Man Behind The Tube

By Gerald Clarke

AS IT HAPPENED by William S. Paley Doubleday; 418 pages; $14.95

Anybody who can flip a TV dial knows what the public wants. But the art of broadcasting, writes William Paley, "is to know what the public is seeking before the public even knows it is looking for something else." As a guide, that advice is about as useful as buy low, sell high. Yet, as the author demonstrates in this often charming memoir, he has been able to follow his own prescription for almost half a century.

Paley's rise to prominence started from the top. His grandfather owned a prosperous lumber business in the Ukraine and represented the Czar in his provincial town. When he anticipated Czarist pogroms and emigrated to the U.S. in 1888, he brought enough money to think about retiring. The treasure was soon lost through bad investments, but Paley's father Samuel made his own fortune manufacturing cigars. Young Bill joined the family business and quickly proved an adept salesman; one of his special delights was putting together a show called The La Palina Smoker on that new thing everybody was talking about: radio.

Even The La Palina Smoker was not enough to keep alive United Independent Broadcasters, the tiny network on which it was heard; in 1928 the owner approached Paley's father and offered to sell. Sam refused, but Bill, who had $1 million in his own account, grabbed the bargain, a measly $503,000, and ran. UlB's problem, he recognized, was that it was not big enough. He reorganized, offering greater inducements to affiliates, and within the space of a few months increased the network from 16 stations to 49. Along the way, it was renamed CBS.

In those innocent days the big names in show business were frightened by radio. Paley set out to win them, and before long such famous names as Paul Whiteman and Will Rogers had been tempted before the microphones, where they found even greater recognition.

Trying to win prestige for his network, Paley even laid siege to the Metropolitan Opera, whose president and chairman, Financier Otto Kahn, was outraged that anyone would want to hear a mezzo-soprano through the static of the air waves. At last Paley persuaded him to come to his office and hear a performance he had piped in. "We heard the overture," he relates, "and several minutes of singing into the first act and still no one reacted. Then Kahn leaped to his feet and exclaimed: 'I can't believe it. It's simply marvelous . . . and just imagine, hearing that wonderful music and those marvelous voices and we don't have to look at those ugly faces!' "

Unfortunately, once he was persuaded to broadcast over radio, Kahn was also persuaded to give the Met to Paley's archrival, the older, larger, and more prestigious NBC. CBS was to remain the underdog for nearly two more decades, until, in the late '40s, CBS began the "Paley raids," luring away NBC's biggest stars, including Jack Benny and Amos 'n' Andy.

Show business is only as good as its stars, and NBC never really recovered. CBS swift ly surpassed its rivals in both radio and TV, and remained serenely ahead, an al most imperial power, until it was finally topped by ABC in 1976.

The story of CBS is never less than fascinating, but Paley's memoir, alas, tends to falter toward the end. Once he leaves the glory days of radio, the book becomes increasingly guarded and corporate in tone. " I don't think I am a very easy person to know," he admits in his preface, and then spends several hundred pages proving it, leaving his personal feelings, except his love for his late wife Babe, largely hidden. Renowned for his superb taste, he may have been hurt by it in this book. In the writing of memoirs, as in the production of shows, too much caution causes the audience to nod and think of other channels. --Gerald Clarke

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