I imagine that's doubly so when an owner is as public (and popular) a figure as Jeter. I'd keep hands well away from that stuff if I were him.
You're probably right.
I can remember, when Bill Paley was alive and well, it was somewhat rare for him to do
any top-level firing at CBS, usually when he had Frank Stanton as his second in command,
but times were that even Stanton would hand the firing off to a subordinate. Until Paley
enforced the then-rule at CBS of mandatory retirement at 65 against Stanton himself,
I only ever knew Paley to fire a very few directly, including CBS News/Murrow's Boys
legend Howard K. Smith. The highest-profile CBS firings I can remember in the
Paley years otherwise were:
* Lou Cowan---the granddaddy of the quiz shows, the mastermind behind radio's
Quiz
Kids and, for CBS television,
The $64,000 Question. Made the fall guy when the
quiz show scandals broke out in 1959, even though it was NBC shows like
Twenty-Oneand
Dotto that caused the biggest headaches. Cowan had nothing to do with
any quiz show rigging (on
Question and its companion
The $64,000 Challenge,
that was the brainchild of sponsor Revlon's chieftain Charles Revson) but CBS needed
a sacrificial lamb and Cowan---who'd been made head of network television when
The
$64,000 Question hit big in 1956---was the designated lamb in 1960. Officially Cowan
"resigned," and he was never proven to have any involvement in quiz show rigging,
but the firing was eventually exposed in
CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye.
Tragically, Cowan and his wife died in a fire at their Madison Avenue hotel apartment in
1976.
* Jim Aubrey---He parlayed his unlikely building of ABC into a late 1950s ratings
comer (it was Aubrey who green-lighted
77 Sunset Strip, which began ABC's
turnaround) into a job replacing Lou Cowan at CBS. Ran it like a banana republic
despot and operated on no credo other than grabbing the biggest audience no matter
with what. ("Broads, bosoms, and fun," a CBS executive called Aubrey's philosophy)
whether he undermined more quality shows in favour of tripe that got bigger
ratings somehow, or whether he undermined particular longtime favourite performers
like Jack Benny or tried strong-arming Lucille Ball. (Somehow, he was unable to
throttle one of the few truly quality shows he had on CBS,
The Dick Van Dyke
Show, though he slaughtered the promising
East Side, West Side by insisting
its locale be moved to Park Avenue and away from its inner-city setting.) Aubrey's
salacious private life did him in in 1965 (he was said to have abused a sponsor's
daughter during a large party thrown at Jackie Gleason's Inverrary, Florida digs),
though there were also rumours he was taking kickbacks from television producers,
including his luxury apartment paid for by Filmways and a limousine paid for by actor-
turned-producer Keefe Brasselle . . . from whom Aubrey bought three shows for
1964-65 that bombed. Stanton fired Aubrey on Paley's orders. Aubrey eventually
became the president of MGM and turned the company around somewhat, before
becoming an independent and then a lecturer before his death. Aubrey was even
a behind the scenes, free-lance consultant to Brandon Tartikoff while Tartikoff turned
NBC around in the 1980s. But by the time he died in 1994, Aubrey was all but
forgotten---even though he was the inspiration for the protagonist of Jacqueline
Susann's novel
The Love Machine.
* Clive Davis---The president of Columbia Records, who'd kicked the label into the rock
and soul era in earnest starting in 1966-67, when he signed the likes of Janis Joplin,
Laura Nyro, Sly & the Family Stone, and Moby Grape to the label and began its climb
to the top of the contemporary music heap. Davis was canned in 1973 over expense
account padding, particularly accused of using big CBS money to stake his son to a
Bar Mitzvah attended by a phalanx of Columbia artists including Paul Simon, Art
Garfunkel, Carlos Santana, and Al Kooper. The designated executioner: Arthur H.
Taylor, then CBS president (Stanton's successor), who'd get his own head into the
guillotine three years later---with the blade dropped, in a rare enough instance, by
Paley himself. The issue a lot of analysts thought was the real reason Davis was
dumped---suspicions of payola, particularly involving distribution deals Columbia
made with the dying Stax, and a label deal Davis made with Gamble & Huff. (The
Philadelphia International soul label. And Kenny Gamble eventually did get bagged
in a payola case, later on . . .) Not that Davis didn't have extra innings: he eventually
turned Columbia Pictures' Bell Records into the far more successful Arista label.
Today---ironically, considering the company's ownership of the vast Columbia
Records legacy---Davis is the president of Sony Music Entertainment.
