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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Paley should have done as chairman. I didn't want to be cast in the role of looking for a big brother, so to speak, but in the end it wasn't any problem. It just fell apart because there was antagonism on the part of our key people. Key people in this instance included Goddard Lieberson and Jack Schneider, the head of the book company, CBS News, all the division presidents were in the meeting. And Paley was there. I think that Lieberson and Schneider were the two most outspoken negative voices. I believe that with a little different presentation they might have been persuaded to go with the idea. At the time --

Q:

Do you mean by that if Paley had been more behind it?

Stanton:

No, I don't mean that he was -- In fact, I think that he simply was present. I don't recall that he even made the presentation. I tried to give it to them as deadpan as I could, didn't put an top spin on it one way or the other. It seemed to me that if they didn't go for it, I didn't want to be in the position of having been negative, and I certainly didn't want to encourage them to go for it if there was any hesitation on their part. The way things have turned out, I think, with GE and NBC, it's probably a good idea we didn't do it. I would have been more comfortable looking to the future, from a financial point of view, if we'd have been with GE. From a program point of view, I would have been having the same difficulties that [Lawrence K.] Grossman and others have had at NBC. The proposition that Fred made to me was that GE would buy eighty percent of the company and, by doing that, they could consolidate the income for tax purposes. And twenty percent of the company would still be owned by the public. In the case of NBC, they acquired the whole of RCA which gave them the whole of NBC. That was not their plan with the proposition that GE brought to me. I believe they had made a similar proposal, to ABC at one point, but I don't know the particulars on that at all.





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