- For the Dutch statistical office CBS, see Statistics
Netherlands.
CBS Broadcasting, Inc. is a major radio and television network in the United States. CBS was one of
the three commercial television networks that dominated
broadcasting in the United States before the rise of cable
television. In the days of radio, it grew to acquire one of its original founders, Columbia Records, which it sold many years later. Viacom, itself
founded by CBS, owns the network today. The term CBS originally stood for
Columbia Broadcasting System.
Les Moonves is Chairman of
CBS and vice-chairman of parent Viacom. Prior to 1998 he was President of CBS Entertainment.
CBS unveiled its eye logo on October 17,
1951. Designed by William Golden, and first drawn by graphic artist Kurt Weiss, it made its broadcasting debut on
October 20, 1951. The CBS eye is now an
American icon. The symbol has not been re-designed in its 50 year history.
The network was the second channel out of three major networks to transition to color; most of the channel did so in the fall
of 1965.
History
Early years
What became CBS was founded as The "Columbia Broadcasting System" in 1927 as a joint
venture by Columbia Records and New York City talent agent Arthur Judson. It originally went on the air on September 18, 1927 as The Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System with 47 radio stations.
In November of 1928, Columbia paid
$390,000 to A.H. Grebe's Atlantic
Broadcasting Company for what would become its New York
flagship station, WABC, which moved to a clear channel frequency, 860 kHz, on November 8. WABC would finally become WCBS on November 3,
1946 and move to its present location at 880 kHz. (The classic CBS owned-and-operated
station lineup from the late 1930s through the 1980s consisted of WCBS New York, KNX Los Angeles, WBBM Chicago,
WTOP Washington, KMOX St. Louis, and WCCO Minneapolis.)
This radio network lost money in its first year, and on January 18, 1929 Columbia Records sold out its interests in the radio network to a group of private investors for
US$400,000, headed by William S. Paley, a Philadelphia cigar
manufacturer. The radio network was renamed The Columbia Broadcasting System. For the next nine years Columbia Records and CBS were independent unrelated companies.
This third radio network soon had more affiliates than either of the NBC networks, though
the signals were weaker than NBC Red. (Ironically, the radio network now called "NBC" is owned by Westwood One, the operations of which are conducted under a management contract by Viacom. Although Viacom now owns many of the original NBC Red Network radio stations, the
current "NBC Radio" is not related to the original NBC radio networks.)
Meanwhile, the core CBS Radio Network exists to this day, primarily providing national news to stations such as flagship WCBS,
WBBM and KNX, as well as features such as "The Osgood File" and "Dan Rather Reporting."
Founder Paley saw an opportunity to win audiences through news programming, and spent substantial amounts of money to achieve
dominance in that area. He hired Edward R. Murrow as "Director of
Talks" as part of this effort. Together with William L. Shirer,
Murrow practically invented broadcast journalism as we know it today.
Expansion and businesses
In 1938 radio was a major force in entertainment while the record industry was still in
the doldrums from the Great Depression, and CBS purchased its
former parent company Columbia Records.
CBS first broadcast television in 1939, with 1 hour of programing per day in New York City. CBS made the first color broadcasts in 1941, but using technology incompatible with existing black-and-white television. This technology was rejected by the
FCC a few years later in favor of
a competing color television standard developed by RCA. Television would remain a minor part
of CBS until after World War II.
Under the leadership of Paley and Frank Stanton, CBS was known for its
strong, distinctive standards of branding and graphic design. Many of the hallmarks of this design live on today, such as CBS Television's unblinking eye
logo (designed by William
Golden and introduced in 1951), while others have gone by the wayside. (For example, in
the Paley/Stanton era, it would never have been acceptable to use the CBS television eye in association with a CBS radio
station or service, whereas today their eye logo is used for everything.) One well-known example of CBS's graphic-design
particularity: on all official CBS letterhead, a tiny dot (at most a point in diameter) was pre-printed to indicate to a secretary where the typewriter carriage should be
positioned for the salutation of a letter. (Elements of the CBS eye logo later inspired the logo for Lew Grade's British television company, ATV.)
From the 1940s until the 1970s, CBS was
considered the most prestigious of the three major television networks and as a result was known as the Tiffany network. Much of the success for this is attributable to the hard-charging CBS
network president, James T. Aubrey, Jr., who served from
1959 to 1965. CBS's dominance was broken in the
1970s by ABC, although CBS retook the top ratings spot from 1979 to 1984 and again during periods in
the early 1990s and 2000s.
In 1982, CBS teamed up with Columbia Pictures and HBO to form Tri-Star Pictures.
In 1988, CBS sold the CBS Records Group (including the venerable Columbia label) to
Sony, which renamed the group Sony Music Entertainment in 1991. The company's corporate
name had already been shortened to "CBS Inc." in 1974.
CBS has a unique tradition of always recording its dramas and sitcoms on film, even after most companies went to
videotape.
New owners
By the early 1990s, profits had fallen as a result of competition from cable companies videorentals, and the high cost of
programming. In 1995 Westinghouse
Electric Corporation acquired CBS for $5.4 billion. An industrial giant for much of the 20th century, Westinghouse sought to
transform itself into a major media company with its purchase of CBS. It continued its expansion in 1997 with the $4.9-billion
purchase of Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, one of the largest owners of radio stations in the United States (second only to
Clear Channel Communications). Also that year Westinghouse acquired two
television channels, The Nashville Network (TNN) and
Country Music Television (CMT)
In late 1997 Westinghouse changed its name to CBS Corporation and began to sell all of its non-entertainment assets. The new
company moved its corporate headquarters from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to New York City. In 1998 CBS added to its broadcasting
empire by paying about $2.6 billion to acquire American Radio Systems Corporation, a company that owned more than 90 radio
stations. A year later CBS paid $2.5 billion to acquire King World Productions, a television syndication company which programs include The Oprah Winfrey Show and Wheel of Fortune. By 1999 CBS Corporation had shed the last of the
industrial businesses of the old Westinghouse.
In 1999 entertainment conglomerate Viacom, Inc., once part of the CBS television network, announced its intention to acquire
CBS Corporation in a deal valued at $37 billion. The merger was completed in 2000 and made the combined firm the second largest
entertainment company in the world.
It was estimated in 2003 that CBS is viewable by 96.98% of all households, reaching
103,421,270 houses in the United States. CBS has 204 VHF and UHF owned-and-operated or affiliate stations in the U.S. and U.S.
possessions.
Scandals
In 2004 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed a record $550,000 fine on CBS for its
broadcast of a Super Bowl half-time show in which singer Janet Jackson's breast was exposed. It was the largest fine ever for a violation
of federal decency laws. Following the incident CBS apologized to its viewers and denied foreknowledge of the event which was
broadcast live.
CBS suffered another embarrassment on September 8 of the same year, when
the network aired a controversial episode of its popular newsmagazine,
60 Minutes, which questioned President George W. Bush's service in the National
Guard. Later, it was revealed that the documents that CBS used were forged. In
January of 2005, CBS fired 4 people because of their connection to the scandal. CBS Evening News anchor and 60 Minutes reporter Dan Rather resigned prior to this announcement, though he claimed that the decision was made before the
report.
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