The
son of an Eastern European Jewish immigrant to Chicago who’d started a
successful cigar company, William S. Paley was, by 1928, a young man looking to
make a mark in a young industry, broadcasting.
By 1938, Paley was on the cover of Time Magazine |
He’d
received a million dollars worth of stock in the Congress Cigar Company, and
wanted to use part of it to buy a controlling interest in New York-based UIB,
the United Independent Broadcasters, a rival to the industry leader, NBC. But
he couldn’t do that without his father’s approval.
“After
thinking it over, Sam told his son that he approved of the UIB purchase, that
Bill should use $400,000 of his stock funds to buy (Jerome) Louchheim’s
interest, and that the family would contribute another $100,000,” wrote Lewis
J. Paper in his Paley biography Empire.
“Paley was delighted and surprised, but most of all surprised. He had convinced
himself that Sam would never release him from the cigar business, and he could
not resist asking his father why he had yielded. Sam replied that it was all a
matter of good business sense. ‘Well,’ he told Bill, ‘if you succeed, it’ll be
a bigger business than what you’re in now; and if you don’t succeed,’ his
father added, ‘you will have had a lot of experience which might be very useful
in the cigar business and to me, and so, on balance, I think you ought to try
it.’”
After
some hard bargaining, Paley succeeded in securing 50.3 percent of UIB’s stock
for $503,000, the day before his 27th birthday.
“Paley
was no doubt excited when he arrived at UIB’s office on an upper floor in the
tower of the Paramount Building in midtown Manhattan. But the reception was
something less than he had hoped for. A stocky office boy refused to admit the
boyish-looking president, demanding to see credentials and to know the purpose
of his visit.”
The
purpose of his visit was to run the company for several decades, as soon as he
changed its name to CBS.
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