The Reason-Why Man

Fred W. Friendly, begetter and producer of CBS Reports, likes to call his colleagues "the band of brothers." What the brethren call him ranges from "brilliant slob" to "self-promoting megalomaniac." Nice friendly place, CBS. Last week Fred Friendly was appointed president of CBS News, succeeding Richard Salant, who was elevated to No. 3 position in the Columbia Broadcasting System, below President Frank Stanton and Chairman William Paley.

A homely, rangy fellow who tosses around in his chair as if it were stuffed with thumbtacks, Friendly stews, fusses and frets over everything he does. He sees more foreign airports in a year than most diplomatic couriers, and is known as "Frenzied Fred" because he expects the brethren to tackle every project with his own clock-defying zeal. His friend Carl Sandburg once remarked: "Fred always looks as if he had just got off a foam-flecked horse."

"I feel like I've been shot into orbit and have no retrorockets to come down with," Friendly said last week. "If this isn't fun, I'll be a flop." Mindful of six other CBS News bosses who have either flopped or walked out since 1945, Friendly advised the CBS functionary who orders up the top wakes: "You can start planning my farewell party."

The One-Ton Pencil. Friendly believes passionately that TV is "the best tool journalism was ever given." During the past twelve years he has used the camera--"the one-ton pencil," he calls it--in a valiant effort to prove that point. His hope now is to regain supremacy in news and public-affairs reporting, which in recent years has been captured by NBC. Under Salant, a corporate attorney, men like David Schoenbrun and Howard K. Smith be came disaffected and left CBS, as Ed Murrow had before them. Those who stayed, notably Charles Collingwood, Eric Sevareid and Walter Cronkite, came more and more under the authority of producers and executives. Snorts one disgruntled CBS alumnus: "It was as though the typesetters took over edit ing the New York Times." Friendly's promotion actually represents something of a victory for the behind-the-scenes types. He first made his name playing Horatio to Ed Murrow's Hamlet. As far back as 1948, the two assembled recordings of celebrated voices for Columbia Records' package I Can Hear It Now. Before long, they were doing See It Now, a documentary with a cutting edge rare in TV. When Murrow left to become director of the USIA, many wondered if Friendly could hold his own alone. He could.

Panoptic Vision. Friendly, one of the few Who's Who entries who omit their ages, was born 49 years ago in New York. Raised in Providence, he got into public-affairs broadcasting at 23 by writing and delivering five-minute biographies of American industrialists on a Providence radio station. Called Footprints in the Sands of Time, his shows were worth all of $1 a minute to him, cold cash.

He is no administrator -- he invariably goes way over his annual budget. But his goals are suitably panoptic. He hopes to put on such compelling shows that all the never-watch-television snobs will repent and reform. "I want this to be 'the reason-why network,' " he says. He has already started a project called "Viet Nam: The Deadly Decision," plans others on topics ranging from the cigarette industry to the absurdity of TV ratings, which happen to be holy writ to CBS's entertainment division. He is convinced that the public wants to be informed, and that it should be. His critics--and there are many--grumble that such aims will not help CBS's overall ratings. But he takes it all in stride. "I've got the greatest collection of enemies in the world," Fred Friendly says with relish. "And I cherish every one of them."

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