contracts, which were to expire after their respective seasons.
Despite projections of losses for its coverage of the Winter Olympics, CBS proudly revealed that it had broken even on the Games. This loss, combined with mounting financial losses and the lack of a move into cable, led to a vote of no confidence from one of CBS's top two institutional investors.
Westinghouse, whose massive holdings included defense electronics, power generation, and nuclear engineering businesses, had experienced profound problems during the early s. But what particularly sets him apart from the other giants of early broadcasting is that he knew, from the beginning, that the key to CBS's success would be the quality of its programming; his great passion was for what went over the air.
Longtime CBS president Frank Stanton later said of him that he "was a brilliant entrepreneur, an inspiring leader—but above all a showman. Programming was his life and his genius. But it gets down to a certain gut instinct about what people will respond to, a kind of mystical connection between the broadcaster and his audience.
But his genius lay in the way he combined his keen eye and ear for popular taste with an impeccable sense of quality and style. In his own life, he was ever the perfectionist, whether precisely aligning the pencils on his desk, adorning his walls with the finest works of modern art, or, as this institution's founder and chairman, minutely critiquing every detail of successive designs for the New York building.
He demanded the best. But in programming, he never equated the "best" with highbrow. If the public wanted comedies, he insisted that his be the funniest. If they wanted adventure or drama, his had to be the most gripping, the most compelling—while also commanding an audience.
Every season he sought something that had never been done before that would push outward the frontiers of broadcasting. Under his leadership, the CBS television network topped the ratings for twenty consecutive years. Before the age of television, the young Bill Paley was a defining shaper of the early age of radio.
His fascination with the medium began in the s, when he often sat for hours entranced by a primitive crystal set as it magically brought in music from distant cities. The high-rated Jack Benny radio show ended in , and Edgar Bergen's Sunday-night show went off the air in When CBS announced in that its radio operations had lost money, while the television network had made money, it was clear where the future lie.
When the soap opera Ma Perkins went off the air November 25 , only eight, relatively minor series remained. Prime-time radio ended on September 30 , , when the legendary Suspense aired for the final time. The network also continued to offer traditional radio programming through its nightly "CBS Mystery Theater", the lone holdout of old-style programming. The CBS Radio Network continues to this day, but offers primarily its well-regarded newscasts, including its centerpiece World News Roundup in the morning and evening and news-related features like "The Osgood File" and " Harry Smith Reporting" as well as other talk properties like " Opie and Anthony ".
CBS-Hytron offered a practical color system in , but it was not compatible with the black-and-white standards set down by RCA. During the World War II years, commercial television broadcasting was reduced dramatically. Toward the end of the war, commercial television began to ramp up again, with an increased level of programming evident in the — period on the three New York television stations which operated in those years the local stations of NBC, CBS and DuMont But as RCA and DuMont raced to establish networks and offer upgraded programming, CBS lagged, advocating an industry-wide shift and re-start to UHF for their incompatible with black and white color system.
Only in , when NBC was dominant in television and black and white transmission was widespread, did CBS begin to buy or build their own stations outside of New York in Los Angeles, Chicago and other major cities. The "talent raid" on NBC of the mid-forties had brought over established radio stars; they now became stars of CBS television as well. One reluctant CBS star refused to bring her radio show, "My Favorite Husband", to television unless the network would re-cast the show with her real-life husband in the lead.
Paley and network president Frank Stanton had so little faith in the future of Lucille Ball 's series, re-dubbed I Love Lucy , that they granted her wish and allowed the husband, Desi Arnaz , to take financial control of the production. This was the making of the Ball-Arnaz Desilu empire, and became the template for series production to this day. In the late s, CBS offered imaginative and historic live television coverage of the proceedings United Nations General Assembly This journalist tour-de-force was under the direction of Edmund A.
As television came to the forefront of American entertainment and information, CBS dominated television as it once had radio. In , the CBS television network would make its first profit [4] , and would maintain dominance on television between the years and as well [4] By the late s, the network often controlled seven or eight of the slots on the "top ten" ratings list.
Perhaps because of its status as the top-rated network, during the late s and early s CBS felt freer to gamble with controversial properties like the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and All in the Family and its many spinoffs during this period. CBS offices were filled with original works.
Paley shared this interest with Frank Stanton , CBS President — , who carried this belief over into the design elements surrounding the network. Similarly, when CBS commissioned Eero Saarinen to design a new corporate center in New York in the s, Stanton supervised every aspect of the project, even dictating what could be displayed in employee offices and on desktops. This belief in art, graphics and branding carried over to such things as the CBS Television's logo, the unblinking eye logo designed by William Golden and introduced in An example of CBS's graphic-design particularity: on all official CBS letterhead, a tiny dot at most a point in diameter was pre-printed to indicate to a secretary where the typewriter carriage should be positioned for the salutation of a letter.
Stanton to develop the CBS Inc. The specials included the Ford Star Jubilee programs which included the first telecast ever of the film classic The Wizard of Oz , the telecast of Rodgers and Hammerstein 's Cinderella , Cole Porter 's musical version of Aladdin , and Playhouse 90 ' s only color broadcast, the production of The Nutcracker. Beginning in , The Wizard of Oz , now telecast as a family special in its own right after the cancellation of Ford Star Jubilee , became an annual tradition on color TV.
By the early s, CBS-TV was void of transmitting anything in color—save for a few specials and only if the sponsor would pay for it. Red Skelton was the first CBS host to telecast his weekly programs in color, using a converted movie studio, in the early s; he tried unsuccessfully to persuade the network to use his facility for other programs, then was forced to sell it.
Color was being pushed hard by rival NBC. It was, however, shown in black-and-white. This would all change by the mids, when market pressure forced CBS-TV to add color programs to the regular schedule for the —66 season.
During the s, CBS began an effort to diversify, and looked for suitable investments. In , it acquired electric guitar maker Fender from Leo Fender , who agreed to sell his company due to health problems The purchase also included that of Rhodes electric pianos, which had already been acquired by Fender.
This and other acquisitions led to a restructuring of the corporation into various operating groups and divisions. As William Paley aged, he tried to find the one person who could follow in his footsteps. Over the years any number of accomplished, successful businessmen were recruited, loudly praised to the press, only later to be summarily dismissed. Eventually he gained Paley's confidence, and then his blessing, taking control of CBS in But Tisch had no dreams of quality or of "Tiffany" networks; he expected a return on his investment.
When CBS faltered, under-performing units were given the axe. Among the first properties to go, and among the most prestigious, was the CBS Records group, which had been part of the company since Leslie speakers , and Rogers drums.
The last musical purchase was the acquisition of the assets of then-bankrupt Arp Instruments , developer of electronic synthesizers. Between and the quality of Fender guitars and amplifiers declined significantly.
The other musical instruments properties were also liquidated. It made a brief, unsuccessful move into film production in the late s, creating Cinema Center Films. Their first release, in , was The Natural. CBS dropped out of the venture in In , CBS Corp. The name CBS Films was actually used once before in when the name was briefly used for CBS' distributor of off-network and first-run syndicated programming to local TV stations in the United States and abroad.
By the early s, profits had fallen as a result of competition from cable companies, video rentals, and the high cost of programming. CBS ratings were acceptable, but the network struggled with an image of stodginess. Laurence Tisch lost interest and sought a new buyer. As one of the major broadcasting group owners of commercial radio and television stations as Group W since , Westinghouse sought to transition from a station operator into a major media company with its purchase of CBS.
And to underline the change in emphasis, all non-entertainment assets were put up for sale. By the end of , all pre-CBS elements of Westinghouse's industrial past beyond retaining rights to the name for brand licensing purposes were gone. Following completion of this effort in , Viacom was ranked as the second-largest entertainment company in the world.
Having assembled all the elements of a communications empire, Viacom found that the promised synergy was not there, and at the end of it split itself in two. Nielsen estimated in that CBS can be seen in Template:TV network logos.
CBS' older logo, with Serif font lettering. While commonly attributed to Golden, there is speculation that at least some design work on the symbol may have been done by another CBS staff designer, Georg Olden, one of the first African-Americans to achieve some notoriety in the postwar graphic design field.
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