CBS (TU's vision)

**CBS** (an initialism of the network's former name, the **Columbia Broadcasting System**) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network that is the flagship property of the CBS Corporation subsidiary of Viacom Networks (itself owned by Viacom). The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major production facilities and operations in New York City (at the CBS Broadcast Center) and Los Angeles (at CBS Television City and the CBS Studio Center).

CBS is sometimes referred to as the **Eye Network**, in reference to the company's trademark symbol, in use since 1951. It has also been called the "**Tiffany Network**", alluding to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of William S. Paley.[1] It can also refer to some of CBS's first demonstrations of color television, which were held in a former Tiffany & Co. building in New York City in 1950.[2]

The network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc., a collection of 16 radio stations purchased by Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System.[3] Under Paley's guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States, and eventually one of the Big Three American broadcast television networks. In 1974 CBS dropped its former full name and became known simply as **CBS, Inc.** The Westinghouse Electric Corporation acquired the network in 1995, renamed its corporate entity to the current **CBS Broadcasting, Inc.** in 1997, and eventually adopted the name of the company it had acquired to become CBS Corporation. In 2000 CBS came under the control of the first Viacom, which was formed as a spin-off of CBS in 1971. In late 2005, Viacom announced a reorganization of itself and re-established CBS Corporation by moving most of its broadcast television, radio, and select cable television and non-broadcasting assets under Viacom Networks, with the CBS television network at its core. CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, which also controls Viacom.

CBS also operates the CBS Radio network, which mainly provides news and features content for its portfolio owned-and-operated radio stations in large and mid-sized markets, and affiliated radio stations in various other markets. The television network has more than 240 owned-and-operated, and affiliated television stations throughout the United States; some of them are also available in Canada via pay-television providers or in border areas over-the-air. The company ranked 197th on the 2018 Fortune 500 of the largest American corporations by revenue.[4]

## History

### Television years: expansion and growth

CBS's involvement in television dates back to the opening of experimental station W2XAB in New York City on July 21, 1931, using the mechanical television system that had been more-or-less perfected in the late 1920s. Its initial broadcast featured New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, Kate Smith, and George Gershwin. The station boasted the first regular seven-day broadcasting schedule in American television, broadcasting 28 hours a week.

Announcer-director Bill Schudt was the station's only paid employee; all other talent was volunteer. W2XAB pioneered program development including small-scale dramatic acts, monologues, pantomime, and the use of projection slides to simulate sets. Engineer Bill Lodge devised the first synchronized sound wave for a television station in 1932, enabling W2XAB to broadcast picture and sound on a single shortwave channel instead of the two previously needed. On November 8, 1932, W2XAB broadcast the first television coverage of presidential election returns. The station suspended operations on February 20, 1933, as monochrome television transmission standards were in flux, and in the process of changing from a mechanical to an all-electronic system. W2XAB returned to the air with an all-electronic system in 1939 from a new studio complex in Grand Central Station and a transmitter atop the Chrysler Building, broadcasting on channel 2.[93] W2XAB transmitted the first color broadcast in the United States on August 28, 1940.[94]

On June 24, 1941, W2XAB received a commercial construction permit and program authorization as WCBW. The station went on the air at 2:30 p.m. on July 1, one hour after rival WNBT (channel 1, formerly W2XBS and now WNBC), making it the second authorized fully commercial television station in the United States. The FCC issued permits to CBS and NBC at the same time, and intended WNBT and WCBW to sign on simultaneously on July 1, so no one station could claim to be the "first".

During the World War II years, commercial television broadcasting was reduced dramatically. Toward the end of the war, commercial television began to ramp up again, with an increased level of programming evident from 1944 to 1947 on the three New York television stations which operated in those years (the local stations of NBC, CBS and DuMont). But as RCA and DuMont raced to establish networks and offer upgraded programming, CBS lagged, advocating an industry-wide shift and restart to UHF for their incompatible (with black and white) color system; the FCC putting an indefinite "freeze" on television licenses that lasted until 1952 also did not help matters. Only in 1950, when NBC was dominant in television and black and white transmission was widespread, did CBS begin to buy or build their own stations (outside of New York City) in Los Angeles, Chicago and other major cities. Up to that point, CBS programming was seen on such stations as KTTV in Los Angeles, which CBS – as a bit of insurance and to guarantee program clearance in that market – quickly purchased a 50% interest in that station, partnering with the Los Angeles Times newspaper. CBS then sold its interest in KTTV (now the West Coast flagship of the Fox network) and purchased outright Los Angeles pioneer station KTSL in 1950, renaming it KNXT (after CBS's existing Los Angeles radio property, KNX). In 1953, CBS bought pioneer television station WBKB in Chicago, which had been signed on by former investor Paramount Pictures (and would become a sister company to CBS again decades later) as a commercial station in 1946, and changed that station's call sign to WBBM-TV, moving the CBS affiliation away from WGN-TV.

WCBS-TV would ultimately be the only station (as of 2013) built and signed on by CBS. The rest of the stations would be acquired by CBS, either in an ownership stake or outright purchase. In television's early years, the network bought Washington, D.C. affiliate WOIC (now WUSA) in a joint venture with The Washington Post in 1950, only to sell its stake to the Post in 1954 due to then-tighter FCC ownership regulations. CBS would also temporarily return to relying on its own UHF technology by owning WXIX in Milwaukee (now CW affiliate WVTV) and WHCT in Hartford, Connecticut (now Univision affiliate WUVN), but as UHF was not viable for broadcasting at the time (due to the fact that most television sets of the time were not equipped with UHF tuners), CBS decided to sell those stations off and affiliate with VHF stations WITI and WTIC-TV (now WFSB), respectively.

In Milwaukee alone, CBS has gone through several affiliation changes since 1953, when its original primary affiliate, WCAN-TV (now defunct) first signed on the air; prior to WCAN's sign-on, selected CBS programming aired on WTMJ-TV, an NBC affiliate since 1947. In February 1955, when WCAN went off the air for good, CBS moved its programming to WXIX, in which CBS purchased several months earlier. In April 1959, CBS decided to move its programming to the city's newer VHF station at the time, WITI; in turn, CBS shut down WXIX, sold its license to local investors, and returned to the air that July as an independent station. The first WITI-CBS union only lasted exactly two years, as the network moved its programming to WISN-TV on April 2, 1961, with WITI taking the ABC affiliation, and the two stations reversed the network swap in March 1977, with WITI returning to the CBS station lineup. CBS was later forced back onto UHF in Milwaukee due to the affiliation agreement with New World Communications that resulted in WITI disaffiliating from the network in December 1994 to join Fox; it is now affiliated with WDJT-TV in that market, which has the longest-lasting relationship with CBS than any other Milwaukee station that carried the network's programming (25 years, as of the end of 2019).

More long-term, CBS bought stations in Philadelphia (WCAU, now owned by NBC) and St. Louis (KMOX-TV, now KMOV), but CBS would eventually sell these stations off as well; before buying KMOX-TV, CBS had attempted to purchase and sign on the channel 11 license in St. Louis, now KPLR-TV.[95]

CBS did attempt to sign on a station in Pittsburgh after the "freeze" was lifted, as that city was then the sixth-largest market but only had one commercial VHF station in DuMont-owned WDTV, while the rest were either on UHF (the modern-day WPGH-TV and WINP-TV) or public television (WQED). Although the FCC turned down CBS's request to buy the channel 9 license in nearby Steubenville, Ohio and move it to Pittsburgh (that station, initially CBS affiliate WSTV-TV, is now NBC affiliate WTOV-TV), CBS did score a major coup when Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric (a co-founder of NBC with RCA) bought WDTV from struggling DuMont and opted to affiliate the now-recalled KDKA-TV with CBS instead of NBC (like KDKA radio) due to NBC extorting and coercing Westinghouse to trade KYW radio and WPTZ (now KYW-TV) for Cleveland stations WTAM, WTAM-FM (now WMJI), and WNBK (now WKYC); the trade ended up being reversed in 1965 by order of the FCC and the United States Department of Justice after an eight-year investigation.[96] Had CBS not been able to affiliate with KDKA-TV, it would have affiliated with eventual NBC affiliate WIIC-TV (now WPXI) once it signed on in 1957 instead.[97] This coup would eventually lead to a much stronger relationship between Westinghouse and CBS decades later.

### Programming (1945–1970)

The "talent raid" on NBC of the mid-1940s had brought over established radio stars, who became stars of CBS television programs as well. One reluctant CBS star refused to bring her radio show, My Favorite Husband, to television unless the network would recast the show with her real-life husband in the lead.

I Love Lucy debuted in October 1951, and was an immediate sensation, with 11 million out of a population of 15 million Television sets watching (73% share).[98] Paley and network president Frank Stanton had so little faith in the future of Lucille Ball's series, that they granted her wish and allowed her husband, Desi Arnaz, to take financial control of the comedy's production. This was the making of the Ball-Arnaz Desilu empire, and became the template for series production to this day; it also served as the template for some television conventions that continue to exist including the use of a multiple cameras to film scenes, the use of a studio audience and the airing of past episodes for syndication to other television outlets.[99] The phenomenal success of a prime-time, big-money quiz show, The $64,000 Question, propelled its creator, Louis G. Cowan, first to an executive position as CBS's vice-president of creative services, then to the presidency of the CBS TV network itself. When the quiz show scandals involving "rigged" questions surfaced in 1959, Cowan was fired by CBS.

As television came to the forefront of American entertainment and information, CBS dominated television as it once had radio.[citation needed] In 1953, the CBS television network would make its first profit,[100] and would maintain dominance on television between 1955 and 1976 as well.[100] By the late 1950s, the network often controlled seven or eight of the slots on the "top ten" ratings list with well-respected shows like Route 66.

During the Presidency of James T. Aubrey (1958–1965), CBS was able to balance prestigious television projects (befitting the Tiffany Network image), with more low culture, broad appeal programs. So the network had challenging fare like The Twilight Zone, The Defenders, and East Side/West Side, as well as The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., and Gilligan's Island.[101]

This success would continue for many years, with CBS being bumped from first place only due to the rise of ABC in the mid-1970s. Perhaps because of its status as the top-rated network, during the late 1960s and early 1970s CBS felt freer to gamble with controversial properties like the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and All in the Family (and its many spinoffs) during this period.

### Programming: "Rural purge" and success in the 1970s and early-mid 1980s (1971–1986)

By the end of the 1960s, CBS was very successful in television ratings, but many of its shows (including The Beverly Hillbillies, Gunsmoke, Mayberry R.F.D., Petticoat Junction, Hee Haw and Green Acres) were appealing more to older and more rural audiences and less to the young, urban and more affluent audiences that advertisers sought to target. Fred Silverman (who would later head ABC, and then later NBC) made the decision to cancel most of those otherwise hit shows by mid-1971 in what became colloquially referred to as the "Rural Purge", with Green Acres cast member Pat Buttram remarking that the network cancelled "anything with a tree in it".[102][103]

While the "rural" shows got the axe, new hits, like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, The Bob Newhart Show, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Kojak and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour took their place on the network's schedule and kept CBS at the top of the ratings through the early 1970s. The majority of these hits were overseen by then East Coast vice president Alan Wagner.[104] 60 Minutes also moved to the 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time slot on Sundays in 1975 and became the first ever prime time television news program to enter the Nielsen Top 10 in 1978.

One of CBS's most popular shows during the period was M\*A\*S\*H, a dramedy that ran for 11 seasons from 1972 to 1983 and was based on the hit Robert Altman film; as with the film, the series was set during the Korean War in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The 2​1⁄2-hour series finale, in its initial airing on February 28, 1983, had peak viewership of up to 125 million Americans (77% of all television viewership in the U.S. that night), which established it as the all-time most watched single U.S. television episode; it also held the ubiquitous distinction of having the largest single-night primetime viewership of any television program in U.S. history until it was surpassed by the Super Bowl, which have taken the record consistently since 2010 (through the annual championship game's alternating telecasts by CBS and rival networks Fox and NBC).

Silverman also first developed his strategy of spinning new shows off from established hit series while at CBS, with Rhoda and Phyllis spun from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Maude and The Jeffersons spun from All in the Family and Good Times from Maude. After Silverman's departure, CBS dropped behind ABC for second place in the 1976–77 season, but still rated strongly, based on its earlier hits and some new ones: One Day at a Time, Alice, Lou Grant, WKRP in Cincinnati, The Dukes of Hazzard and, the biggest hit of the early 1980s, Dallas, the latter of which holds the record for the all-time most watched non-series finale single U.S. television episode – the November 21, 1980, primetime telecast of the resolution episode of the internationally prominent "Who Shot J.R.?" cliffhanger.

By 1982, ABC had run out of steam, NBC was in dire straits with many failed programming efforts greenlighted by Silverman during his tenure as network president (a three-year run which began in 1978), and CBS once more nosed ahead, courtesy of the major success of Dallas (and its spin-off Knots Landing), as well as hits in Falcon Crest, Magnum, P.I., Simon & Simon and 60 Minutes. CBS also acquired the broadcast rights to the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament in 1982 (taking over for NBC), which the network has broadcast every March since. CBS bought Emmy-winning documentary producer Dennis B. Kane's production company and formed a new company CBS/Kane Productions International (CKPI). The network managed to pull out a few new hits over the next couple of years – namely Kate & Allie, Newhart, Cagney & Lacey, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Murder, She Wrote – however, this resurgence would be short-lived. CBS had become mired in debt as a result of a failed takeover effort by Ted Turner, which CBS chairman Thomas Wyman successfully helped to fend off. The network sold its St. Louis owned-and-operated station KMOX-TV, and allowed the purchase of a large portion of its shares (under 25 percent) by Loew's Inc. chairman Laurence Tisch. Consequently, collaboration between Paley and Tisch led to the slow dismissal of Wyman, with Tisch taking over as chief operating officer, and Paley returning as chairman.[105]

### Programming: Tiffany Network in distress (1986–2002)

By the end of the 1987–88 season, CBS had fallen to third place behind both ABC and NBC for the first time, and had some major rebuilding to do.

In 1984, The Cosby Show and Miami Vice debuted on NBC and immediately garnered high ratings, allowing that network to rise back to first place by the 1985–86 season with a slate that included several other hits (such as Amen, Family Ties, Cheers, The Golden Girls, The Facts Of Life, L.A. Law, and 227). ABC had in turn also rebounded with hits such as Dynasty, Who's the Boss?, Hotel, Growing Pains, The Wonder Years, and Roseanne.

Some of the groundwork had been laid as CBS fell in the ratings, with hits Simon & Simon, Falcon Crest, Murder, She Wrote, Kate & Allie, and Newhart still on the schedule from the most recent resurgence, and future[needs update] hits Designing Women, Murphy Brown, Jake and the Fatman, and the newsmagazine 48 Hours, all having debuted during the late 1980s. The network was also still getting decent ratings for 60 Minutes, Dallas and Knots Landing; however, the ratings for Dallas were a far cry from what they were in the early 1980s. During the early 1990s, the network would bolster its sports lineup by obtaining the broadcast television rights to Major League Baseball from ABC and NBC and the Winter Olympics from ABC despite losing the National Basketball Association to NBC after the 1989–90 NBA season.

Under network president Jeff Sagansky, the network was able to earn strong ratings from new shows Diagnosis: Murder; Touched by an Angel; Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman; Walker, Texas Ranger; Picket Fences; and a resurgent Jake and the Fatman during this period, and CBS was able to reclaim the first place crown briefly, in the 1992–93 season; however, a drawback for the network during this time-frame was that its programming slate skewed towards an older demographic than ABC, NBC, or even the fledgling Fox network, with its relatively limited presence at that time; a joke even floated around that CBS was "the network for the living dead" during this period.[106] In 1993, the network made a breakthrough in establishing a successful late-night talk show franchise to compete with NBC's The Tonight Show when it signed David Letterman away from NBC after the Late Night host was passed over as Johnny Carson's successor on Tonight in favor of Jay Leno.

Despite having success with Late Show with David Letterman, 1993 saw the network suffer to a time where television changed forever.[dubious – discuss][unbalanced opinion?] The network lost the rights to two major sports leagues: the network terminated its contract with Major League Baseball (after losing approximately US$500 million over a four-year span), with the league reaching a new contract with NBC and ABC. Then on December 17 of that year, in a move that surprised many media analysts and television viewers, Fox – then a fledgling network that in its then-seven years on the air had begun to accrue several popular programs in the Nielsen Top 20 alongside its established counterparts – outbid CBS for the broadcast rights to the National Football Conference, stripping the elder network of National Football League game telecasts for the first time since CBS began broadcasting games from the pre-merger NFL in 1955; Fox bid $1.58 billion for the NFC television rights, significantly higher than CBS's reported offer of $290 million to retain the contract.[107]

The acquisition of the NFC rights, which took effect with the 1994 NFL season, and which led to CBS being nicknamed "Can't Broadcast Sports",[108] resulted in Fox striking a series of affiliation deals with longtime affiliates of each of the Big Three networks; CBS bore the brunt of the switches, with many of its existing affiliates being lured away by Fox (especially those owned by New World Communications, which Fox struck its largest affiliation deal with)[109] while most of the stations that CBS ended up affiliating with to replace the previous affiliates it lost to Fox were former Fox affiliates and independent stations, most of which had limited to no local news presence prior to joining CBS. The network attempted to fill the loss of NFL by going after the rights to the National Hockey League; however, when CBS countered with a bid, Fox also outbid the network for the NHL rights.[110]

The loss of the NFL, along with an ill-fated effort to court younger viewers, led to a drop in CBS's ratings. One of the shows that was affected was the Late Show with David Letterman, which saw its viewership decline in large part due to the affiliation switches, at times even landing in third place in its timeslot behind ABC's Nightline; as a result, NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, which the Late Show often dominated over during the first two years of that show's run, became the top-rated late-night talk show.[111] Still, CBS was able to produce some hits during the mid-1990s, such as The Nanny, JAG (which moved to the network from NBC), Chicago Hope, Cosby, Cybill, Touched by an Angel, and Everybody Loves Raymond.

CBS attempted to court families on Fridays with the launch of a family-oriented comedy block, the "CBS Block Party", in the 1997–98 season (consisting of Family Matters, Step by Step, Meego, and The Gregory Hines Show, all but the latter coming from Miller-Boyett Productions, which had maintained a relationship with ABC during the late 1980s and 1990s). The lineup failed to compete against ABC's "TGIF" lineup (which saw its own viewership erode that season): Meego and Hines were cancelled by November, while Family Matters and Step by Step were put on hiatus and ended their runs in the summer of 1998. That winter, CBS aired its last Olympic Games to date with its telecast of the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano; NBC, which had already held the rights to the Summer Olympics since 1988, took over coverage of the Winter Olympics beginning with the 2002 Games.

The building blocks for the network's return to the top of the ratings were put in place in 1997, when CBS regained the NFL through its acquisition of the broadcast television rights to the American Football Conference (stripping that package from NBC after 32 years, though NBC would begin sharing the AFC rights with CBS again in 2006), effective with the 1998 season.[112] The contract was struck shortly before the AFC's emergence as the dominant NFL conference over the NFC, spurred in part by the turnaround of the New England Patriots in the 2000s. With the help of the AFC package, CBS surpassed NBC for first place in the 1998–1999 season; however, it was beaten by ABC the following year. The network gained additional hits in the late 1990s and early 2000s with series such as The King of Queens, Nash Bridges, Judging Amy, Becker, and Yes, Dear.

### Programming: Return to first place and rivalry with the two post-1986 networks (2002–present)

Another turning point for CBS came in the summer of 2000 when it debuted the summer reality shows Survivor and Big Brother, which became surprise summer hits for the network. In January 2001, CBS debuted the second season of Survivor after its broadcast of Super Bowl XXXV and scheduled it on Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time; it also moved the investigative crime drama CSI (which had debuted that fall in the Friday 9:00 p.m. time slot) to follow Survivor at 9:00 p.m. on Thursdays. The pairing of the two shows was both able to chip away at and eventually beat NBC's Thursday night lineup, and attract younger viewers to the network.

During the 2000s, CBS found additional successes with a slew of police procedurals (several of which were produced by Jerry Bruckheimer) including Cold Case, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, NCIS and The Mentalist, along with CSI spinoffs CSI: Miami and CSI: NY. The network also featured several prominent sitcoms like Still Standing, Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Rules of Engagement and The Big Bang Theory, as well as the reality show The Amazing Race. The network's programming slate, buoyed largely by the success of CSI, briefly led the network to retake first place in the ratings from NBC in the 2002–03 season. The decade also saw CBS finally make ratings headway on Friday nights, a perennial weak spot for the network, with a focus toward drama series such as Ghost Whisperer and the relatively short-lived but critically acclaimed Joan of Arcadia.

CBS became the most watched American broadcast television network once again in the 2005–06 season, an achievement that the network proclaimed in on-air promotions as being "America's Most Watched Network" (a term it would use again in the 2011–12 season). This lasted until the 2007–08 season, when Fox overtook CBS for first, becoming the first non-Big Three network to earn the title as the most watched network overall in the United States; despite CBS's continued strong lineup, Fox's first-place finish that season was primarily due to its reliance on American Idol (the longest reigning #1 prime time U.S. television program from 2004 to 2011) and the effects of the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. CBS retook its place as the top-rated network in the 2008–09 season, where it has remained every season since.[113] Fox and CBS, both having ranked as the highest rated of the major broadcast networks during the 2000s, tend to nearly equal one another in the 18–34, 18–49 and 25–54 demographics, with either network alternating in placing first in either of these groups by very close margins. NCIS, which has been the flagship of CBS's Tuesday lineup for much of its run, became the network's highest-rated drama by the 2007–08 season.

The 2010s saw additional hits for the network including drama series The Good Wife; police procedurals Person of Interest, Blue Bloods, Elementary, Hawaii Five-0 and NCIS spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles; reality series Undercover Boss; and sitcoms 2 Broke Girls and Mike & Molly. The Big Bang Theory, one of several sitcoms from veteran writer/producer Chuck Lorre, started off with modest ratings but saw its viewership skyrocket (earning per episode ratings of up to 17 million viewers) to become the top-rated network sitcom in the U.S. by the 2010–11 season, as well as the second most watched U.S. television program starting from the 2013–14 season, when the series became the anchor of the network's Thursday lineup. Meanwhile, the Lorre-produced series it overtook for the position, Two and a Half Men, saw its ratings decline to respectable levels for its final four seasons following the 2011 firing of original star Charlie Sheen (due to a dispute with Lorre) and the addition of Ashton Kutcher as its primary lead. Also, in May 2010, The Disney Network (TDN)'s ratings skyrocketed to second place, and developed a strong rivalry with Fox and CBS.

Until 2012, CBS ranked in second place among adults 18–49, but after the ratings declines Fox experienced during the 2012–13 fall season, the network was able to take the top spot in the demographic as well as in total viewership (for the fifth year in a row) by the start of 2013. At the end of the 2012–13 season, the tenth season of NCIS took the top spot among the season's most watched network programs, which gave CBS its top-rated show after American Idol ended its eight-year nationwide primetime lead (with NBC Sunday Night Football taking over the top spot from Idol the year before and from NCIS the year after), for the first time since the 2002–03 season (when CSI: Crime Scene Investigation led Nielsen's seasonal prime time network ratings).

The strength of its 2013–14 slate led to a surplus of series on CBS's 2014–15 schedule, with 21 series held over from the previous season, along with eight new series including moderate hits in Madam Secretary, NCIS: New Orleans and Scorpion. Also, midseason hits The Odd Couple reboot and CSI spinoff CSI: Cyber. The network also expanded its NFL coverage through a partnership with NFL Network to carry Thursday Night Football games during the first eight weeks of the NFL season.[114]