overview
ABC, SBS, BBC
Advance
Annenberg
AOL
APN
Astors
Aust Networks
Beaverbrook
Bertelsmann
Black
Cox
Disney
DMG
Elsevier
Fairfax
Financial Press
Fleet Street
Hearst
Liberty
Maxwell
News & Murdoch
New Yorker
NY Times
Packer
Sony
Thomson
Time Warner
Tribune
US Networks
Viacom
Vivendi
W Post
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US Networks
[Under
Development]
Paley, Stanton and
CBS
CBS is now part
of the Viacom empire, described on a separate page of this
profile.
William Paley stars in Sally Bedell Smith's breathless In
All His Glory: The Legendary Tycoon & His Brilliant
Circle (New York, Simon & Schuster 90) - enough
said - and the less awe-struck Empire: William S Paley
& The Making of CBS (New York, St Martins 87) by
Lewis Paper. The Sisters: Babe Mortimer Paley, Betsey
Roosevelt Whitney & Minnie Astor Fosburgh: The Life
& Times of the Fabulous Cushing Sisters (New York,
Random 92) by David Grafton offers another perspective.
David Halberstam's The Powers That Be (New York,
Knopf 79) is a far more intelligent picture of the Washington
Post, CBS, New York Times and LA
Times at the peak of the 'television age'.
Ken Auletta's Three Blind Mice: How The Television
Networks Lost Their Way (New York, Random House 91)
gives a picture of 'old media in crisis' as the businesses
and consumers first started to head onto the information
highway. It's deeper and more original than the
disappointing collection of profiles in his The
Highwaymen - Warriors of the Information Superhighway
(New York, Random House 97).
Sarnoff and NBC
NBC, for several
generations the leading US radio and television
broadcaster, reflected the vision of RCA executive David
Sarnoff - a strange mix of technocrat, tireless
self-promoter and cash register. Kenneth Bilby's The
General: David Sarnoff and the Rise of the Communications
Industry (New York, Columbia Uni Press 91) offers an
introduction to Sarnoff's life and times.
It's more nuanced than Eugene Lyons' David Sarnoff (New
York, Harper & Row 66) and Carl Dreher's Sarnoff:
An American Success (New York, Quadrangle 77). Tom
Lewis' Empire of the Air (New York, Harper Collins
91) offers a wider picture.
NBC was formed by Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in
1926 after parent General Electric decided that it could
maximise profits by producing the content, the broadcasts,
the transmitters and the receivers. Sounds like Microsoft
circa 1998. GE was forced to divest RCA (and thus NBC) in
1932. ABC, RCA's 'second network', was spun off a few
years later. NBC started US commercial television
broadcasts in 1941. In 1986 RCA - by then a struggling
conglomerate - was swallowed by GE.
For a view of life in front of the camera Gwenda Blair's
breathless Almost Golden: Jessica Savitch & The
Selling of Television News (New York, Simon &
Schuster 88), Robert Goldberg's Anchors: Brokaw,
Jennings & the Evening News (New York, Carol 90)
and
Program executive Brandon Tartikoff's The Last Great
Ride: NBC Television (New York, 92) is
self-celebratory but provides a view from inside the belly
of the beast. Grant Tinker's Tinker In Television: From
General Sarnoff To General Electric (New York, Simon
& Schuster 94) is less pacy.
ABC
ABC was initially
spun off from the NBC network to placate Federal
Communications Commission criticisms. In the 80s it was
swallowed by regional broadcaster Capital Cities and then
by Disney, described on a separate page of this profile.
Chief executive Leonard Goldenson's Beating the Odds:
The Untold Story Behind the Rise of ABC (New York,
Scribner 91) offers an account of the television rating
wars.
DuMont
The DuMont
network, dead and buried for 40 years, has a memorial site.
Gary Hess' An Historical Study of the DuMont Television
Network (New York, Ayer 79) reflects its origin as a
doctoral thesis: worthy but hardly the stuff of which
dreams are made. We recommend David Halberstam's The
Fifties (New York, Villard )
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