William S. Paley

William S. Paley in 1939

William S. Paley (September 28, 1901 – October 26, 1990) was an American pioneer of the television broadcasting business and chief executive officer of CBS for many years.

Quotes

• Most educators and students are familiar with Columbia's American School of the Air, which was established in 1930 and today has a weekly audience of millions throughout the school year. These broadcasts, prepared under the supervision of distinguished educators, typify in many ways Columbia's whole roster of educational and cultural programs. In themselves, however, they are a well-planned and cumultative course of education by radio, presented five days a week each autumn, winter, and spring.
  • (1936). "Many Listen to Learn". The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas 10 (7): 390–391. DOI:10.1080/00098655.1936.11474158.

As It Happened: A Memoir (1979)

• ... My father sold newspapers, then worked in a tobacco factory, and then in a cigar factory, where as an apprentice he came upon his destiny.
  It was not long before my father got the idea of opening a cigar store with one cigar maker working in the front window, which was not uncommon in those days. The cigar maker, sitting at a table in the window, rolling cigars by hand, was not only functional but was an attraction and an advertisement. Passers-by would stop to watch and perhaps come in to buy. Between his factory job and his own store, my father learned all about tobacco and discovered that he had the gift of recognizing the various qualities of tobacco and of blending them in attractive combinations of flavor. It was his particular genius and became his lifelong vocation.
  ... His brand of cigars began selling so well that he decided to go out and sell them to other cigar stores. Eventually he gave up the factory job, put more cigar makers to work in the back room of the store, and found himself in the cigar business. It was a short step from there to opening a cigar factory of his own. He made a good product, built a business, and became successful at an early age. In 1896, the year he was naturalized at the age of twenty-one, he had probably become a millionaire.
  • Paley, William S. (24 June 2014). As It Happened: A Memoir. ISBN 9781476752945.  (1st edition, 1979)

• I had an early passion for reading, especially for Horatio Alger stories. I went to the public library almost every day, and when I found a Horatio Alger book I had not read before, it was like finding a gold mine.
  • 2014 edition

• Ed Sullivan proved his talent as a showman who could attract the best and most timely performers from all four corners of the world of entertainment.
  • As It Happened: A Memoir. Doubleday. 1979. p. 239. ISBN 9780385146395. 

• We the People (6/1/48) began on CBS Television as the first regularly scheduled network program series simulcast.
  • As It Happened: A Memoir. 1979. p. 382. 

Quotes about Paley

• Television was dominated by one network — CBS in its early days. And Paley was a god. But he didn't like to hear what he didn't like to hear. And people soon learned that. So they told Paley only what he liked to hear. Therefore, he was soon living in a little cocoon of unreality and everything else was corrupt — although it was a great business.
  So the idiocy that crept into the system was carried along by this huge tide. It was a Mad Hatter's tea party the last ten years under Bill Paley.
  • Charlie Munger, A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business. Speech at USC Business School (1994). (p. 9 of 24)

• Paley, Mister Paley. "He is to American broadcasting as Carnegie was to steel, Ford to automobiles, Luce to publishing and Ruth to baseball," the New York Times had once written. The New York Daily News had called him an electronic Citizen Kane." His reign at CBS, wrote Washington Post television critic Tom Shales, could be summed up as more than five decades of "brilliant brinksmanship, salesmanship, statesmanship, and showmanship."
  • Sally Bedell Smith, In All His Glory: The Life and Times of William S. Paley and the Birth of Modern Broadcasting. Random House Publishing. 29 February 2012. ISBN 9780307786715.