The Best Seat in the House: The Golden Years of Radio and Television
Weaver was instrumental in creating, maintaining and then changing the style of electronic entertainment in this country. Born to affluence in California in 1908, he graduated from Dartmouth and went into radio in Los Angeles. He became a show-biz factotum--writer, producer, announcer, salesman--doing whatever it took to get shows and news on the air. Joining an advertising agency in Manhattan as Fred Allen's producer, he was soon working with Bob Hope and Jack Benny. During WW II he married Liz Inglis (actress Sigourney Weaver is his daughter), skippered a navy sub-chaser in the Caribbean and later produced such GI radio favorites as Command Performance. In 1949 he assumed the presidency of NBC Television, where he revolutionized the industry by having the network program and own its shows. (Previously, the sponsors controlled the production and contents of shows.) Weaver then sold advertizing time to sponsors, changing commercial TV forever. At NBC he husbanded such programs as The Today Show , The Tonight Show , Your Show of Shows and Victory at Sea , plus the creation of NBC News. Writing with freelancer Coffey, his positive, can-do attitude comes through anecdotally to not only enchant, but inform as well. Photos.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.