General Discussion

Yale SOM’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, with co-authors Steven Tian and Stephen Henriques, writes that the capitulation of Paramount-CBS to the Trump administration is the final stage of a long decline for a collection of storied brands.

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-last-disgrace-of-the-tiffany-network

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CBS was founded in 1927 as a radio network by a talent agent, Arthur Judson. A year later, William Paley acquired 51% of the network, while Paramount Pictures bought 49%. In the Depression, Paramount was forced to sell its stake to emerge from bankruptcy. Under Paley, CBS became known as “the Tiffany network,” given its high-quality programming, expanding into television in the 1940s; its news division, under Edward R. Murrow, became the gold standard of broadcast journalism. It spun out its syndication business, known as Viacom, in 1971. Paley had undermined a series of four highly regarded successors with sequential palace coups over 60 years, until the board finally removed him and sold the business to the Tisch family’s Loews firm, which later sold it to Westinghouse, which in turn sold it to Sumner Redstone.

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