Father Of Broadcasting

By Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner

When Dick Solomon, the alien high commander in 3rd Rock from the Sun, declares, "God bless television," he is merely reflecting the feeling of most earthlings: that television is the most influential medium of the 20th century.

While some people critique its content, no one debates television's power. It is the window through which we see reality, as well as the window that permits us to escape from it. This season the average American family will watch the box more than 50 hours a week.

So it is nearly impossible to imagine that it was less than 60 years ago, in 1939, when David Sarnoff told a crowd of curious viewers, "Now we add sight to sound." Sarnoff went on to say, "It is with a feeling of humbleness that I come to this moment of announcing the birth in this country of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society. It is an art which shines like a torch of hope in the troubled world. It is a creative force which we must learn to utilize for the benefit of all mankind. This miracle of engineering skill which one day will bring the world to the home also brings a new American industry to serve man's material welfare...[Television] will become an important factor in American economic life."

And how. On that fateful day in 1939, with America recovering from its greatest depression and war rumbling in the distance, Sarnoff gave the world a look into a new life. Not only was he instrumental in creating both radio and television as we know them, he was also nearly clairvoyant in seeing how each medium would develop. He regarded black-and-white TV as only a transitional phase to color and even predicted the invention of the VCR. His stubborn pursuit of technology turned his employer, Radio Corp. of America, into a powerhouse in less than a decade.

Sarnoff was born in Uzlian, Russia, in 1891 (the year the electron was christened; he often bragged they were born the same year) and traveled steerage to New York nine years later with his family. Knowing no English, he helped support his family by selling newspapers and with other small jobs. At 15 he bought a telegraph key, learned Morse code and, after being hired as an office boy for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of America, became a junior operator in 1908.

Then, like so many people in the communications business, he was at the right place at the right time. On April 14, 1912, Sarnoff was working at the Marconi station atop Wanamaker's department store when he picked up a message relayed from ships at sea: "S.S. Titanic ran into iceberg, sinking fast." For the next 72 hours, the story goes, he remained at his post, giving the world the first authentic news of the disaster. Did someone say CNN?

Sarnoff's technical ability propelled him quickly through the ranks at Marconi, and in 1915 he submitted an idea for a "radio music box" at a time when radio was mainly used in shipping and by amateur wireless enthusiasts. He believed his device would make radio a "household utility" like the piano or phonograph. "The idea is to bring music into the house by wireless," he wrote in a memo. It was regarded as commercial folly. But he would soon have another opportunity to find backing for his idea. After the Great War, in 1919, RCA was formed by General Electric to absorb Marconi's U.S. assets (including him).

Sarnoff had it all figured out: for RCA to sell radios, it had to have programming--music, news, sports. On July 2, 1921, he arranged the broadcast of the Jack Dempsey-Georges Carpentier prizefight (great ratings in the male demos), which was a watershed event. Within three years the radio music box, now called the Radiola (price: a hefty $75), was a success, with sales of $83.5 million.

Sarnoff's career took off. His next epiphany: the fastest path to profits would be to create national broadcasts by stringing together hundreds of stations. In other words, a network. In 1926, as general manager of RCA, he formed the National Broadcasting Co. as a subsidiary.

Sarnoff next saw the potential of the iconoscope, a proto-television patented by Vladimir Zworykin in 1923. Within five years Sarnoff had set up a special NBC station called B2XBS to experiment with what came to be known as television. In 1941 NBC started commercial telecasting from station WNBT in New York City, but once again progress was delayed by war. Sarnoff served as communications consultant for General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who later named him a brigadier general. The title stuck. And in the halls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Sarnoff became known as "the General."

After the war television was unleashed. As a shrewd businessman who mixed as easily with scientists as with corporate leaders, Sarnoff fought for patents and the right to advance the technology of the medium. Called ruthless by his rivals, he once said, "Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in men." And when others would complain that his focus was more on technology than on programming, he said, "Basically, we're the delivery boys."

His strong-willed management style gave him the label of not always being "talent-friendly," although he was close to great musicians like Arturo Toscanini. Sarnoff managed to survive a major raid orchestrated by CBS boss William S. Paley, who lured several major NBC stars. But if Sarnoff lost a battle, you could always bet on his winning the war. Under his leadership NBC had the first videotape telecast and the first made-for-television movie.

Sarnoff retired as RCA chairman in 1970 and died a year later. RCA became a conglomerate, diversifying broadly--and unsuccessfully--before being taken over in 1986 by GE, the outfit that started RCA and was forced to divest it in 1932.

From our earliest days as network executives and, before that, as students of the medium and charter members of the first generation of TV viewers, we have lived and worked in his giant shadow. Having established our own production company, we are humbled by the success of a man who started with nothing and by force of will ignited a revolution that has had an unparalleled effect on our society.

When we first teamed up at ABC in the mid-'70s, broadcast television was still a heady and vibrant place. We were thrilled when we heard someone mention a show we had helped get on--Soap, maybe, or Barney Miller or Taxi. We learned from our favorite bosses, Fred Silverman and Michael Eisner, that a good programmer respects the audience, takes risks, has showman-like instincts and lives to bring the best and brightest talent to the people.

The broadcast industry has changed since then, and is undergoing the same kind of technological revolution that occurred when Sarnoff introduced television. Still there are programmers and producers with great passion for the medium, and we count ourselves among them. But now these broadcasters have had to embrace other media as well--cable and the Internet--to avoid being crushed by the furious pace of technology.

For that same reason we've just teamed up with our longtime partner, Caryn Mandabach, as well as Geraldine Laybourne and Oprah Winfrey, in a venture called Oxygen, in which we will fuse a new cable channel with an Internet base to program for women.

The heady feeling is back with another technology revolution. But the basic truth Sarnoff articulated--television is a beneficial, creative force--still holds despite the tumult of vertical integration, ratings wars, new-media breakthroughs and Internet companies with zooming stock prices. Certainly, the General would have caught the new wave, if not led it, and embraced television's transformation by the digital age. His channel was always dialed to the future.

Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner have produced the hit TV series The Cosby Show, Roseanne and 3rd Rock from the Sun