CBS legend Frank Stanton dead at 98

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Frank Stanton, the broadcasting executive who as president of CBS for 26 years helped build it into the "Tiffany Network," died on Sunday at age 98.

Stanton died Sunday afternoon at his home in Boston, according to CBS News (Charts). He had been in declining health.

Frank Stanton, seen here in 1990, was known as the master builder of CBS.

Stanton, who ran the network from 1946 to 1971, served as CBS Chairman William Paley's chief aide and helped the company make the transition from radio to television.

"He was an academic, and got into radio with Bill Paley on the viewer-analysis side," said Richard Hottelet, a reporter with CBS News from 1944 to 1985. "But he wasn't a bean counter or just a figure juggler. He was a very thoughtful man with enormous taste."

It was Stanton who oversaw construction of Black Rock, the network's sleek corporate headquarters on Sixth Avenue and 52nd Street in Manhattan.

"He chose all the details ... the whole design," said Hottelet, who at 89 is retired and living in Wilton, Conn. "Frank was the man who gave CBS its sort-of public persona. He was quite a man."

Not everyone felt that way. The man who hired Hottelet, Edward R. Murrow, whose documentaries laid bare deep poverty in America and whose "Person to Person" program helped end McCarthyism, did not get along with Stanton.

"It was a shame, because each was an excellent person," Hottelet said about Stanton and Murrow. "But they got on each other's nerves to a remarkable degree, to the point where Murrow said Frank Stanton didn't understand broadcasting, and there were a couple of collisions, especially over 'Person to Person.'"

Hottelet said Stanton took Murrow to task for letting his interview subjects know before the interview started what he was going to ask them. "Stanton, not justifiably, said, in effect, you're helping the man. You're giving him the answer by the way you ask the question. You're rehearsing the man. You can't rehearse something that purports to be a spontaneous broadcast. They were at daggers."

For his part, "Murrow said you can't just barge in on somebody and demand an answer. You have to give them some idea of what we're talking about."

"It annoyed the hell out of Murrow. He said you don't understand this business."

Though Hottelet credits Murrow, not Stanton, for having made CBS News "the Tiffany Network," he described Stanton as a man "who didn't stand in the way of good news."

"There was no hawking with Stanton. He knew what he wanted, and he got it. What he wanted was really the most tasteful and the best quality of whatever broadcast was going to be put on."

And he credited the relationship between Stanton and Paley as key to CBS' success.

"I imagine it was Paley more than Stanton, though Stanton was Paley's right-hand man and certainly didn't disagree - that I ever heard of - with what Paley was trying to do."

"Together, they made it an enormously successful network, moving from radio to television. It was just a smooth transition."

Stanton was born in 1908 in Muskegon, Mich., and grew up in Dayton, Ohio. He received his undergraduate degree in 1930 from Wesleyan University with a degree in pre-medicine and earned his Masters and Doctorate in psychology from Ohio State University.

Stanton's dissertation, "A Critique of Present Methods and a New Plan for Studying Radio Listening Behavior," caught the attention of the network, and he began working in its audience research department in 1935. He was promoted to vice president of CBS in 1942 and, four years later, at age 38, to president.

According to the Museum of Broadcasting, Stanton reorganized the company in 1951, creating separate administrations for radio and television and creating autonomous divisions, including buying the New York Yankees in 1964 and buying the publisher, Holt, Rinehart and Winston and Creative Playthings, maker of educational toys.

Stanton helped bring about the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon televised presidential debate that is credited with helping the Democrat emerge victorious and worked to repeal Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act, requiring networks to grant equal time to all political candidates.

The news executive defended First Amendment rights and upheld the responsibility of the media to broadcast in the public interest.

In 1971, the U.S. House of Representatives subpoenaed him to turn over outtakes from a documentary "CBS Reports: 'The Selling of the Pentagon'," which exposed the Pentagon's propaganda campaign to build support for the Vietnam War.

Risking a possible jail sentence, he refused to turn over the outtakes. A House vote later cleared him and the network of contempt charges. His defense of broadcast journalism won him one of his five Peabody Awards.

CBS News quoted Stanton as saying, "The spirit and the purpose of the First Amendment ... is to protect not the government, not the press but the people."

"Broadcast journalism thrives today, to a large extent, because Frank Stanton defended our rights under the First Amendment and guided us through the most dangerous crisis this industry ever faced," said Sean McManus, president of the network's news and sports divisions.

Stanton also revolutionized the ratings system by creating the first ratings monitor for CBS, giving the network an edge with advertisers. His ability to monitor the public's interests helped CBS generate hits.

From 1950 to 1973, an average of 58 percent of each season's top 10 Nielson-rated programs were broadcast on CBS.

Said former CBS Anchor Walter Cronkite, "It was William Paley's sagacity and great good fortune to bring along as his chief executive Frank Stanton, who recruited over the years the broadcasters, producers, reporters and writers that constituted the all-star cast, from Ed Murrow on down, that burnished CBS."

Stanton remained president until 1971 when he became vice chairman before he reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 in 1973.

The last surviving member of the elite group of broadcast journalists sometimes referred to as "Murrow's Boys" said the network has changed dramatically in the years since Stanton left, all but giving up on documentaries.

Asked for his comments on Katie Couric's assumption of the network's anchor chair, Hottelet said, "She's doing her best. It's a different approach to news."

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