Philip Marlowe
In the late 1940s, CBS chairman William S. Paley, a fan of the "Philip Marlowe" radio series, asked his programming chief, Hubell Robinson, to develop a hardboiled Western series, a show about a "Philip Marlowe of the Old West". Robinson instructed his West Coast CBS Vice President, Harry Ackerman, who had developed the "Philip Marlowe" series, to take on the task.