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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

I was willing to put out--I think I was willing to go to our stockholders and people who could lend us some money and build those facilities in markets like San Francisco and Boston and in the markets where we did not have a station we owned, and do an all-news round-the- clock television service. I wasn't prepared to spend six months to a year working my way through the bureaucratic process, only to have a hearing in the end and be told no. So I didn't--nobody did it until Westinghouse-ABC combined to do an all-news television service.

Q:

Who combined? I'm sorry. Would you repeat that?

Stanton:

Westinghouse and ABC. And that was at the same time [Edward N., “Ted”] Turner was getting started. They were both losing their shirts. I believe Westinghouse was prepared to stay in the joint venture--the ABC Westinghouse one. ABC said they would stay with it another month, or another period of time, and see whether they could get enough advertiser income to support it.

The man who ran it and built it was a man named Bill [William] Scott, and I went up to see his operation. It was very impressive. Bill was located up in Connecticut. Why? Because they could get away from the union conditions which they faced in New York City, and they did a twenty-four hour news service which was pretty damned good--better at that time than our friend in Atlanta.

But ABC didn't want to stay at the table and Westinghouse didn't want to do it alone, so they went out of the business. Only to find out later that Turner was hanging on by his fingernails--and had said to himself, “I'll give it another month or so and maybe I won't stay in.” But there's no way of knowing those things.





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