Have you ever watched the Today show? How about the Tonight show? “Well, DUH, yeah!,” you probably just responded. Today and Tonight, long since their premiers have become staples in our American culture. They created blueprints of best operating practices for their show types. One NBC executive played a major role in creating and developing these groundbreaking shows and more because he learned firsthand that necessity is the mother of invention. Now, more than six decades later, his legacy continues. His successes serve as perfect lesson plans for administrators in various fields for turning lemons into lemonade!
When he died in 2002 at the age of 93, Sylvester “Pat” Weaver received praise from then-NBC chairman Bob Wright as “the first major creative force in television programming and one of the most innovative executive in the history of television.”
Nearly from the very invention of radio, the National Broadcasting Company, as Shakespeare might say, was “to the manner born.” RCA, the Radio Corporation of America, founded NBC in 1926 and within a year actually operated not one, but two networks: the Red and the Blue. The government forced NBC to sell one of the two, because of antitrust laws. In the early 1940s, NBC sold the Blue Network, which eventually became ABC. William S. Paley had founded CBS Radio in 1928, just after NBC.
NBC thrived as the most successful radio network into the late 1940s. That’s when Paley, planning for the coming blockbuster success of television, hired away virtually all the major talent from NBC, with only a couple of exceptions. In fact, just before the dawn of 1950, CBS had hired 12 of the top 15 shows during the NBC Radio era.
RCA chairman Gen. David Sarnoff searched for answers and one of the best answers arrived in the form of Weaver. NBC hired him in 1949 and elevated him to president in 1953. The magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth, with a philosophy degree, brought dignity and culture to programming, but also accessibility and – most importantly – innovation!
He fundamentally changed the very nature of programming by selling advertising to clients to run on various shows. The traditional model from radio was to have one sponsor per show. That gave the sponsor incredible power and Weaver’s change ultimately gave the power to the networks themselves, as others followed his new model.
He introduced “spectaculars,” today known as “specials.” These one-time or occasional programs ranged from Mary Martin starring as “Peter Pan” to other performers who didn’t want the grind of a weekly series or were hoping the exposure would land them a weekly show.
Weaver was a programming force when producer Max Liebman’s “Your Show of Shows” debuted. Starring Sid Caesar and a repertory company of Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris, a different guest host joined them each week to perform live comedy sketches on Saturday nights. And, they did it 25 years before the debut of “Saturday Night Live.” The show’s writers included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and others who later became household names.
Weaver also had a hand in creating the Today show, with its first host, Dave Garroway, and the Tonight show with its first host, Steve Allen. The morning mixture of news and information and late night emphasis on comedy, both benefited from a heavy dose of likeable personalities. Those programs became the blueprint for later versions on NBC and other networks’ entries in the competition, as well.
As radio changed its stock in trade to the disc jockey show, newscast, and interview formats, Weaver created NBC Monitor in June 1955. The weekend-long magazine show featured a wide range of news, music, comedy, drama, sports, and more with well-known hosts, many from NBC-TV, ranging from newscasters and sportscasters to comedians and actors. The program ended in January 1975, approximately five months shy of its 20th anniversary.
Pat Weaver left NBC in 1956 over conflicts with Sarnoff. His daughter, Sigourney Weaver, is far better known to modern generations for her acting roles in movies.
Still, he brought an entirely new mindset to NBC and broadcasting during the transition of media dominance from radio to television. Realizing that the CBS raids of NBC’s talent put the once-dominant network in the position of also-ran if competition remained on the same playing field, Weaver was a master game changer. His innovations reinvented broadcast news and entertainment.
Question of the Week
What issues do you and your organization face, where innovation and re-invention could be a real game-changer?