Robert Bennett - WCVB-TV Boston

WCVB-TV BOSTON

How We Built the Greatest Television Station In America

Robert M. Bennett
with Dennis Richard

WCVB-TV Boston 2013 Robert M. Bennett

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Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-939447-11-1
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-939447-12-8

Printed in the United States of America

For Marjie, Kelly, Casey, and Brandon

I ONCE TOLD Bob Bennett that if he ever made something out of a television station he was going to be working at in Boston, I would be very interested in buying that station if it was ever offered for sale. Apparently, as he was making his way out the door to take his new job at Boston Broadcasters, Inc., my words registered with him. Many years later, when he and his team had built WCVB-TV into one of Americas best television stations, he called me and told me it was for sale. I had been waiting for that call because I knew that if anyone could build a station from the ground up, and make it a station of unbelievable recognition and success, that person would be Bob Bennett.

Bobs work at Metromedia is legendary. I first met him in 1963, when Metromedia was buying KTTV-Los Angeles. Bob was a sales manager at the time and I remember quite vividly when we met. After we had made our purchase, I was making my way around the room greeting the new Metromedia employees and introducing myself, when someone came over to me, yanked on my tie, and said, Mr. Kluge, thats the ugliest tie I have ever seen. I broke out laughing at the joke and then, for the first time, met the man who was to help me shape the future of Metromedia. I think he was quite taken aback at his statement about my tie, and soon realized it might not have been the best way for him to make an introduction to his new boss, but I took it in a good-natured way and we became friends.

Bobs first assignment was to be the General Manager of WTTGTV in Washington, D.C. In the late 50s, I bought a controlling interest in the DuMont Television Network, and thus acquired the New York City and Washington, D.C. DuMont stations. We changed the name of the company in 1961, to Metromedia Broadcasting, Inc, and when the time came in 1966 to choose a GM for WTTG-TV, I chose Bob. Even though he had come out of sales and had no real-world experience as a general manager, I knew there was something special about him, so we sent him to Washington.

He faced a tough assignment at that time. Other stations were already entrenched in the market: NBC had an owned and operated station, as did CBS, which was owned by the Washington Post, and there was also an ABC affiliate. Bob and his team did extraordinary things with the station, and by the end of the first year, WTTG had made seventy percent of all profit in the market. He took a station that was losing in the ratings, and made it a model for emulation by other stations. He seemed to have the uncanny ability to create popular local television programming, which would be the hallmark of his career.

Based on the success he had at WTTG, we then sent Bob to New Yorks WNEW-TV to be the GM. While there, he once again showed his tremendous local programming talent and made the station a winner. He was the first broadcaster to create an all-minority newscast and to create local programming that touched a nerve in the New York market.

In the early 1970s, he was offered a job with a company in Boston that had been embroiled in a long and bitter battle to acquire a license to run a television station. At the time he was hired as the GM, the company did not formally own the license. But I knew that if they did acquire that license, it was going to take a man like Bob Bennett to make that station a success.

They eventually acquired the license, and that station became WCVB-TV Boston, one of the most highly awarded and talked-about stations in television history. It also became the number one ABC affiliate in the country. The New York Times declared that WCVB was a television station with a different vision. That different vision belonged to Bob Bennett, so when he called me and told me that the station was for sale, I went right up to Boston and bought it. We had come full circle in some ways, because after I bought the station, I offered Bob the position of President of Metromedia Broadcasting, Inc., and he took it. We went on to do great things at Metromedia, including taking the company private in what was then the highest leveraged buyout in U.S. history. I was fortunate to have great partners around me, which included Bob, Stuart Subotnick, and George Duncan.

My philosophy for all of my life has been the pursuit of excellence. Throughout Bobs career, he has joined me in that lofty pursuit. Bob Bennett is a truly unique individual and a legend in television broadcasting. He is the recipient of many awards, including the coveted Broadcasting & Cable Magazines Hall of Fame Award. He is an extraordinary person and a man of enormous understanding, insight, and talent. There was never a job for Metromedia that he could not get done. Bob is a builder. People would gravitate toward him and were always eager to join his team. I always believed that one of the major reasons for Bobs success was his ability to motivate people. He was hailed as the man most responsible for balancing the profit motive with a concern for quality programming.

I never met a person at Metromedia who would not work his or her heart out just to please him. From all of this came the extraordinary career of a man who has helped shape the business of television. They dont make people like him anymore.

John W. Kluge

I FIRST MET Bob Bennett in 1995 in Los Angeles, when a friend of mine suggested that I meet him. This friend went on to tell me that he felt strongly about getting the two of us together because, as he put it, You and Bob speak the same language. I did not know who Bob Bennett was at the time, nor did I know what language we had in common, but I took his telephone number and called to introduce myself. Bob agreed to meet me, and our first meeting was very congenial. We asked one another questions as to who we were, what we did, and what projects we were working on. I remember him telling me that he was financing three full-length films all at once out of his own pocket, and that he owned a film library. He spoke very little about his background in television, and he never really explained to me what his previous accomplishments were. I didnt realize at the time that he was the man behind one of the most respected and honored television stations in the country, WCVB-TV Boston.

Even though I grew up in Boston, I had not heard of Bob Bennett. He came to Boston in 1971 to become General Manager of WCVB-TV, and it was not too long afterwards that I moved to New York City. Under the leadership of one man, WCVB-TV was about to offer some very new and exciting original local programming. The new WCVB-TV was to become a television station that responded to the needs of local viewers, yet showed such originality that other station managers across the country were forced to sit up and take notice, even if they didnt want to. The person who was leading that charge was Bob Bennett. In many ways, Bob forever changed the face of local television and made it into something original, exciting, and very much tied in with the local community. As a previous WCVB-TV sales executive put it to me, Local programming was in our DNA.