TV Hot Spot: News

CBS Exec Stanton Dies at 98

Post by: Sal

Frank Stanton, a pioneering executive in early television who was a major force in branding CBS as "the Tiffany Network" while also defending its news division against 1st Amendment assaults, died Sunday afternoon at his home in Boston. He was 98.

Stanton, who had lived in Boston for the last eight years, had been in declining health for some time, according to Elizabeth Allison, a longtime friend who had been coordinating Stanton's medical care.

In a career at CBS that spanned his early days as a researcher for the radio division in the 1930s until his retirement as president of CBS Inc. in 1973, Stanton won five Peabody Awards for distinguished achievement and public service in broadcasting and made several lasting contributions to the industry.

He pioneered efforts to analyze audience responses to programming; instituted such innovations as block programming, bundling similar programs in blocks of time during the day; led the way in persuading Congress to suspend the equal-time rule as it applied to presidential debates, opening the door for today's familiar format of presidential debates between the leading candidates; and pulled the plug on CBS' quiz shows after it was found that several of the programs, which were produced independently of CBS, had manipulated the results.

"Stanton came to be regarded as broadcasting's foremost statesman, and more than anything else, it was his vigorous and admirable response to the 1959 quiz-show scandals that elevated him to that stature," Gary Paul Gates wrote in "Air Time: The Inside Story of CBS News" (1978).

Perhaps most notably, however, Stanton in 1971 risked jail for contempt of court rather than turn over to a House subcommittee the outtakes from a controversial CBS production sharply criticizing Pentagon spending. Stanton avoided jail when the full House refused to back up the citation.

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