CBS Spotlight

Paley says he’s retiring, honest

“I’m like a father with a child, and I want it to succeed when I’m gone.”

—William S. Paley

He is one of broadcast journalism’s earliest pioneers and, as the autocratic leader of the Columbia Broadcasting System for more than half a century, a major figure in its growth from a fledgling business into a billion-dollar industry. Last week William S. Paley, who will be 81 in two weeks, announced that effective next April 20, he will resign after 37 years as chairman of CBS Inc. Paley told TIME Correspondent Janice Simpson, “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but it came to a point in my mind now, and so I decided to announce it.”

Paley will retain his posh office at the company’s Manhattan headquarters, remain on the CBS board as chairman of the executive committee, and be a consultant to the corporation at half salary, which last year was $339,746 before bonuses that totaled $204,000. This has led some to speculate that Paley will still play a very active role in company affairs. Said Les Brown, editor of Channels, a broadcasting-industry publication: “I think he really means it about retirement, but as long as Paley’s alive, he’ll have influence.”

While relinquishing his full-time position with CBS Paley announced plans to become a partner hi Manhattan’s Whitcorn Investment Co. That firm indirectly owns a one-third interest in the Paris-based International Herald Tribune and has other publishing and cable-television ventures.

Paley’s move signaled the final transfer of power to his hand-chosen successor, CBS President Thomas Wyman, 52. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College, Wyman joined the company in June 1980 after holding top positions at Polaroid, Green Giant and Pillsbury.

Before Wyman arrived at “Black Rock,” as the 36-story CBS headquarters building is known, four others had lost out in the race to succeed Paley. The list of former heirs presumptive includes Presidents Frank Stanton, who served from 1946 until 1971, Charles Ireland (1971-72), Arthur Taylor (1972-76) and John Backe (1976-80). Stanton retired, Ireland died after less than a year on the job, and Taylor and Backe were fired.

While Paley was one of the creative geniuses behind the founding of network radio and television, his direction of CBS in recent years has come under increasingly heavy fire. A number of questionable investments and lagging revenues in the company’s record and cable divisions caused net income in the first half of 1982 to fall 8%, to $58.3 million.

Wyman is expected to give the company competent but unflamboyant management. One of his major achievements during the past two years was to end some of the internecine warfare between divisions of the firm. Wyman is also likely to pursue a strategy of consolidating the company’s traditionally solid network and broadcasting divisions, while imposing belt-tightening measures on less profitable enterprises. Efforts are already under way, for example, to sell off the critically acclaimed but money-losing CBS Cable television service.

CBS is now at a crucial point in its development. ABC is waging a fierce ratings battle, while cable TV is eating into the audience of all the networks. If CBS is to stay on top of the broadcasting industry, Wyman will have to be as creative as Paley was—assuming, of course, that the founding father really means it this time about his retirement.