It has been suggested that CBS Radio Network be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since January 2011.

CBS Radio, Inc.

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Radio Broadcasting
Founded	1928 (1928) (Foundation of CBS) 1997 (relaunched as Infinity Broadcasting) 2005 (relaunched as CBS Radio)
Headquarters	New York City, New York, U.S.
Area served	Nationwide
Parent	CBS Corporation
Website	cbsradio.com

CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications (which owns many of the stations that were previously owned by former CBS parent Viacom before 1997) and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country. It is currently part of CBS Corporation, which also owns the CBS radio and television networks, and jointly owns the CW Television Network.

History[link]

CBS Radio is one of the oldest units within CBS Corporation, second to the CBS Radio Network, and has been around since 1928. The CBS Radio Network, however, was launched in 1927, when CBS itself was known as United Independent Broadcasters. Columbia Records later joined in and that company was renamed the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System. In September 1927, Columbia Records sold the company to William S. Paley and in 1928, Paley streamlined the corporate name to Columbia Broadcasting System.

The company that would become CBS Radio was founded in 1972 as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation by Michael A. Wiener and Gerald Carrus, with the acquisition of KOME, an FM radio station that served the San Francisco Bay Area. It became a publicly-traded company twice, in 1986, and again in 1992.

Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which acquired CBS, Inc. in 1995, acquired Infinity Broadcasting in 1997. Westinghouse, which established modern broadcasting on November 2, 1920 with KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, would later change its name to CBS Corporation, and reorganize all of its radio properties (including its own Group W stations), as well as its outdoor advertising business, under the Infinity Broadcasting Corporation name.

In 1999, CBS Corporation was merged into Viacom. On December 14, 2005, Viacom changed its name to CBS Corporation and spun off its motion picture and cable television assets under the Viacom name. In anticipation of this, Infinity Broadcasting was reorganized as CBS Radio.

Streaming Radio[link]

Until late 2004, the stations were not allowed to stream their programs online. WCBS-AM was the first station able to stream their content over the internet, shortly followed by other news and talk stations. Company officials originally thought that there was no profit to be made from streaming.

Recent Actions[link]

In August 2006, CBS Radio announced the sale of its 15 radio stations in Cincinnati, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee; Austin, Texas; and Rochester, New York to Entercom Communications. This group deal was granted FCC approval in mid-November 2007 after it faced regulatory review and numerous challenges for over a year, and officially closed on November 30. Several other stations, most in smaller markets, have also been sold to companies like Border Media Partners and Peak Media Corporation.

On April 30, 2008, CBS Radio and AOL entered a partnership (following the dissolution of partnership between AOL and XM Satellite Radio due to the change in Internet royalty rates). The AOL Radio player powered by CBS Radio features over 200 CBS Radio stations, along with over 200 AOL Radio stations, combining two of the largest online radio networks and giving millions of listeners unlimited and free access to a diverse array of music and programming including news, sports and talk. These stations have been folded into the AOL Radio application seen in the iTunes App Store for availability on the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad.

On July 31, 2008; CBS Radio has announced that it will sell 50 more radio stations in 12 mid-size markets to increase its focus on stations in large markets such as Greater Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago metropolitan area, Dallas/Fort Worth, New York City, San Francisco Bay Area, and Greater Philadelphia. It is reported that KMOX in St. Louis and KDKA in Pittsburgh are not included in the 50 radio station sale,^[1] however some companies like RBC Capital Markets said CBS Radio is a "melting icecube" and that CBS Corporation would be better off selling the entire radio unit rather than "waiting a couple of years and selling the rest for less."

On December 15, 2008, CBS Radio and Clear Channel Communications reached an agreement to swap seven stations. In this deal, Clear Channel acquired WQSR in Baltimore, Maryland, KBKS in Seattle, Washington, KLTH and KXJM in Portland, Oregon, and KQJK in Sacramento, California; and CBS Radio would get KHMX and KLOL in Houston, Texas. The swap was among the first examples of CBS Radio's strategy to divest its mid-sized market stations and focus on the larger markets.^[2] The deal closed on April 1, 2009.

On December 20, 2008, CBS Radio announced that it would sell the entire Denver cluster (this includes three radio stations) to Wilks Broadcasting for $19.5 Million. This is another example of CBS Radio's strategy to divest its mid-sized market stations and focus on the larger markets. The stations included in the sale are KIMN, KWLI, and KXKL.^[3]

In February 2009, with the rise of Internet royalty rates, Yahoo! made a deal with CBS Radio to power LAUNCHcast.

On August 10, 2009, CBS Radio announced that it would sell the entire Portland cluster (this includes four radio stations) to Alpha Broadcasting for $40 Million. The stations included in the sale are KCMD, KINK, KUFO, and KUPL-FM.^[4]

On February 4, 2010, all CBS Radio stations, as well as AOL Radio and Yahoo! Music Radio have restricted all non U.S. listeners from streaming online content. CBS Radio redirects to sister property Last.fm.^[5]

As of October, 2011, AOL Radio is no longer a part of radio.com, having switched to Slacker Radio.

Howard Stern and Free FM[link]

From 1995 to 2005, Infinity/CBS Radio was the home of controversial and top-rated talk show host Howard Stern, who left due to increasing FCC and station censorship. In January 2006, rock star David Lee Roth, Rover's Morning Glory, and talk show host Adam Carolla replaced Stern in most major radio markets, and CBS Radio launched its new "Free FM" hot talk format in many of these markets. Roth's show was cancelled four months later and CBS Radio announced that Opie and Anthony of XM Radio would replace Roth on the stations that carried him, despite the irony that the two were fired after the sex act controversy inside of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Adam Carolla's show was also later canceled.

On February 28, 2006, CBS Radio announced it had filed a lawsuit against Stern, his agent Don Buchwald, and Sirius, arguing that Stern promoted Sirius "to enrich himself unfairly."^[6] It also claimed that Stern "repeatedly and willfully" breached his contract with CBS, "misappropriated millions of dollars worth [of airtime]" for his own benefit and "fraudulently concealed" his performance-related interests in Sirius stock. The suit, filed in New York State Court, sought compensatory and punitive damages. Stern anticipated the suit, and earlier that day, prior to CBS' announcement, held a press conference, discussing how CBS added to the media attention, even booking him for appearances on Late Show with David Letterman and 60 Minutes. "I made them millions of dollars," Stern argued. "If I was hurting them, why did they keep me on the air for fourteen months? How can you have it both ways?"^[7] When a settlement was announced on May 26, 2006, Sirius gained exclusive rights to Stern's back catalogue of radio broadcasts at WXRK from November 1995 to December 2005, totalling almost 23,000 hours.^[8] The rights, costing Sirius approximately $2 million, equates to approximately $87 per-hour of tape.^[9]

As of 2009^[update], the Free FM branding has been discontinued in all markets, and no former Free FM station continues to have a hot talk format.

Jack FM[link]

CBS Radio owns the majority of stations in the United States that broadcast the Jack FM format, a radio format that incorporates all types of popular music from the mid-50s to the present. These include stations in Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle, Minneapolis and many other cities. New York and Houston had Jack FM stations, too; the New York City station, WCBS-FM has reverted back to its traditional oldies format, and Jack (which has been renamed ToNY) is now carried on its HD2 subchannel.

Major League Baseball[link]

CBS Radio is the largest broadcaster of local Major League Baseball broadcasts. In 2005 and 2007 respectively, CBS dropped the St. Louis Cardinals from KMOX and the Pittsburgh Pirates from KDKA, ending two long relationships between the teams and their flagship stations. However, KMOX reacquired the Cardinals' broadcast rights in 2011, and KDKA's FM sister all-sports station acquired the Pirates' broadcast rights in 2012, in addition to New York Yankees games being renewed on WCBS-AM after the conclusion of the 2011 season.

CBS's WFAN is the flagship station of the New York Mets and WSCR is the flagship station of the Chicago White Sox. In Philadelphia, WPHT, a frequency that had been the long time home of the Philadelphia Phillies before parting ways after the 2001 season, reacquired the team's broadcast rights in 2005. As of 2012 those games are now simulcast on sister station WIP-FM . KRLD-FM in Dallas was the flagship station for the Texas Rangers before the 2011 season.

All-News Radio Stations[link]

CBS Radio operates nearly all of the all-news radio stations in the United States. The full list includes KCBS (AM) in San Francisco, KNX (AM) in Los Angeles, KRLD (AM) in Dallas, WBBM (AM) in Chicago, WWJ (AM) in Detroit, KYW (AM) in Philadelphia, WCBS (AM) and WINS (AM) in New York, and WBZ (AM) in Boston. There are only five other all-news stations in the United States that are not owned by CBS Radio.

See also[link]

• List of broadcast stations owned by CBS Radio
• Westinghouse Broadcasting (Group W), the broadcasting unit of Westinghouse.
• Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, the company before its reorganization by Westinghouse.
• Last.fm

References[link]

External links[link]

• CBS Radio official website

CBS Broadcasting Inc. (CBS)

Type	Broadcast radio network and television network
Branding	"Only CBS"
Country	United States
First air date	January 27, 1927 (as United Independent Broadcasters)
Availability	National
Founded	by William S. Paley
Motto	America's Most Watched Network
Slogan	Only CBS
Headquarters	CBS Building New York City
Owner	Independent (1927–1995) Westinghouse Electric (renamed CBS Corp. in 1997) (1995–2000) Viacom (2000–2005) CBS Corporation (2006–present)
Key people	Leslie Moonves, Chairman of CBS, Nancy Tellem (President of CBS Network Television Entertainment)
Launch date	September 18, 1927 (radio) July 1, 1941 (television)
Former names	United Independent Broadcasters (1927) Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System (1927–1928) Columbia Broadcasting System (1928–1995 in official usage)
Picture format	480i (16:9 SDTV) 720p 1080i (HDTV)
Callsigns	CBS
Callsign meaning	Columbia Broadcasting System (former legal name)
Affiliates	Lists: By state or By DMA
Official website	CBS.com

CBS Broadcasting Inc. (CBS) is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. It is the second largest broadcaster in the world behind the BBC. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of the company's logo. It has also been called the "Tiffany Network," which alludes to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of its founder William S. Paley (1901–90).^[1] It can also refer to some of CBS's first demonstrations of color television, which were held in a former Tiffany & Co. building in New York City in 1950,^[2] thus earning it the name "Color broadcasting system" back when such a feat was innovative.^{[citation needed]}

The network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc., a collection of 16 radio stations that was bought by William S. Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System.^[3] Under Paley's guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States and then one of the big three American broadcast television networks. In 1974, CBS dropped its full name and became known simply as CBS, Inc. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation acquired the network in 1995 and eventually adopted the name of the company it had bought to become CBS Corporation. In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, which coincidentally had begun as a spin-off of CBS in 1971. In late 2005, Viacom split itself and reestablished CBS Corporation with the CBS television network at its core. CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, its parent.

History[link]

Radio years[link]

The origins of CBS date back to January 27, 1927, with the creation of the "United Independent Broadcasters" network in Chicago by New York talent-agent Arthur Judson. The fledgling network soon needed additional investors though, and the Columbia Phonograph Company, manufacturers of Columbia Records, rescued it in April 1927; as a result, the network was renamed "Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System." Columbia Phonographic went on the air on September 18, 1927, with a presentation by the Howard Barlow Orchestra^[4] from flagship station WOR in Newark, New Jersey, and fifteen affiliates.^[5]

Operational costs were steep, particularly the payments to AT&T for use of its land lines, and by the end of 1927, Columbia Phonograph wanted out.^[6] 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 Louchenheim. None of the three was 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."^[6] 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.^[7] By September 1928, Paley bought out the Louchenheim share of CBS and became its majority owner with 51% of the business.^[8]

Turnaround: Paley's first year[link]

During Louchenheim's brief regime, Columbia paid $410,000 to A.H. Grebe's Atlantic Broadcasting Company for a small Brooklyn station, WABC, which would become the network's flagship station. WABC was quickly upgraded, and the signal relocated to a stronger frequency, 860 kHz.^[9] The physical plant was relocated also—to Steinway Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan. It was where much of CBS's programming originated. Other owned-and-operated stations were KNX Los Angeles, KCBS San Francisco (originally KQW), WBBM Chicago, WCAU Philadelphia, WJSV Washington, D.C. (later WTOP, which moved to the FM dial in 2005; the AM facility today is WFED, also a secondary CBS affiliate), WWNY St. Louis, and WCCO Minneapolis. These remain the core affiliates of the CBS Radio Network today, with WCBS still the flagship, and all except WTOP and WFED (both Hubbard Broadcasting properties) owned by CBS Radio. By the turn of 1929, the network could boast to sponsors of having 47 affiliates.^[10]

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.^[11] The deal came to fruition in September 1929: Paramount got 49 percent of CBS in return for a block of its stock worth $3,800,000 at the time.^[7] The agreement specified that Paramount would buy that same stock back by March 1, 1932 for a flat $5,000,000, provided CBS had earned $2,000,000 during 1931 and 1932.^[11] For a brief time there was talk that the network might be renamed "Paramount Radio," but it only lasted a month—the 1929 stock market crash sent all stock value tumbling. It galvanized Paley and his troops, though: they "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."^[11] The near-bankrupt movie studio sold its CBS shares back to CBS in 1932; Paramount was in trouble, CBS was not.^[12]

In the first year of Paley's watch, CBS's gross earnings more than tripled, going from $1,400,000 to $4,700,000.^[13]

Paley's management saw a twentyfold increase in gross income in his first decade

Much of the increase was a result of Paley's second upgrade to the CBS business plan—improved affiliate relations. There were two types of program at the time: sponsored and sustaining, i.e., unsponsored. Rival NBC paid affiliates for every sponsored show they carried and charged them for every sustaining show they ran.^[14] It was onerous for small and medium stations, and resulted in both unhappy affiliates and limited carriage of sustaining programs. Paley had a different idea, designed to get CBS programs emanating from as many radio sets as possible:^[15] he would give the sustaining programs away for free, provided the station would run every sponsored show, and accept CBS's check for doing so.^[16] CBS soon had more affiliates than either NBC Red or NBC Blue.^[17]

Paley was a man who valued style and taste,^[18] and in 1929, once he had his affiliates happy and his company's creditworthiness on the mend, he relocated his concern to sleek, new 485 Madison Avenue, the "heart of the advertising community, right where Paley wanted his company to be"^[19] and where CBS would stay until its move to Black Rock in 1965. When his new landlords expressed skepticism about the network and its fly-by-night reputation, Paley overcame their qualms by purchasing a lease for $1,500,000.^[19]

1930s: CBS takes on the Red and the Blue[link]

Wholesome Kate Smith, Paley's choice for La Palina Hour, was unthreatening to home and hearth

Since NBC was the broadcast arm of radio set manufacturer RCA, its chief David Sarnoff approached his decisions as both a broadcaster and as a hardware executive; NBC's affiliates had the latest RCA equipment, and were often the best-established stations, or were on "clear channel" frequencies. Yet Sarnoff's affiliates were mistrustful of him. Paley had no such split loyalties: his—and his affiliates'—success rose and fell with the quality of CBS programming.^[15]

Paley had an innate, pitch-perfect, sense of entertainment, "a gift of the gods, an ear totally pure,"^[20] wrote David Halberstam. "[H]e 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."^[21] As the 1930s loomed, Paley set about building the CBS talent stable. The network became the home of many popular musical and comedy stars, among them Jack Benny, ("Your Canada Dry Humorist"), Al Jolson, George Burns & Gracie Allen, and Kate Smith, whom Paley personally selected for his family's La Palina Hour because she was not the type of woman to provoke jealousy in American wives.^[22] When, on a mid-ocean voyage, Paley heard a phonograph record of a young unknown crooner, he rushed to the ship's radio room and "cabled" New York to sign Bing Crosby immediately to a contract for a daily radio show.^[23]

While the CBS prime-time 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 time salesmen recognized early on that this intimate connection could be a bonanza for advertisers of female-interest products.^[24] 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 box-top from sponsor Forhan's toothpaste.^[25] The low-key murmuring of smooth-voiced Tony Wons, backed by a tender violin, "made him a soul mate to millions of women"^[26] 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."^[27] The most popular radio-friend of all was M. Sayle Taylor, The Voice Of Experience, though his name was never uttered on air.^[27] 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 on The Voice Of Experience.^[28]

When Charlie Chaplin finally allowed the world to hear his voice after twenty years of pantomime, he chose CBS air to do it on

As the decade progressed, a new genre joined the daytime lineup: serial dramas—soap operas, so named for the products that sponsored them, by way of the ad agencies that actually produced them. Although the form, usually in quarter-hour episodes, proliferated widely in the middle and late 1930s, they all had the same basic premise: that characters "fell into two categories: 1) those in trouble and 2) those who helped people in trouble. The helping-hand figures were usually older."^[29] At CBS, Just Plain Bill brought human insight and Anacin pain reliever into households; Your Family and Mine came courtesy of Sealtest Dairy products; Bachelor's Children first hawked Old Dutch Cleanser, then Wonder Bread; Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories was sponsored by Spry Vegetable Shortening. Our Gal Sunday (Anacin again), The Romance of Helen Trent (Angélus cosmetics), Big Sister (Rinso laundry soap) and many others filled the daytime ether.^[30]

CBS west coast headquarters reflected its industry stature while hosting its top Hollywood talent

Thanks to its daytime and primetime schedules, CBS prospered in the 1930s. In 1935, gross sales were $19,300,000, yielding a profit of $2,270,000.^[31] By 1937, the network took in $28,700,000 and had 114 affiliates,^[15] almost all of which cleared 100% of network-fed programming, thus keeping ratings, and revenue, high. In 1938, CBS even acquired the American Record Corporation, parent of its onetime investor Columbia Records.^[32]

In 1938, NBC and CBS each opened studios in Hollywood to attract movieland's top talent to their networks – NBC at Radio City on Sunset and Vine, CBS two blocks away at Columbia Square.^[33]

CBS launches an independent news division[link]

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 Ohio State Penitentiary; for CBS, it was "a shocking journalistic coup."^[34] Yet as late as 1934, there was still no regularly scheduled newscast on network radio: "Most sponsors did not want network news programming; those that did were inclined to expect veto rights over it."^[35] There had been a longstanding wariness between radio and the newspapers as well; the papers had rightly concluded that the upstart radio business would compete with them on two counts—advertising dollars and news coverage. By 1933, they fought back, many no longer publishing radio schedules for readers' convenience, or allowing "their" news to be read on the air for radio's profit.^[36] Radio, in turn, pushed back when urban department stores, newspapers' largest advertisers and themselves owners of many radio stations, threatened to withhold their ads from print.^[37] A short-lived attempted truce in 1933 even saw the papers proposing that radio be forbidden from running news before 9:30 am, and then only after 9:00 pm—and that no news story could air until it was twelve hours old.^[38]

CBS News engineers prepare a remote: Justice Hugo Black's 1937 denial of Klan ties

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."^[39] He did it through sustaining programming like the New York Philharmonic, the thoughtful drama of Norman Corwin—and an in-house news division to gather and present news, free of fickle suppliers like newspapers and wire services.^[39] In the fall of 1934, CBS launched its independent news division, shaped in its first years by Paley's vice-president, former The New York Times man Ed Klauber, and news director Paul White. Since there was no blueprint or precedent for real-time news coverage, early efforts of the new division used the short-wave link-up CBS had been using for five years^[40] to bring live feeds of European events to its American air.

A key early hire was Edward R. Murrow in 1935; his first corporate title was Director of Talks. He was mentored in microphone technique by Robert Trout, the lone full-timer of the News Division, and quickly found himself in a growing rivalry with boss White.^[41] Murrow was glad to "leave the hothouse atmosphere of the New York office behind"^[42] when he was dispatched to London as CBS's European Director in 1937, a time when the growing Hitler menace underscored the need for a robust European Bureau. Halberstam described Murrow in London as "the right man in the right place in the right era."^[43] Murrow began assembling the staff of broadcast journalists—including William L. Shirer, Charles Collingwood and Eric Sevareid—who would become known as "Murrow's Boys." They were "in [Murrow's] own image, sartorially impeccable, literate, often liberal, and prima donnas all."^[44] They covered history in the making, and sometimes made it themselves: on March 12, 1938, Hitler boldly annexed nearby Austria and Murrow and Boys quickly assembled coverage with Shirer in London, Edgar Ansel Mowrer in Paris, Pierre Huss in Berlin, Frank Gervasi in Rome and Trout in New York.^[45] The News Round-Up format was born and is still ubiquitous today in broadcast news.

Murrow's nightly reports from the rooftops during the dark days of the London Blitz galvanized American listeners: even before Pearl Harbor, the conflict became "the story of the survival of Western civilization, the most heroic of all possible wars and stories. He was indeed reporting on the survival of the English-speaking peoples."^[46] With his "manly, tormented voice,"^[47] Murrow contained and mastered the panic and danger he felt, thereby communicating it all the more effectively to his audience.^[47] Using his trademark self-reference "This reporter,"^[48] he did not so much report news as interpret it, combining simplicity of expression with subtlety of nuance.^[47] Murrow himself said he tried "to describe things in terms that make sense to the truck driver without insulting the intelligence of the professor."^[47] When he returned home for a visit late in 1941, Paley threw an "extraordinarily elaborate reception"^[49] for him at the Waldorf-Astoria. Of course, its goal was more than just honoring CBS's latest "star"—it was an announcement to the world that Mr. Paley's network was finally more than just a pipeline carrying other people's programming: it was now a cultural force in its own right.^[50]

Once 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."^[51] 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, taking on Senator Joseph McCarthy first, then eventually William S. Paley himself,^[52] and with a foe that formidable, even the vast Murrow account would soon run dry.

[edit] Panic: The War of the Worlds radio broadcast

Enfant terrible Orson Welles's "Hallowe'en joke" frightened the country and snared a sponsor

On October 30, 1938, CBS gained a taste of infamy when Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. Its unique format, a contemporary version of the story in the form of faux news broadcasts, had many CBS listeners panicked into believing invaders from Mars were actually devastating Grover's Mill, New Jersey, despite three disclaimers during the broadcast that it was a work of fiction. The flood of publicity after the broadcast had two effects: an FCC ban on faux news bulletins within dramatic programming, and sponsorship for Mercury Theatre on the Air—the former sustaining program became The Campbell Playhouse to sell soup.^[53] Welles, for his part, summarized the episode as "the Mercury Theater's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying 'Boo!'"^[54]

CBS recruits Edmund A. Chester[link]

Before the onset of World War II, CBS recruited Edmund A. Chester from his position as Bureau Chief for Latin America at Associated Press to serve as Director of Latin American Relations and Director of Short Wave Broadcasts for the CBS radio network (1940). In this capacity, Mr. Chester coordinated the development of the Network of the Americas (La Cadena de las Americas) with the Department of State, the Office for Inter-American Affairs (as chaired by Nelson Rockefeller) and Voice of America. This network provided vital news and cultural programming throughout South America and Central America during the crucial World War II era and fostered diplomatic relations between the United States of America and the less developed nations of the continent. It featured such popular radio broadcasts as Viva América^[55] which showcased leading musical talent from both North and South America accompanied by the CBS Pan American Orchestra under the musical direction of Alfredo Antonini. The post war era also marked the beginning of CBS's dominance in the field of radio as well.^[56]

1940s: Zenith of network radio[link]

As 1939 wound down, Bill Paley announced that 1940 would "be the greatest year in the history of radio in the United States."^[57] He was right—times ten: the decade of the 1940s would indeed be the apogee of network radio by every gauge. Nearly 100% of 1939's advertisers renewed their contracts for 1940; manufacturers of farm tractors made radios standard equipment on their machines.^[58] Wartime rationing of paper limited the size of newspapers—and hence advertisers—and when papers turned them away, they migrated to radio sponsorship.^[59] A 1942 act of Congress made advertising expenses a tax benefit^[59] and that sent even automobile and tire manufacturers—who had no products to sell since they had been converted to war production—scurrying to sponsor symphony orchestras and serious drama on radio.^[60] In 1940, only one-third of radio programs were sponsored, while two-thirds were sustaining; by mid-decade, the statistics had swapped—now two out of three shows had cash-paying sponsors and only one-third were sustaining.^[61]

The CBS of the 1940s was vastly different from that of the early days; many of the old guard veterans had died, retired or moved on.^[62] No change was greater than that in Paley himself: he 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 three hundred suits, one hundred shirts and had special racks for a hundred neckties.^[63]

Dr. Frank Stanton, second only to Paley in his impact on CBS, president 1946–1971