William S. Paley | |
|---|---|
 Paley in 1939 | |
| Born | William Samuel Paley (1901-09-28)September 28, 1901 |
| Died | October 26, 1990(1990-10-26) (aged 89) New York City, U.S. |
| Resting place | Memorial Cemetery of Saint John's Church |
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania |
| Occupation | Television executive |
| Known for | President ofCBS |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 4 |
| Awards | Carlos Manuel de Cespedes National Order of Merit of Cuba |
William Samuel Paley (September 28, 1901 – October 26, 1990)[1] was an American businessman, primarily involved in the media, and best known as the chief executive who built the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) from a smallradio network into one of the foremost radio andtelevision network operations in theUnited States.[2]
Paley was born on September 28, 1901,[3] in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Goldie (née Drell) and Samuel Paley. His family wasJewish, and his father was an immigrant from Ukraine who ran a cigar company. As the company became increasingly successful, Samuel Paley became a millionaire, and moved his family to Philadelphia in the early 1920s.[4]
William Paley matriculated atWestern Military Academy inAlton, Illinois but later transferred to, and recorded his degree from, theUniversity of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Theta chapter ofZeta Beta Tau fraternity. He was expecting to take an increasingly active role running the family cigar business upon graduation.[4]
In 1927, Samuel Paley, Leon Levy (who was married to Paley's sister, Blanche[5]), and some business partners bought a struggling Philadelphia-based radio network of 16 stations called theColumbia Phonographic Broadcasting System.[6] Samuel Paley's intention was to use his acquisition as an advertising medium for promoting the family's cigar business, which included theLa 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 from their partners. Within a decade, William S. Paley had expanded the network to 114 affiliate stations.[citation needed]
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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 stations as stand-alone local outlets, as thebroadcast equivalent of local newspapers. Individual stations originally bought programming from the network and, thus, were considered the network's clients.
Paley changed broadcasting'sbusiness model not only by developing successful and lucrativebroadcast programming but also by viewing advertisers and sponsors as the most significant element of the broadcasting equation. Paley providednetwork programming to affiliate stations at a 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[7] 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 theCBS news division into a dominant force just as he had previously built the network's entertainment division.
As early as 1940 Paley envisioned the creation of a network division within CBS tasked with serving much of South America. In collaboration with his news directorPaul White and his director of short wave operationsEdmund Chester, Paley laid the foundation for a chain of sixty-four stations in eighteen countries which would subsequently be known as La Cadena de las Americas (The Network of the Americas).[8][9] By 1942, Paley's innovative network was broadcasting both news and cultural programming live from CBS in New York City in cooperation with the government'sOffice of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs under the direction of a youngNelson Rockefeller.[10][11] During World War II, these broadcasts played a central role in promotingcultural diplomacy andPan Americanism as part of President Franklin Roosevelt'sGood Neighbor Policy.[8][10][12] In 1943, he and Chester were awarded theCarlos Manuel de Cespedes National Order of Merit by the Cuban government in recognition of his efforts to foster greater understanding between the peoples of Cuba and the United States of America, in recognition of services performed by the Columbia Broadcasting System's Latin-Americanshortwave radio network.[13][14][15]
During World War II, Paley served as director of radio operations of thePsychological Warfare branch in theOffice of War Information atAllied Force Headquarters in London, where he held the rank of colonel. While based in England during the war, Paley came to know and befriendEdward R. Murrow, CBS's head of European news who expanded the news division's foreign coverage with a team of war correspondents later known as theMurrow Boys. In 1946, Paley promotedFrank Stanton to president of CBS. CBS expanded intotelevision and rode the postwar TV boom to surpassNBC, which had dominated radio.
CBS has owned theColumbia Record Company and its associatedCBS Laboratories since 1939. In June 1948, Columbia Records introduced the 33-1/3-rpmLP record, which could hold more than 20 minutes' worth of music on each side, and became a standard recording format through the 1970s. Also, CBS Laboratories andPeter Goldmark developed a method for color television. After lobbying by RCA PresidentDavid Sarnoff and Paley in Washington, D.C., theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the CBS system, but later reversed the decision based on the CBS system's incompatibility with black and white receivers. The new, compatibleRCA color system was selected as the standard, and CBS sold the patents to its system to foreign broadcasters asPALSECAM. CBS broadcast few color programs during this period, reluctant to supplement RCA revenue. They did, however, buy and license some RCA equipment and technology, taking the RCA markings off of the equipment,[16] and later relying exclusively onPhilips-Norelco for color equipment beginning in 1964, when color television sets became widespread.[17] PAL or Phase Alternating Line, an analogue TV-encoding system, is today a television-broadcasting standard used in large parts of the world.
"Bill Paley erected two towers of power: one for entertainment and one for news,"60 Minutes creatorDon 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 putFrank Sinatra and Edward R. Murrow on the radio and60 Minutes on television."
Paley was not fond of one of the network's biggest stars.Arthur Godfrey had been working locally in Washington, DC and New York City hosting morning shows. Paley did not consider him worthy of CBS, being a mere local host. When Paley went into the Army and took up his assignment in London, and Frank Stanton assumed his duties, he decided to try Godfrey on the network. By the time Paley returned, Godfrey was a rising star on the network with his dailyArthur Godfrey Time program. Paley had to accept the entertainer, but the two were never friends. Godfrey would, on occasion, mock Paley and other CBS executives by name, on the air. Godfrey's massive revenues from advertising on the popular morning programs and his two prime-time showsArthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts andArthur Godfrey and his Friends, protected him from any reprisals. In private, Paley and his colleagues despised Godfrey.
The relationship between Paley and his news staff was not always smooth. His friendship with Edward R. 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-hostedSee It Now series. The implication was that the network's sponsors were uneasy about some of the controversial topics of the series, leading Paley to worry about lost revenue to the network as well as unwelcome scrutiny during the era ofMcCarthyism. In 1955,Alcoa withdrew its sponsorship ofSee 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 likeThe Beverly Hillbillies andGilligan's Island. However, Paley's personal favorite wasGunsmoke; in fact, he was such a fan ofGunsmoke that, upon its threatened cancellation in 1967, he demanded that it be reinstated, a dictum that led to the abrupt demise ofGilligan's Island,[citation needed] 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 withFred 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-partCBS Evening News series on theWatergate scandal, based on a complaint byCharles Colson, an aide to PresidentRichard Nixon. And later, Paley briefly ordered the suspension of instant and often negatively critical analyses by CBS news commentators which followed presidential addresses.
Over the years, Paley sold portions of his family stockholding in CBS. At the time of his death, he owned less than nine percent of theoutstanding stock. In 1995, five years after Paley's death, CBS was bought byWestinghouse Electric Corporation and, in 1999, byViacom, which itself was once a subsidiary of CBS. Today, CBS is owned byParamount Global, after merging with the"new" Viacom in 2019.
Paley acquired an art collection consisting of approximately forty works, many of which are today in theMuseum of Modern Art in New York. Paley's collection included works byCezanne,Matisse,Picasso,Toulouse-Lautrec,Degas,Derain,Bonnard,Gauguin, andRouault.[18] He acquired Picasso'sBoy Leading a Horse in 1936 and donated it to the MoMA in 1964[19] however its Nazi-era provenance turned out to be problematic and resulted in a claim for restitution filed by the heirs ofPaul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy who said it had been sold under duress. The lawsuit, known as Schoeps v. The Museum of Modern Art, was about to go to trial when a settlement between the parties was announced.[20][21][22]
Other works from the Paley collection include Paul Cézanne L'Estaque which he acquired in 1935,[23] Henri Matisse'sWoman with a Veil, which he acquired in 1936,[24] Paul Gauguin's Washerwomen, which he acquired in 1958[25] and Paul Cézanne'sMilk Can and Apples.[26]
The MoMA organized a special exhibition of the William Paley Collection in 1992.[27]
In 2022, twenty-nine artworks, including five on long term loan to the MoMA, from the Paley collection were auctioned at Sothebys on consignment from the William S. Paley Foundation.[28][29][30]
In the 1940s, William Paley and his brother-in-law Leon Levy formed Jaclyn Stable, which owned and raced a string ofthoroughbredrace horses. He enjoyed photographing Picasso in Cap d'Antibes. Like Picasso, Paley drove an exotic FrenchFacel Vega Facel II, the fastest four-seater car in the world in the early 1960s.[31]
In 1964, CBS purchased theNew York Yankees fromDel Webb andDan Topping. Subsequently, the storied baseball team fell into mediocrity, not making the postseason for the next ten years. In 1973, Paley sold the team at its low ebb for $8.7 million toCleveland shipbuilderGeorge Steinbrenner and a group of investors. Under the Steinbrenner regime, the Yankees grew in value to what, in April 2006,Forbes magazine estimated was $1.26 billion, or about $280 million in 1973 dollars.[32]
Encouraged by Paley's avid interest in modern art and his outstanding collection, theRockefeller family's Museum of Modern Art made Paley a trustee in the 1930s; in 1962 he was tapped by then-chairmanDavid 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 notableGertrude Stein collection. He subsequently became chairman, stepping down from the museum post in 1985.[33]
In 1974, Paley dedicated the second building at theS.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications atSyracuse University. He also personally dedicated the Samuel L. Paley library atTemple University named in honor of his father.
The Paley Center for Media was founded by Paley in New York City in 1976 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. An L.A. branch opened in 1996, and closed in 2020.
Paley met Dorothy Hart Hearst (1908–1998) while she was married toJohn Randolph Hearst, the third son ofWilliam Randolph Hearst. Paley fell in love with her, and, after her Las Vegas divorce from Hearst, she and Paley married on May 12, 1932, inKingman, Arizona.[34]
Dorothy called on her extensive social connections acquired during her previous marriage to introduce Paley to several top members of PresidentFranklin Roosevelt's government. She also exerted a considerable influence over Paley's political views. She later said: "I can't believe he would have votedDemocrat without me."[7]
Dorothy began to become estranged from Paley during the early 1940s because of his infidelity. They divorced on July 24, 1947, inReno, Nevada. She retained custody of their two adopted children, Jeffrey Paley and Hilary Paley. In 1953, Dorothy married stockbroker Walter Hirshon; they divorced in 1961.[34]
Paley married divorcée, socialite and fashion iconBarbara Cushing Mortimer (1915–1978) affectionally referred to as "Babe" on July 28, 1947 and they remained married until her death. She was the daughter of renowned neurosurgeonHarvey Cushing. William and Babe Paley, in spite of their successes and social standing, were barred from being members of country clubs onLong Island because he was Jewish. As an alternative, the Paleys built a summer home, "Kiluna North," onSquam Lake in New Hampshire and spent the summers there for many years, routinely entertaining their many friends, includingLucille Ball,Grace Kelly, andDavid O. Selznick. The couple had two children, William and Kate.
Paley was a notorious womanizer his entire life. His first marriage to Dorothy ended when a newspaper published a suicide note written to Paley by a former girlfriend. He provided a small stipend to a former lover, actressLouise Brooks, for the rest of her life. In his later years he enjoyed keeping company with several women. Paley was included in a list of the ten most eligible bachelors compiled byCosmopolitan magazine in 1985; the irony of the octogenarian Paley being on the list was an inspiration forLate Night with David Letterman's nightlyTop Ten lists.[35]
Paley died ofkidney failure on October 26, 1990, less than a month after his 89th birthday.[2] He was buried at the Memorial Cemetery of St. John's Episcopal Church beside his second wifeBabe.[36]
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.
Five works that had been on long-term loan to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, given as part of a posthumous agreement with Paley's charitable foundation, were sold in the second portion of the night. The most valuable of the five hailing from the Paley loan was Pablo Picasso's 1919 Cubist still life Guitare sur une table, which hammered at $32 million, going to a bidder on the phone with Sotheby's New York business development representative Brad Bentoff.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Dorothy Hart Hirshon, a glamorous figure in New York society from the 1920s through the 40s 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.
