Word: sarnoffs
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Thirty years ago, over cornucopia-shaped Radiolas, Americans in 25 cities heard the first peep out of the National Broadcasting Co., created by RCA's David Sarnoff to sell more of what he first envisioned as a "radio music box." Last week, with a $350,000 birthday party in Miami, NBC proudly surveyed what Sarnoff had wrought. It had grown into a giant with 207 TV and 188 radio affiliates, yearly net revenue of $159 million, 5,500 employees and 35 vice presidents,*and the cachet of being sued by the U.S. as a monopoly...
...celebrate it all, NBC kept Cadillac motorcades flowing between the airport and the Americana until they filled its 475 rooms with some 700 guests, including so many celebrities that oglers hardly had eyes for the lobby's live orchids, alligators and waterfalls. By the time Robert Sarnoff got to the main business, his convention speech, the clock ticked toward midnight, Gina was distractingly cuddling with her husband at one of the main tables, and a spectator was heard to grumble, "Here comes the late late speech...
...staking its future, and a combined RCA-NBC investment of possibly as much as $75 million, on the belief that the U.S public will switch to color television. To 500 station owners and executives affiliated with NBC and thus involved-not all of them happily-in its color plunge, Sarnoff insisted that black-and-white TV is slack ing off and color is "the booster charge for our fourth decade." With the kind of optimism that helped his immigrant father become one of the great U.S. success stories, Bobby Sarnoff professed to see a pleasant sight. "At our 60th anniversary...
...adjusting to reality, called a press conference to announce the news. Later he said: "The sponsors loved the show. I've never had a flop. I've never lost a sponsor in my life. I've been on the air 29 years. I said to Bobby Sarnoff, the president of NBC, I says 'Bobby, you knew from the beginning I didn't want to go back to small time. I never asked to do this show.''' In the true show-must-go-on spirit, ex-Hoofer Winchell went on as scheduled...
Parlor Carnival. "When the chips were down, the networks lived in their narrow, narrow world" of crass commercialism, cried Critic Gould, who appealed to NBC Boss David Sarnoff, CBS Chairman Bill Paley and ABC President Leonard Goldenson to "search their consciences" and "have a long hard look at their operations...