You're going to hear a lot of tributes today about Frank Stanton. There's no doubt that without William Paley's money, there would be no CBS, at least not the glamorous, high-profile network we see today. It's amazing how the big networks conform to their reputations, decades after their legends have gone. NBC still tries to nurture sickly shows like "Studio 60," the way Tinker and Tartikoff once did, ABC still searches for the fountain of youth while trying to keep mom and dad happy, and CBS is haunted by its "Tiffany" reputation.
And for that, CBS has Frank Stanton to thank. Because just like Ted Turner could not have gotten CNN on the air without Reese Schonfeld's experience and imagination, so CBS would not have become classy, expensive CBS without Paley's right hand Stanton. Without Frank Stanton, Paley could well have been his generation's Larry Tisch: just another venal moneybags in love with show business.
Long before the word "micromanager" became in vogue, Stanton sweated the small stuff, like the design of the fancy new CBS headquarters that became known as Black Rock. He also made the big calls on news. Fred Friendly, no shrinking violet, was running CBS news during the Vietnam War, and argued bitterly with Stanton over network coverage of same. Finally, when Friendly pleaded for CBS to pre-empt the daytime reruns of "I Love Lucy" to air key hearings in the Senate, and Stanton said no, Friendly quit.
One of the intriguing sidelines to the news of Stanton's death is a whisper I picked up in New York the other week ... namely, is CBS gonna stay in Black Rock? Though certainly an imposing structure, the property may not be a great fit for CBS, which already has a building on 57th Street where it does news, the Simon & Schuster building, and Leslie Moonves' main hangout, Television City in L.A.
As for the headline above ... again, as with James Brown, no alert in my Inbox.
What an interesting cover -- I wonder if that's a literal depiction of the wheel that was part of CBS's proposed mechanical color television system?
Posted by: Brian Pearce | December 26, 2006 at 09:46 AM
Oh, I'm sure of it. The cover's from 1950, which would be at the time CBS and RCA were lobbying the feds with their competing color schemes.
Posted by: Aaron | December 26, 2006 at 02:56 PM