History of CBS
CBS Broadcasting, Inc. (
CBS was founded as a radio network in 1927 and then expanded to television in the 1940s. Although it primarily remained an independent company throughout most of the 20th century,
Early radio years
The origins of CBS date back to January 27, 1927, with the creation of the United Independent Broadcasters network in Chicago by New York City
Operational costs were steep, particularly the payments to AT&T for use of its landlines, and by the end of 1927, Columbia Phonograph wanted out.[3] In early 1928 Judson sold the network to brothers Isaac and Leon Levy, owners of the network's Philadelphia affiliate WCAU, and their partner Jerome Louchheim. None of the three were interested in assuming day-to-day management of the network, so they installed wealthy 26-year-old William S. Paley, son of a Philadelphia cigar family and in-law of the Levys, as president. With the record company out of the picture, Paley quickly streamlined the corporate name to "Columbia Broadcasting System".[3] He believed in the power of radio advertising since his family's La Palina cigars had doubled their sales after young William convinced his elders to advertise on radio.[4] By September 1928, Paley bought out the Louchheim share of CBS and became its majority owner with 51% of the business.[5]
Turnaround: Paley's first year
During Louchheim's brief regime, Columbia paid $410,000 to
Paley moved right away to put his network on a firmer financial footing. In the fall of 1928, he entered into talks with Adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures, who planned to move into radio in response to RCA's forays into motion pictures with the advent of talkies.[7] The deal came to fruition in September 1929; Paramount acquired 49% of CBS in return for a block of its stock worth $3.8 million at the time.[4] The agreement specified that Paramount would buy that same stock back for a flat $5 million by March 1, 1932, provided that CBS had earned $2 million during 1931 and 1932.[7] For a brief time, there was talk that the network might be renamed "Paramount Radio", but it only lasted a month as the 1929 stock market crash sent all stock value tumbling. It galvanized Paley and his troops, who had no alternative but to "turn the network around and earn the $2,000,000 in two years... This is the atmosphere in which the CBS of today was born."[7] The near-bankrupt film studio sold its CBS shares back to the network in 1932.[8] In the first year of Paley's watch, CBS's gross earnings more than tripled, going from $1.4 million to $4.7 million.[9]
Much of the increase was a result of Paley's effort to improve affiliate relations. There were two types of program at the time: sponsored and sustaining, i.e., unsponsored. Rival network
Paley valued style and taste,[12] and in 1929, once he had his affiliates happy and his company's creditworthiness on the mend, he relocated his company to the sleek, new 485 Madison Avenue, the "heart of the advertising community, right where Paley wanted his company to be",[13] and where it would stay until its move to its own Eero Saarinen-designed headquarters, the CBS Building, in 1965. When his new landlords expressed skepticism about the network and its fly-by-night reputation, Paley overcame their qualms by inking a lease for $1.5 million.[13]
CBS takes on the Red and the Blue (1930s)
Since NBC was the broadcast arm of the
Paley had an innate sense of entertainment. David Halberstam wrote that he had "a gift of the gods, an ear totally pure",[14] and knew "what was good and would sell, what was bad and would sell, and what was good and would not sell, and he never confused one with another."[15] As the 1930s loomed closer, Paley set about building the CBS talent stable. The network became the home to many popular musical and comedy stars, among them Jack Benny ("Your Canada Dry Humorist"), Al Jolson, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Kate Smith, whom Paley had personally selected for his family's La Palina Hour as she was not the type of woman to provoke jealousy in American wives.[16] When Paley heard a phonograph record of Bing Crosby, then a young unknown crooner, on a mid-ocean voyage, he rushed to the ship's radio room and cabled New York to sign Crosby immediately to a contract for a daily radio show.[17]
While the CBS primetime lineup featured music, comedy and variety shows, the daytime schedule was a direct conduit into American homes – and into the hearts and minds of American women. For many, it was the bulk of their adult human contact during the course of the day. CBS salesmen recognized early on that this intimate connection could be a bonanza for advertisers of female-interest products.[18] Starting in 1930, astrologer Evangeline Adams would consult the heavens on behalf of listeners who sent in their birthdays, a description of their problems, and a boxtop from sponsor Forhan's toothpaste.[19] The low-key murmuring of smooth-voiced Tony Wons, backed by a tender violin, "made him a soul mate to millions of women"[20] on behalf of the R. J. Reynolds tobacco company, whose cellophane-wrapped Camel cigarettes were "as fresh as the dew that dawn spills on a field of clover".[21] The most popular radio-friend of all was M. Sayle Taylor, the Voice of Experience, though his name was never uttered on air.[21] Women mailed descriptions of the most intimate of relationship problems to the Voice in the tens of thousands per week; sponsors Musterole ointment and Haley's M–O laxative enjoyed sales increases of several hundred percent in just the first month of The Voice of Experience's run.[22]
As the decade progressed, a new genre joined the daytime lineup: serial drama
Thanks to its daytime and primetime schedules, CBS prospered in the 1930s. In 1935, gross sales were $19.3 million, yielding a profit of $2.27 million.[25] By 1937, the network took in $28.7 million and had 114 affiliates,[9] almost all of which cleared 100% of network-fed programming, thus keeping ratings, and revenue, high. In 1938, CBS acquired the American Record Corporation, parent of its one-time investor Columbia Records.[26] In 1938, NBC and CBS each opened broadcast studios on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in order to attract the entertainment industry's top talent to their networks.[27]
CBS launches an independent news division
The extraordinary potential of radio news showed itself in 1930, when CBS suddenly found itself with a live telephone connection to a prisoner called "the Deacon", who described, from the inside and in real time, a riot and conflagration at the
It was in this climate that Paley set out to "enhance the prestige of CBS, to make it seem in the public mind the more advanced, dignified and socially aware network".
A key early hire was
Murrow's nightly reports from the rooftops during the dark days of the
When the war was over and Murrow returned for good, it was as "a superstar with prestige and freedom and respect within his profession and within his company".[45] He possessed enormous capital within that company, and as the unknown form of television news loomed large, he would spend it freely, first in radio news, then in television, first taking on Senator Joseph McCarthy, then eventually – and unsuccessfully – William S. Paley himself.[46]
Panic: The War of the Worlds radio broadcast
On October 30, 1938, CBS Radio gained a taste of infamy when
CBS recruits Edmund A. Chester
Before the United States joined
Zenith of network radio (1940s)
As 1939 wound down, Paley announced that 1940 would be "the greatest year in the history of radio in the United States".
CBS in the 1940s was vastly different from that of its early days; many of the old guard veterans had died, retired, or simply left the network.[62] No change was greater than that in Paley himself, who had become difficult to work for, and had "gradually shifted from leader to despot".[62] He spent much of his time seeking social connections and in cultural pursuits; his hope was that CBS "could somehow learn to run itself".[62] His brief to an interior designer remodeling his townhouse included a requirement for closets that would accommodate 300 suits and 100 shirts, and had special racks for 100 neckties.[63]
As Paley grew more remote, he installed a series of buffer executives who sequentially assumed more and more power at CBS: first Ed Klauber, then Paul Kesten, and finally Frank Stanton. Second only to Paley as the author of CBS's style and ambitions in its first half-century, Stanton was "a magnificent mandarin who functioned as company superintendent, spokesman, and image-maker".[64] He had come to the network in 1933 after sending copies of his Ph.D. thesis "A Critique Of Present Methods and a New Plan for Studying Radio Listening Behavior" to CBS top brass, and they responded with a job offer.[65] He scored an early hit with his study "Memory for Advertising Copy Presented Visually vs. Orally", which CBS salesmen used to great effect, bringing in new sponsors.[65] In 1946, Paley appointed Stanton as President of CBS and promoted himself to chairman. Stanton's colorful but impeccable wardrobe – slate-blue pinstripe suit, ecru shirt, robin's egg blue necktie with splashes of saffron – made him, in the mind of one sardonic CBS vice president, "the greatest argument we have for color television".[66]
Despite the influx of advertisers and their money – or perhaps because of them – the 1940s were not without bumps for the radio networks. The biggest challenge came in the form of the FCC's chain broadcasting investigation, often called the "monopoly probe".
On the air, the war affected almost every show. Variety shows wove patriotism through their comedy and music segments; dramas and soaps had characters join the service and go off to fight. Even before hostilities commenced in Europe, one of the most played songs on radio was Irving Berlin's "God Bless America", popularized by CBS personality Kate Smith.[71] Although an Office of Censorship sprang up within days of Pearl Harbor, censorship would be totally voluntary. A few shows submitted scripts for review, but most did not.[72] The guidelines that the Office did issue banned weather reports (including announcement of sports rainouts), as well as news about war production or troop, ship, or plane movements, and live man-on-the-street interviews. The ban on ad-libbing caused quizzes, game shows, and amateur hours to wither for the duration.[72]
Surprising was the "granite permanence" of the shows at the top of the ratings.[73] The vaudevillians and musicians who were hugely popular after the war were the same stars who had been huge in the 1930s; Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Burns and Allen, and Edgar Bergen all had been on the radio almost as long as there had been network radio.[74] A notable exception to this was relative newcomer Arthur Godfrey, who was still doing a local morning show in Washington, D.C. as late as 1942.[75] Godfrey, who had been a cemetery lot salesman and a cab driver, pioneered the style of talking directly to the listener as an individual, with a singular "you" rather than phrases like "Now, folks..." or "Yes, friends...".[76] His combined shows contributed as much as 12% of all CBS revenues; by 1948, he was making $500,000 a year.[75]
In 1947, Paley, still the undisputed "head talent scout" of CBS,
As a result of this, CBS finally beat NBC in the ratings in 1949,[79] but it was not just to one-up rival Sarnoff that Paley led his talent raid; he and all of radio had their eye on the coming force that threw a shadow over radio throughout the 1940s – television.
Primetime radio gives way to television (1950s)
In the spring of 1940, CBS staff engineer Peter Goldmark devised a system for color television that CBS management hoped would leapfrog the network over NBC and its existing black-and-white RCA system.[80][81] The CBS system "gave brilliant and stable colors", while NBC's was "crude and unstable but 'compatible'".[82] Ultimately, the FCC rejected the CBS system because it was incompatible with RCA's, along with the fact that CBS had moved to secure many ultra high frequency (UHF), not very high frequency (VHF), television licenses, leaving them flatfooted in the early television age.[83] In 1946, only 6,000 television sets were in operation, most in greater New York City where there were already three stations; by 1949, the number had increased to 3 million sets, and by 1951, had risen to 12 million.[84] There were 64 American cities with television stations, though most of them only had one.[85]
Radio continued to be the backbone of the company in the early 1950s, but it was "a strange, twilight period" where some cities had often multiple television stations which siphoned the audience from radio, while other cities such as Denver and Portland had no television stations at all. In those areas, as well as rural areas and some entire states, network radio remained the sole nationally broadcast service.[74] NBC's venerable Fred Allen saw his ratings plummet when he was pitted against upstart ABC's game show Stop The Music!; within weeks, he was dropped by longtime sponsor Ford Motor Company and was shortly gone from the scene.[86] Radio powerhouse Bob Hope's ratings plunged from a 23.8 share in 1949 to 5.4 in 1953.[87] By 1952, "death seemed imminent for network radio" in its familiar form;[88] most tellingly, the big sponsors were eager for the switch.
Gradually, as the television network took shape, radio stars began to migrate to the new medium. Many programs ran on both media while making the transition. The radio soap opera
CBS's radio programming after 1972
The retirement of Arthur Godfrey in April 1972 marked the end of long-form programming on CBS radio; programming thereafter consisted of hourly news summaries and news features, known in the 1970s as Dimension, and commentaries, including the Spectrum series that evolved into the "Point/Counterpoint" feature on the television network's
On November 17, 2017, CBS Radio was sold to Entercom, becoming the last of the original Big Four radio networks to be owned by its founding company.
Television years: Expansion and growth
CBS's involvement in television dates back to the opening of experimental station W2XAB in New York City on July 21, 1931, using the mechanical television system that had more or less been perfected in the late 1920s. Its initial broadcast featured New York mayor Jimmy Walker, Kate Smith, and George Gershwin. The station boasted the first regular seven-day broadcasting schedule in American television, broadcasting 28 hours a week.
Announcer-director Bill Schudt was the station's only paid employee; all other talent was volunteer. W2XAB pioneered program development including small-scale dramatic acts, monologues, pantomime, and the use of projection slides to simulate sets. Engineer Bill Lodge devised the first synchronized sound wave for a television station in 1932, enabling W2XAB to broadcast picture and sound on a single shortwave channel instead of the two previously needed. On November 8, 1932, W2XAB broadcast the first television coverage of presidential election returns. The station suspended operations on February 20, 1933, as monochrome television transmission standards were in flux, and in the process of changing from a mechanical to an all-electronic system. W2XAB returned to the air with an all-electronic system in 1939 from a new studio complex in Grand Central Station and a transmitter atop the Chrysler Building, broadcasting on channel 2.[93] W2XAB transmitted the first color broadcast in the United States on August 28, 1940.[94]
On June 24, 1941, W2XAB received a commercial
During the period of the USA's participation in World War II, commercial television broadcasting was reduced dramatically. Towards the end of the war, however, it began to ramp up again, with an increased level of programming evident from 1944 to 1947 on the three New York television stations which operated in those years: the local stations of NBC, CBS and DuMont. As RCA and DuMont raced to establish networks and offer upgraded programming, CBS lagged, advocating an industry-wide shift and restart to UHF for their incompatible (with black and white) color system. The FCC putting an indefinite "freeze" on television licenses that lasted until 1952 did not help matters. Only in 1950, 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 City) in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other major cities. Up to that point, CBS programming was seen on such stations as KTTV in Los Angeles, in which CBS – as a bit of insurance and to guarantee program clearance in that market – quickly purchased a 50% interest, partnering with the Los Angeles Times. CBS then sold its interest in KTTV (now the West Coast flagship station of the Fox network) and purchased outright Los Angeles pioneer station KTSL in 1950, renaming it KNXT (after CBS's existing Los Angeles radio property KNX), later to become KCBS-TV. In 1953, CBS bought pioneer Chicago television station WBKB, which had been signed on by former investor Paramount Pictures (and would again become a sister company of CBS decades later) as a commercial station in 1946, and changed that station's call sign to WBBM-TV, moving the CBS affiliation away from WGN-TV.
WCBS-TV would ultimately be the only station (as of 2013[update]) built and signed on by CBS. The rest of the stations would be acquired by CBS, either in an ownership stake or outright purchase. In television's early years, the network bought Washington, D.C. affiliate WOIC (now WUSA) in a joint venture with The Washington Post in 1950, only to sell its stake to the newspaper in 1954 due to tighter FCC ownership regulations. CBS would also temporarily return to relying on its own UHF technology by owning WXIX in Milwaukee (now CW affiliate WVTV) and WHCT in Hartford (now Univision affiliate WUVN). However, as UHF was not viable for broadcasting at the time (due to the fact that most television sets of the time were not equipped with UHF tuners), CBS decided to sell those stations off and affiliate with VHF stations WITI and WTIC-TV (now WFSB).
In Milwaukee alone, CBS has gone through several affiliation changes since 1953, when its original primary affiliate
More long-term, CBS bought stations in Philadelphia (WCAU, now owned by NBC) and St. Louis (KMOX-TV, now KMOV), but would eventually sell these stations off as well. Before buying KMOX-TV, CBS had attempted to purchase and sign on the channel 11 license in St. Louis, now KPLR-TV.[95]
CBS did attempt to sign on a station in Pittsburgh after the freeze was lifted, as it was the sixth-largest market at the time, but had just one commercial VHF station in DuMont-owned WDTV, while the rest were either on UHF (the modern-day
1945–1970: Dominance and broad appeal
The mid-1940s "talent raid" on NBC had brought over established radio stars, who became stars of CBS television programs as well. One reluctant CBS star refused to bring her radio show
CBS dominated television, now at the forefront of American entertainment and information, as it once had radio.[citation needed] In 1953, the CBS television network would make its first profit,[101] and would maintain dominance on television between 1955 and 1976.[101] By the late 1950s, the network often controlled seven or eight of the slots on the "top ten" ratings list with well-respected shows such as Route 66.
Under
This success would continue for many years, with CBS being bumped from first place only due to the rise of ABC in the mid-1970s. Perhaps because of its status as the top-rated network, CBS felt freer to gamble with controversial properties like the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and All in the Family (and its many spinoffs) during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
1971–1986: "Rural purge" and ratings success
By the end of the 1960s, CBS was very successful in
While the "rural" shows got the axe, new hits like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, The Bob Newhart Show, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Kojak, and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour took their place on the network's schedule and kept it at the top of the ratings through the early 1970s. The majority of these hits were overseen by then-East Coast vice president Alan Wagner.[105] 60 Minutes also moved to the 7:00 p.m. slot on Sundays in 1975, and became the first ever primetime television news program to enter the Nielsen Top 10 in 1978.
One of CBS's most popular shows during the period was
Silverman also first developed his strategy of
By 1982, ABC had run out of steam and NBC was in dire straits, with many failed programming efforts greenlighted by Silverman during his tenure as network president. CBS nosed ahead once more thanks to the major success of Dallas (and its spin-off Knots Landing), as well as hits in Falcon Crest, Magnum, P.I., Simon & Simon, and 60 Minutes. CBS also acquired the broadcast rights to the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in 1982, which it now broadcasts every March since. CBS bought Emmy-winning documentary producer Dennis B. Kane's production company and formed CBS/Kane Productions International. The network managed to pull out a few new hits over the next couple of years, including Kate & Allie, Newhart, Cagney & Lacey, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Murder, She Wrote. However, this resurgence was short-lived, as CBS had become mired in debt as a result of a failed takeover effort by Ted Turner, which CBS chairman Thomas Wyman successfully helped to fend off. The network sold its St. Louis owned-and-operated station KMOX-TV, and allowed the purchase of a large portion of its shares (under 25 percent) by Loew's Inc. chairman Laurence Tisch. Collaboration between Paley and Tisch led to the slow dismissal of Wyman, with Tisch taking over as chief operating officer and Paley returning as chairman.[106]
1986–2002: Tiffany Network in distress
By the end of the 1987–88 season, CBS had fallen to third place behind both ABC and NBC for the first time. In 1984, The Cosby Show and Miami Vice debuted on NBC and immediately garnered high ratings, helping NBC rise back to first place by the 1985–86 season with a slate that included several other hits such as Night Court, Family Ties, Cheers, The Golden Girls, The Facts Of Life, L.A. Law, and 227. ABC had also rebounded with hits such as Dynasty, Who's the Boss?, Hotel, Full House, Growing Pains, The Wonder Years, and Roseanne.
Some of the groundwork had been laid as CBS fell in the ratings, with hits Simon & Simon, Falcon Crest, Murder, She Wrote, Kate & Allie, and Newhart still on the schedule from the most recent resurgence, and to-be-hits
Under network president Jeff Sagansky, the network was able to earn strong ratings from new shows
Despite having success with the
The acquisition of the NFC rights, which took effect with the
The loss of the NFL, along with an ill-fated effort to court younger viewers, led to a drop in CBS's ratings. One of the affected shows was the Late Show with David Letterman, which saw its viewership decline in large part due to the affiliation switches, at times even landing in third place in its timeslot behind ABC's Nightline. As a result, NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which had previously been dominated by the Late Show, became the top-rated late-night talk show.[112] However, CBS was able to produce some hits during the mid-1990s such as The Nanny, JAG (which moved to the network from NBC), Chicago Hope, Cosby, Cybill, Touched by an Angel, and Everybody Loves Raymond.
During this time, several longtime affiliates beside the ones that were defected to Fox also defected from CBS in markets such as
During the
In 1997, CBS regained the NFL through its acquisition of the broadcast television rights to the American Football Conference (AFC), effective with the 1998 season.[118] The contract was struck shortly before the AFC's emergence as the dominant NFL conference over the NFC, spurred in part by the turnaround of the New England Patriots during the 2000s. With the help of the AFC package, CBS surpassed NBC for first place in the 1998–99 season, although it was beaten by ABC the following year. The network gained additional hits in the late 1990s and early 2000s with series such as The King of Queens, Nash Bridges, Judging Amy, Becker, and Yes, Dear.
2002–present: Return to first and Fox rivalry
Another turning point for CBS came in the summer of 2000, when it debuted the summer reality shows
During the 2000s, CBS found additional successes with a slew of police procedurals, several of which were produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. These included Cold Case, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, NCIS, and The Mentalist, along with CSI spinoffs CSI: Miami and CSI: NY. The network also featured several prominent sitcoms like Still Standing, Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Rules of Engagement, and The Big Bang Theory, as well as the reality show The Amazing Race. The network's programming slate, buoyed largely by the success of CSI, briefly led it to retake first place in the ratings from NBC during the 2002–03 season. The 2000s also saw CBS finally make ratings headway on Friday nights, a perennial weak spot for the network, with a focus toward drama series such as Ghost Whisperer and the relatively short-lived but acclaimed Joan of Arcadia.
CBS became the most watched American broadcast television network once again in the
The 2010s saw additional hits for the network, including drama series The Good Wife; police procedurals Person of Interest, Blue Bloods, Elementary, Hawaii Five-0, and NCIS spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles; reality series Undercover Boss; and sitcoms 2 Broke Girls and Mike & Molly. The Big Bang Theory, one of several sitcoms from veteran writer/producer Chuck Lorre, started off with modest ratings, but saw its viewership skyrocket, earning ratings of up to 17 million viewers per episode. It became the top-rated network sitcom in the U.S. by the 2010–11 season, as well as the second most watched U.S. television program by the 2013–14 season, when the series became the anchor of the network's Thursday lineup. Meanwhile, Two and a Half Men saw its ratings decline to respectable levels for its final four seasons following the 2011 firing of original star Charlie Sheen and the addition of Ashton Kutcher as its primary lead.
Until 2012, CBS ranked in second place among adults 18–49, but after the ratings declines Fox experienced during the 2012–13 season, CBS was able to take the top spot in the demographic, as well as in total viewership (for the fifth year in a row) by the start of 2013. At the end of the 2012–13 season, the tenth season of NCIS took the top spot among the season's most watched network programs, giving CBS its first top-rated show since the 2002–03 season, when CSI: Crime Scene Investigation led Nielsen's seasonal primetime network ratings.
The strength of CBS's 2013–14 slate led to a surplus of series on its 2014–15 schedule, with 21 series held over from the previous season along with eight new series, including moderate hits in Madam Secretary, NCIS: New Orleans, and Scorpion. The network also aired midseason hits The Odd Couple and CSI spinoff CSI: Cyber. CBS also expanded its NFL coverage through a partnership with the NFL Network to carry Thursday Night Football games during the first eight weeks of the NFL season.[120]
On September 29, 2016, National Amusements, the owner of both CBS's parent company CBS Corporation and its sister company
The two companies have also been reported as in talks to acquire
CBS television news operations
Upon becoming commercial station WCBW in 1941, the pioneer CBS television station in New York City broadcast two daily news programs, at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. weekdays, anchored by Richard Hubbell. Most of the newscasts featured Hubbell reading a script with only occasional cutaways to a map or still photograph. When Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, WCBW, usually off-the-air on Sundays to give the engineers a day off, took to the air at 8:45 p.m. that evening with an extensive special report. The national emergency even broke down the unspoken wall between CBS radio and television. WCBW executives convinced radio announcers and experts such as George Fielding Elliot and Linton Wells to come down to the station's Grand Central Station studios during the evening and to give information and commentary on the attack. Although WCBW's special report that night lasted less than 90 minutes, that special broadcast pushed the limits of live television in 1941, and opened up new possibilities for future broadcasts. As CBS wrote in a special report to the FCC, the unscheduled live news broadcast on December 7 was "unquestionably the most stimulating challenge and marked the greatest advance of any single problem faced up to that time". Additional newscasts were scheduled in the early days of the war.
In May 1942, WCBW, like almost all television stations, sharply cut back its live program schedule and canceled its newscasts, as the station temporarily suspended studio operations, resorting exclusively to the occasional broadcast of films. This was primarily because much of the staff had either joined the service or had been redeployed to war-related technical research, as well as because it was necessary to prolong the life of the cameras, which were now impossible to repair due to the lack of parts available during wartime. In May 1944, as the war began to turn in favor of the Allies, WCBW reopened its studios and resumed production of its newscasts, which were briefly anchored by Ned Calmer and then by Everett Holles.[129] After the war, WCBW, which changed its call letters to WCBS-TV in 1946, introduced expanded news programs on its schedule. These were first anchored by Milo Boulton and later by Douglas Edwards. On May 3, 1948, Edwards began anchoring CBS Television News, a regular 15-minute nightly newscast on the rudimentary CBS television network, including WCBS-TV. Airing every weeknight at 7:30 p.m., it was the first regularly scheduled, network television news program featuring an anchor; the nightly Lowell Thomas NBC radio network newscast was simulcast on television locally on NBC's WNBT (now WNBC) for a time in the early 1940s, and Hubbell, Calmer, Holles and Boulton on WCBW in the early and mid-1940s, but these were local television broadcasts seen only in the New York City area. In contrast, the NBC Television Newsreel, the NBC television network's offering at the time which premiered in February 1948, was simply film footage with voice narration to provide illustration of the stories. In 1949, CBS offered the first live television coverage of the proceedings of the United Nations General Assembly. This journalistic tour-de-force was under the direction of Edmund A. Chester, who was appointed to the post of Director for News, Special Events, and Sports at CBS Television in 1948.
In 1950, the nightly newscast was retitled Douglas Edwards with the News, and became the first news program to be broadcast on both coasts the following year, thanks to a new coaxial cable connection. As such, Edwards used the greeting "Good evening everyone, coast to coast". The broadcast was renamed the CBS Evening News when Walter Cronkite replaced Edwards in 1962.[130] Edwards remained with CBS News as anchor/reporter for various daytime television and radio news broadcasts until his retirement on April 1, 1988.
Color technology (1953–1967)
Although CBS Television was the first with a working color television system, the network lost out to RCA in 1953, in part because its color system was incompatible with existing black-and-white sets. Although RCA – then the parent company of NBC – made its color system available to CBS, the network was not interested in boosting RCA's profits, and televised only a few specials in color for the rest of the decade.
The specials included the
Beginning in 1959, The Wizard of Oz became an annual tradition on color television. It had been the success of NBC's 1955 telecast of the musical Peter Pan, which became the most watched television special of its time, that inspired CBS to telecast The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, and Aladdin.
From 1960 to 1965, the CBS television network limited its color broadcasts to only a few special presentations such as The Wizard of Oz, and only if the sponsor would pay for it. In the early 1960s, Red Skelton was the first CBS host to telecast his weekly programs in color using a converted movie studio. He tried unsuccessfully to persuade the network to use his facility for other programs, and was forced to sell it. Rival NBC was pushing for the use of color at the time. Even ABC had several color programs beginning in the fall of 1962, although those were limited due to financial and technical issues the network was going through. One particularly notable television special aired by CBS during this era was the Charles Collingwood-hosted tour of the White House with First Lady Jackie Kennedy, which was broadcast in black and white.
Beginning in 1963,
In 1965, CBS telecast a new color version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. This version, starring Lesley Ann Warren and Stuart Damon in the roles formerly played by Julie Andrews and Jon Cypher, was shot on videotape (at its Television City complex in Los Angeles) rather than being telecast live, and would become an annual tradition on the network for the next nine years.
In 1967, NBC outbid CBS for the rights to the annual telecast of The Wizard of Oz, and the film moved to NBC beginning the following year. However, in 1976, CBS reacquired the television rights to the film, with the network continuing to broadcast it through the end of 1997. CBS aired The Wizard of Oz twice in 1991, in March and again the night before Thanksgiving. Thereafter, it was broadcast the night before Thanksgiving.
By the end of the 1960s, CBS was broadcasting virtually its entire programming lineup in color.
Conglomerate
Prior to the 1960s, CBS's acquisitions, such as American Record Corporation and Hytron, had mostly related to its broadcasting business. During the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS did operate a CBS-Columbia division, which manufactured phonographs, radios, and television sets; however, the company had problems with product quality, and CBS never achieved much success in that field. In 1955, CBS purchased animation studio
During the 1960s, CBS began an effort to diversify its portfolio and looked for suitable investments. Their acquisitions eventually led to a restructuring of the corporation into various operating groups and divisions. In 1965, CBS acquired electric guitar maker
In other diversification attempts, CBS would buy and later sell a variety of other properties. This included sports teams, especially the
William Paley attempted to find the one person who could follow in his footsteps. However, numerous successors-in-waiting came and went. By the mid-1980s, investor Laurence Tisch had begun to acquire substantial holdings in CBS. Eventually, he gained Paley's confidence and, with his support, took control of CBS in 1986. Tisch's primary interest was turning profits. When CBS faltered, underperforming units were given the ax. Among the first properties to be jettisoned was the Columbia Records group, which had been part of the company since 1938. In 1986, Tisch also shut down the
Through its CBS Productions unit, the company produced a few shows for non-CBS networks, like NBC's Caroline in the City.
Columbia Records
Columbia Records was acquired by CBS in 1938. In 1962, CBS launched CBS Records International to market Columbia recordings outside of North America, where the Columbia name was controlled by other entities. In 1966, CBS Records was made a separate subsidiary of the Columbia Broadcasting System.[133] CBS sold the CBS Records Group to Sony on November 17, 1987, initiating a Japanese buying spree of American companies, including MCA, Pebble Beach Co., Rockefeller Center, and even the Empire State Building, which continued into the 1990s. The record company was rechristened as Sony Music Entertainment in 1991, as Sony had a short-term license on the CBS name.
Sony purchased its rights to the Columbia Records name outside the United States, Canada, Spain and Japan from EMI. Sony now uses Columbia Records as a label name in all countries except Japan, where Sony Records remains their flagship label. Sony acquired the Spanish rights when Sony Music merged with Bertelsmann subsidiary BMG in 2004 as Sony BMG; Sony bought out BMG's share in 2008. CBS Corporation formed a new record label named CBS Records in 2006.
Publishing
In 1967, CBS entered the publishing business by acquiring
CBS sold its book publishing businesses in 1985. The educational publishing division, which retained the Holt, Rinehart & Winston name, was sold to
CBS Musical Instruments division
Forming the CBS Musical Instruments division, the company also acquired Fender (1965–1983), Electro-Music Inc. (Leslie speakers) (1965–1980), Rogers Drums (1966–1983), Steinway pianos (1972–1985), Gemeinhardt flutes, Lyon & Healy harps (in the late 1970s), Rodgers (institutional) organs, and Gulbransen home organs. The company's last musical instrument manufacturer purchase was its 1981 acquisition of the assets of then-bankrupt ARP Instruments, a developer of electronic synthesizers.
It is widely held that the quality of Fender guitars and amplifiers declined significantly between 1965 and 1985, outraging Fender fans. Because of this, CBS Musical Instruments division executives executed a leveraged buyout in 1985, and created Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. At the same time, CBS divested itself of Rodgers, along with Steinway and Gemeinhardt, all of which were purchased by holding company Steinway Musical Properties. The other musical instrument manufacturing properties were also liquidated.
Film production
CBS made a brief, unsuccessful move into film production in the late 1960s, when they created Cinema Center Films. The studio released such films as the 1969 Steve McQueen drama The Reivers and the 1970 Albert Finney musical Scrooge. This profitless unit was shut down in 1972; the distribution rights to the Cinema Center library today rest with Paramount Pictures for home video (via CBS Home Entertainment) and theatrical release, and with CBS Television Distribution for television syndication; most other ancillary rights remain with CBS.
Ten years after Cinema Center ceased operations, in 1982, CBS tried again to break into the film industry by co-founding TriStar Pictures, a joint venture with Columbia Pictures and HBO. Despite releasing box office successes such as The Natural, Places in the Heart, and Rambo: First Blood Part II, CBS felt the studio was not making a profit, and sold its stake in TriStar to Columbia Pictures' then-corporate parent The Coca-Cola Company in 1985.[136] Today, Tristar is now under Sony Pictures Entertainment.
In 2007, CBS Corporation announced its intent to re-enter the feature film business, slowly launching CBS Films and hiring key executives in the spring of 2008 to start up the new venture. The CBS Films name had been used previously in 1953, when it was briefly used as CBS's distributor of off-network and first-run syndicated programming to local television stations in the United States and internationally.
Home video
CBS entered into the home video market when it partnered with
CBS Toys Division
The CBS Toys Division of CBS Inc. purchased Child Guidance, Creative Playthings of Framingham, Massachusetts and Hagerstown, Maryland; Gilbert; Gym-Dandy of Bossier City, Louisiana; Hubley; Ideal; Kohner; and Wonder Products of Collierville, Tennessee.[137][138]
CBS entered the video game market briefly through its acquisition of Gabriel Toys (renamed CBS Toys). It published several arcade adaptations and original titles under the name CBS Electronics for the Atari 2600 and other consoles and computers; it also produced one of the first karaoke players. CBS Electronics also distributed all Coleco-related video game products in Canada, including the ColecoVision. CBS later sold Gabriel Toys to View-Master, which eventually ended up as part of Mattel.
New owners
By the early 1990s, profits had fallen as a result of competition from cable television and video rentals, as well as the high cost of programming. About 20 former CBS affiliates switched to the rapidly rising Fox network in the mid-1990s, the first of which were reportedly KDFX in Palm Springs, California, and KECY in Yuma, Arizona, which made the switch in August 1994. Many other television markets lost their CBS affiliate for a while. The network's ratings were acceptable, but it struggled with an image of stodginess. Laurence Tisch lost interest and sought a new buyer.
Westinghouse Electric Corporation
In the mid-1990s, CBS formed an affiliate relationship with the
In response, CBS began affiliating with UHF stations in Detroit and Cleveland, namely former Fox affiliate WOIO and low-rated ethnic independent WGPR-TV (now WWJ-TV), which CBS eventually purchased. This was, however, only after CBS failed to woo WXYZ-TV and WEWS-TV, the respective longtime ABC affiliates in those markets (the latter of which had been a CBS affiliate from 1947 to 1955), to replace departing affiliates WJBK and WJW-TV. The E. W. Scripps Company actually used this situation as leverage to sign a group-wide affiliation deal with ABC that kept the network on WXYZ and WEWS.[139][140]
Included in the Scripps deal was Baltimore NBC affiliate WMAR-TV, which had been affiliated with CBS from 1948 to 1981. With this agreement, WMAR-TV was able to displace longtime ABC affiliate and Westinghouse-owned WJZ-TV, which had long been the Baltimore market's dominant station, while WMAR-TV had been in a distant third and had even nearly lost its broadcast license in 1991.[141] WJZ-TV's loss of the ABC affiliation did not sit well with Westinghouse. Even before the New World deal, the company had been seeking a group-wide affiliation deal of its own, but it accelerated the process after the Scripps–ABC agreement.[142]
In July 1994, Westinghouse signed a long-term deal to affiliate all five of its television stations, including WJZ-TV, with CBS.
On August 1, 1995, Westinghouse announced it was acquiring CBS outright for $5.4 billion;[147] the deal was completed on November 24.[148] Under the name Group W, it had been one of the major broadcasting group owners of commercial radio and television stations since 1920, and was seeking to transition from a station operator to a major media company with its purchase of CBS. Except for KUTV, which CBS sold to Four Points Media Group in 2007 and is now owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, all of the stations involved in the initial Westinghouse deal as well as WWJ-TV remain owned-and-operated stations of the network to this day.
Westinghouse's acquisition of CBS turned the combined company's
In 1997, Westinghouse acquired the
Following the Infinity purchase, operation and sales responsibilities for the CBS Radio Network were handed to Infinity, which turned management over to Westwood One, a major radio program syndicator that Infinity managed. Westwood One had previously purchased the Mutual Broadcasting System, NBC's radio networks, and the rights to use the "NBC Radio Networks" name. For a time, CBS Radio, NBC Radio Networks, and CNN's radio news services were all under the Westwood One umbrella. As of 2008[update], Westwood One continues to distribute CBS radio programming, but as a self-managed company that put itself up for sale and found a buyer for a significant amount of its stock. The same year the company purchased Infinity, Westinghouse changed its name to CBS Corporation, and its corporate headquarters were moved from Pittsburgh to New York City. To underline the change in emphasis, all non-entertainment assets were put up for sale. Another 90 radio stations were added to Infinity's portfolio in 1998, with the acquisition of American Radio Systems Corporation for $2.6 billion.
In 1999, CBS paid $2.5 billion to acquire
Viacom
By the 1990s, CBS had become a broadcasting giant. However, in 1999, entertainment conglomerate
CBS Corporation
Having assembled all the elements of a communications empire, Viacom found that the promised synergy was not there. As such, in 2005, Viacom announced it would split the company into two separately operated but commonly controlled entities,
As a result of the Viacom/CBS corporate split and other recent acquisitions, CBS (under the moniker CBS Studios) owns a massive film and television library spanning nine decades. These include acquired material from Viacom and CBS in-house productions and network programs, as well as programs produced by Paramount and others originally aired on competing networks such as ABC and NBC. Series and other material in this library include I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Twilight Zone, Hawaii Five-O (both the original and current remake), Gunsmoke, The Fugitive, The Love Boat, Little House on the Prairie (U.S. television rights only), Cheers, Becker, Family Ties, Happy Days and its spin-offs, The Brady Bunch, Star Trek, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (distribution rights on behalf of copyright holder Lucasfilm), Evening Shade, Duckman, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its spin-offs, the CBS theatrical library (including My Fair Lady and Scrooge), Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Mills Lane, and the entire Terrytoons library from 1930 forward.
Paramount Global and CBS Studios
Paramount Global is owned by National Amusements, the Sumner Redstone-owned company that controlled the original Viacom prior to the split. Paramount Home Entertainment continues to handle DVD and Blu-ray distribution for the CBS library.
In August 2019, Viacom and CBS reunited as ViacomCBS to invest in more films and television and to become a bigger player in the growing business of streaming video. The deal was completed on December 4, 2019. Paramount Global has a combined library with over 140,000 TV episodes and 3,600 film titles, including the Star Trek and Mission: Impossible franchises.[150]
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