CBS

• 1. Introduction

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  CBS traces its roots not to television but to a small radio venture launched on the 27th of January 1927 by a New York City talent agent named Arthur Judson. What began as United Independent Broadcasters, Inc., a modest Chicago-based radio network, would grow over the following century into one of the most watched broadcast television operations in the United States. How did a startup funded partly by a phonograph company become the home of the Super Bowl, 60 Minutes, and the very first broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas? And how did the distinctive eye staring out from every CBS television set come to symbolize something far larger than a single network? Those are the questions worth sitting with as the story of CBS unfolds.

• 2. From Radio to Paley's Empire

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  William S. Paley was installed as president of the fledgling network by the Levy brothers, two Philadelphia broadcasters who had purchased it from Judson and his early partners in early 1928. Paley was an in-law of the Levys, not a media veteran, but he proved to have an uncommon sense for what audiences wanted. By September 1928 he had acquired 51 percent of the network, making him its majority owner. Paramount Pictures then took the remaining 49 percent in 1929, though the Great Depression forced the studio to sell those shares back to the network in 1932.

  With the Columbia phonograph connection severed, Paley renamed the company the Columbia Broadcasting System. Under his leadership CBS first became one of the largest radio networks in the country. The network's full name was formally dropped in 1974, when the company simply became CBS, Inc. Paley's tenure shaped the network's reputation for quality programming so strongly that CBS earned the nickname the Tiffany Network, a reference both to the perceived polish of its output and to the fact that some of its first color television demonstrations were held in the former Tiffany and Company Building in New York City in 1950.

• 3. The Eye That Never Blinked

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  On the 20th of October 1951, CBS introduced a new on-air symbol that would become one of the most recognized logos in American broadcasting. The Eye device was conceived by William Golden, who drew inspiration from a Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign and a Shaker drawing. Some credit also belongs to CBS staff designer Georg Olden, one of the first African Americans to gain significant recognition in postwar graphic design.

  When Golden prepared a replacement the following season, CBS president Frank Stanton overruled him and insisted on keeping the Eye. Golden died unexpectedly in 1959. His successor, Lou Dorfsman, would go on to oversee all CBS print and on-air graphics for the next 30 years. The Eye has never been fundamentally redesigned. In October 2011, the network marked the 60th anniversary of the logo by airing special IDs during primetime that traced its visual history. A five-note sonic identity, developed by the audio design agency Antfood and meant to phonetically suggest the phrase "This is CBS," was added during a broader rebranding announced in October 2020.

• 4. The Golden Age of Specials

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  A Charlie Brown Christmas aired on CBS on the 9th of December 1965, and launched a run of more than 30 Peanuts holiday specials on the network that continued until 2000, when ABC acquired the broadcast rights. CBS also began airing Dr. Seuss adaptations starting with How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1966, and it was the original home for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Rankin/Bass stop-motion production that had premiered on NBC in 1964 before eventually landing at CBS.

  All of these animated specials, from 1973 to 1990, were preceded by a fondly remembered seven-second opening sequence in which the words "A CBS Special Presentation" appeared in ITC Avant Garde typeface against a black background. The fanfare accompanying it was edited music from the CBS crime drama Hawaii Five-O, credited on the Capitol Records soundtrack as "Call to Danger."

  CBS also produced the Cinderella musical of the 31st of March 1957, the only Rodgers and Hammerstein work written specifically for television. That broadcast, starring Julie Andrews, was seen by over 100 million people. The Young People's Concerts, conducted by Leonard Bernstein and telecast every few months between 1958 and 1972, won Emmy Awards in 1961 and again in 1966, and were among the first programs ever broadcast from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

  In April 1986, CBS presented Horowitz in Moscow, a live piano recital by Vladimir Horowitz marking his first return to Russia in over 60 years. The broadcast was so popular that CBS repeated it just two months later by popular demand.

• 5. Daytime and the Long Schedule

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  The Price Is Right began production in 1972 and holds the distinction of being the longest continuously running daytime game show on network television. Bob Barker hosted the program for 35 years before Drew Carey took over in 2007. Barker also emceed the Miss USA pageant on CBS from 1967 to 1987, eventually quitting in a dispute over the pageant's practice of awarding fur coats as prizes, a cause connected to his animal rights activism.

  The Young and the Restless debuted on CBS in 1973 and became the first daytime soap opera ever broadcast in high definition, a milestone reached on the 27th of June 2001. The Bold and the Beautiful followed in 1987. From 1977 to 2009, CBS carried hours of soap operas in its daytime lineup, and it remains the only commercial broadcast network that continues to air daytime game shows. CBS Daytime's schedule is the longest among the major networks, measured in total hours.

• 6. Controversies That Shaped Journalism

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  In 1995, CBS refused to air a 60 Minutes interview with a former president of research and development for Brown and Williamson, the country's third largest tobacco company at the time. The decision raised urgent questions about whether legal threats could compromise journalistic standards, and it became the basis for the 1999 Michael Mann film The Insider.

  Nine years later, on the 8th of September 2004, a 60 Minutes Wednesday segment questioned President George W. Bush's Air National Guard service in 1972 and 1973. The documents used in the report were subsequently found to have not been properly authenticated. CBS eventually fired four people connected to the story. Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its then-parent Viacom in September 2007; the suit was dismissed in full by 2010.

  The Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime broadcast in 2004 brought the FCC's largest indecency fine at the time: $550,000. A Philadelphia federal court annulled that fine in 2008, labeling it arbitrary and capricious. In July 2018, thirty current and former CBS employees described harassment, gender discrimination, or retaliation at the company in reporting by Ronan Farrow, and six women accused then-chief executive Les Moonves of harassment. Moonves resigned on the 9th of September 2018, the same day a second round of accusations became public.

• 7. Ownership Loops and Corporate Shifts

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  Westinghouse Electric Corporation acquired CBS in 1994 and renamed its legal entity CBS Broadcasting Inc. two years later. In 1997, Westinghouse adopted the name of the company it had bought and became CBS Corporation. Then, in 1999, CBS came under the control of Viacom, the very company that CBS itself had spun off as a separate broadcast syndication division back in 1971.

  In 2005, Viacom split in two. CBS Corporation was re-established as a separate entity anchored by the television network. On the 4th of December 2019, CBS Corporation and Viacom agreed to re-merge, forming ViacomCBS, later renamed Paramount Global and subsequently Paramount Skydance. The network reached 95.96 percent of all American households with at least one television set, covering 299,861,665 people, with agreements spanning 50 states, the District of Columbia, two U.S. territories, and stations in Bermuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Nexstar Media Group operates 49 CBS affiliates, making it the largest operator by numerical count, while Tegna Media leads in overall market reach with stations touching 8.9 percent of the country.

• 8. The Network in the Streaming Era

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  On the 28th of October 2014, CBS launched CBS All Access, described at the time as the first over-the-top streaming service offered by a U.S. broadcast television network. Priced at $5.99 per month, it allowed subscribers to stream past and current CBS programming; a commercial-free tier was available for $9.99 per month. The service became available on Roku on the 7th of April 2015 and on Chromecast on the 14th of May 2015. Original programs produced for the service included Star Trek: Discovery and The Good Fight.

  In September 2020 it was announced that CBS All Access would be rebranded as Paramount+, with the changeover taking effect on the 4th of March 2021, folding in content from across the wider ViacomCBS library. Meanwhile, CBS's radio division, which had long provided news and feature content for owned-and-operated stations in large and mid-sized markets, was sold to Entercom in 2017. Entercom subsequently renamed itself Audacy, Inc. in 2021. CBS received a 72 percent stake in the combined Entercom for CBS Corporation's common shareholders as part of the deal, and retained long-term licensing rights to the CBS trademarks even after exiting direct radio ownership.