Pat Weaver
Encyclopedia
Sylvester Barnabee "Pat" Weaver (December 21, 1908 – March 15, 2002) was an American radio advertising executive, who became president of NBC
between 1953 and 1955. He has been credited with reshaping commercial broadcasting
's format and philosophy as radio
gave way to television
as America's dominant home entertainment. His daughter is actress Sigourney Weaver
.
, the son of Sylvester Laflin Weaver (1876–1958) and Elenor Isabel Dixon. He was of Scottish
descent (possibly Clan MacFarlane
), as well as of Ulster Scots and early New England
ancestry. He was a great-great-grandson of Charles Laflin, a gunpowder manufacturer, who came to America in 1740 from Ulster
, Ireland
, settling at Oxford
Worcester County
, Massachusetts
. Charles Laflin and his family were living at Oxford, Massachusetts, when he purchased land in 1749 in the Southern (South-) village (-wick) part of the town of Westfield
, Massachusetts
. He was the brother of comedian Doodles Weaver
. He graduated from Dartmouth College
in 1930, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Psi
Fraternity. He also served in the United States Navy from 1942 through 1945.
He married Elizabeth Inglis
in 1942. She was born Desiree Mary Lucy Hawkins on July 10, 1913 in Colchester
, County Essex, England; and died on August 25, 2007 in Santa Barbara, California
. She made her screen debut in Borrowed Clothes (1934) as well as having a number of small parts in some of Alfred Hitchcock
's early movies. She reached the high point of her career when she co-starred with Bette Davis
in William Wyler
's The Letter
. She retired from acting when she married in 1942. The couple were the parents of two children; Sigourney (born Susan Alexandra) and Trajan Victor Charles. She acted with her daughter Sigorney in the sci-fi masterpiece "Aliens
."
advertising agency during the golden age of radio. In the mid-1930s he produced Fred Allen
's Town Hall Tonight radio show, and he then supervised all the agency's radio programming. NBC hired him in 1949 to challenge the CBS
network's programming lead.
At NBC, Weaver established many operating practices that became standard for network television. He introduced the practice of networks producing their own television programming, then selling advertising time during the broadcasts. Prior to that, ad agencies usually created each show for a particular client. Because commercial announcements could now more easily be sold to more than one company sponsor for each program, a single advertiser pulling out would not necessarily threaten a program.
Weaver created Today in 1952, followed by Tonight
(1954) with Steve Allen
, Home (1954) with Arlene Francis
and Wide Wide World
(1955), hosted by Dave Garroway
.
He believed so deeply that broadcasting should educate as well as entertain that he typically required NBC shows to include at least one sophisticated cultural reference or performance per installment—including a segment of a Verdi
opera adapted to the comic style of Sid Caesar
and Imogene Coca
's groundbreaking Your Show of Shows
.
Weaver didn't ignore NBC Radio, either. In 1955, as network radio was dying, Weaver gave it one of the greatest adrenaline kicks in its history with NBC Monitor
, a weekend-long magazine-style programming block that featured an array of news, music, comedy, drama, sports, and anything that could be broadcast within magazine style, with rotating advertisers and some of the most memorable names in broadcast journalism, entertainment and sports.
NBC Monitor long outlived Weaver's tenure running the network. Following disputes with chieftain David Sarnoff
, Weaver departed. His ideas were either too expensive or too highbrow
for company tastes. His successors (first, Sarnoff's son, Robert; then, Robert Kintner) standardized the network's programming practices with far less of the ambitiousness that characterized the Weaver years.
In 1960, years after leaving NBC, Weaver displayed his frustration with the network in an article in the Sunday Denver Post. What once was the "Golden Age" of television in the early 1950s, slowly diminished by the end of the decade into the early 1960s when he claimed networks made a series of bad decisions. In the article he noted management problems within NBC, CBS and ABC: "Television has gone from about a dozen forms to just two-news shows and the Hollywood stories. The blame lies in the management of NBC, CBS and ABC. Management doesn't give the people what they deserve. I don't see any hope in the system as it is."
He died in 2002 at his home in Santa Barbara, California at the age of 93.
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
between 1953 and 1955. He has been credited with reshaping commercial broadcasting
Commercial broadcasting
Commercial broadcasting is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship...
's format and philosophy as radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
gave way to television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
as America's dominant home entertainment. His daughter is actress Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver is an American actress. She is best known for her critically acclaimed role of Ellen Ripley in the four Alien films: Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, for which she has received worldwide recognition .Other notable roles include Dana...
.
Personal life
Weaver was born Sylvester Barnabee Weaver in Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, the son of Sylvester Laflin Weaver (1876–1958) and Elenor Isabel Dixon. He was of Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
descent (possibly Clan MacFarlane
Clan MacFarlane
Clan MacFarlane is a Highland Scottish clan. The clan claims a descent from the old line of the Earls of Lennox. For some time there had been some controversy as to the descent of these earls, with both Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon origins given. Though today it is accepted that Clan MacFarlane is of...
), as well as of Ulster Scots and early New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
ancestry. He was a great-great-grandson of Charles Laflin, a gunpowder manufacturer, who came to America in 1740 from Ulster
Ulster
Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. In ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, settling at Oxford
Oxford, Massachusetts
Oxford is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 13,709 at the 2010 census.For geographic and demographic information on the census-designated place Oxford, please see the article Oxford , Massachusetts.-History:...
Worcester County
Worcester County, Massachusetts
-Demographics:In 1990 Worcester County had a population of 709,705.As of the census of 2000, there were 750,963 people, 283,927 households, and 192,502 families residing in the county. The population density was 496 people per square mile . There were 298,159 housing units at an average density...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. Charles Laflin and his family were living at Oxford, Massachusetts, when he purchased land in 1749 in the Southern (South-) village (-wick) part of the town of Westfield
Westfield, Massachusetts
Westfield is a city in Hampden County, in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 41,094 at the 2010 census. The ZIP Code is 01085 for homes and businesses, 01086 for Westfield State...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. He was the brother of comedian Doodles Weaver
Doodles Weaver
Winstead Sheffield Weaver , who used the professional name Doodles Weaver, was an American actor and comedian on radio, recordings, and television. He was the brother of NBC executive Sylvester "Pat" Weaver and the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver.Born in Los Angeles, Weaver was given the nickname...
. He graduated from Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
in 1930, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania on February 19, 1852. There are over a hundred chapters and colonies at accredited four year colleges and universities throughout the United States. More than 112,000 men have been...
Fraternity. He also served in the United States Navy from 1942 through 1945.
He married Elizabeth Inglis
Elizabeth Inglis
Elizabeth Inglis was a British actress, known for her role in The Letter opposite Bette Davis.Inglis was born Desiree Mary Lucy Hawkins in Colchester, England. Her screen debut was in the 1934 film, Borrowed Clothes. She then went on to take a small part in the 1935 classic Alfred Hitchcock film,...
in 1942. She was born Desiree Mary Lucy Hawkins on July 10, 1913 in Colchester
Colchester
Colchester is an historic town and the largest settlement within the borough of Colchester in Essex, England.At the time of the census in 2001, it had a population of 104,390. However, the population is rapidly increasing, and has been named as one of Britain's fastest growing towns. As the...
, County Essex, England; and died on August 25, 2007 in Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
. She made her screen debut in Borrowed Clothes (1934) as well as having a number of small parts in some of Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's early movies. She reached the high point of her career when she co-starred with Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
in William Wyler
William Wyler
William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...
's The Letter
The Letter (1940 film)
The Letter is a 1940 American film noir directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Howard Koch is based on the 1927 play of the same name by W. Somerset Maugham, originally filmed in 1929.-Plot:...
. She retired from acting when she married in 1942. The couple were the parents of two children; Sigourney (born Susan Alexandra) and Trajan Victor Charles. She acted with her daughter Sigorney in the sci-fi masterpiece "Aliens
Alien (film)
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which...
."
Career
Weaver worked for the Young & RubicamYoung & Rubicam
Y&R is a marketing and communications company specializing in advertising, digital and social media, sales promotion, direct marketing and brand identity consulting.-History:...
advertising agency during the golden age of radio. In the mid-1930s he produced Fred Allen
Fred Allen
Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it...
's Town Hall Tonight radio show, and he then supervised all the agency's radio programming. NBC hired him in 1949 to challenge the CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
network's programming lead.
At NBC, Weaver established many operating practices that became standard for network television. He introduced the practice of networks producing their own television programming, then selling advertising time during the broadcasts. Prior to that, ad agencies usually created each show for a particular client. Because commercial announcements could now more easily be sold to more than one company sponsor for each program, a single advertiser pulling out would not necessarily threaten a program.
Weaver created Today in 1952, followed by Tonight
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...
(1954) with Steve Allen
Steve Allen (comedian)
Stephen Valentine Patrick William "Steve" Allen was an American television personality, musician, composer, actor, comedian, and writer. Though he got his start in radio, Allen is best known for his television career. He first gained national attention as a guest host on Arthur Godfrey's Talent...
, Home (1954) with Arlene Francis
Arlene Francis
Arlene Francis was an American actress, radio talk show host, and game show panelist...
and Wide Wide World
Wide Wide World
Wide Wide World was a 90-minute documentary series telecast live on NBC on Sunday afternoons at 4pm Eastern. Conceived by network head Pat Weaver and hosted by Dave Garroway, Wide Wide World was introduced on the Producers' Showcase series on June 27, 1955...
(1955), hosted by Dave Garroway
Dave Garroway
David Cunningham "Dave" Garroway was the founding host of NBC's Today from 1952 to 1961. His easygoing, relaxed, and relaxing style belied a battle with depression that may have contributed to the end of his days as a leading television personality—and, eventually, his life...
.
He believed so deeply that broadcasting should educate as well as entertain that he typically required NBC shows to include at least one sophisticated cultural reference or performance per installment—including a segment of a Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
opera adapted to the comic style of Sid Caesar
Sid Caesar
Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,...
and Imogene Coca
Imogene Coca
Imogene Fernandez de Coca was an American comic actress best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows....
's groundbreaking Your Show of Shows
Your Show of Shows
Your Show of Shows is a live 90-minute variety show that appeared weekly in the United States on NBC , from February 25, 1950, until June 5, 1954, featuring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca....
.
Weaver didn't ignore NBC Radio, either. In 1955, as network radio was dying, Weaver gave it one of the greatest adrenaline kicks in its history with NBC Monitor
Monitor (NBC Radio)
NBC Monitor was an American weekend radio program broadcast from June 12, 1955, until January 26, 1975. Airing live and nationwide on the NBC Radio Network, it originally aired beginning Saturday morning at 8am and continuing through the weekend until 12 midnight on Sunday...
, a weekend-long magazine-style programming block that featured an array of news, music, comedy, drama, sports, and anything that could be broadcast within magazine style, with rotating advertisers and some of the most memorable names in broadcast journalism, entertainment and sports.
NBC Monitor long outlived Weaver's tenure running the network. Following disputes with chieftain David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff was an American businessman and pioneer of American commercial radio and television. He founded the National Broadcasting Company and throughout most of his career he led the Radio Corporation of America in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his...
, Weaver departed. His ideas were either too expensive or too highbrow
Highbrow
Used colloquially as a noun or adjective, highbrow is synonymous with intellectual; as an adjective, it also means elite, and generally carries a connotation of high culture. The word draws its metonymy from the pseudoscience of phrenology, and was originally simply a physical descriptor...
for company tastes. His successors (first, Sarnoff's son, Robert; then, Robert Kintner) standardized the network's programming practices with far less of the ambitiousness that characterized the Weaver years.
In 1960, years after leaving NBC, Weaver displayed his frustration with the network in an article in the Sunday Denver Post. What once was the "Golden Age" of television in the early 1950s, slowly diminished by the end of the decade into the early 1960s when he claimed networks made a series of bad decisions. In the article he noted management problems within NBC, CBS and ABC: "Television has gone from about a dozen forms to just two-news shows and the Hollywood stories. The blame lies in the management of NBC, CBS and ABC. Management doesn't give the people what they deserve. I don't see any hope in the system as it is."
He died in 2002 at his home in Santa Barbara, California at the age of 93.
Further reading
- Currey, Josiah Seymour. Chicago: Its History and Its Builders, a Century of Marvelous Growth, Volume 5 Chicago. Publisher: Clarke Publishing Company, 1912.
- Cutter, William Richard. New England families, genealogical and memorial: a record of the achievements of her people in the making of commonwealths and the founding of a nation, Volume 3 Publisher: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1913.
- Reed, William Field. The descendants of Thomas Durfee of Portsmouth, R.I. Publisher: Washington, D.C., Gibson Bros., Printers. 1900
External links
- The Museum of Broadcast Communications (formal bio)
- Television Heaven (brief bio)
- Pat Weaver: Television Advertising Visionary (biographical essay)
- "NBC (Radio) Monitor" tribute
- Sylvester Weaver interviewed by Mike WallaceMike Wallace (journalist)Myron Leon "Mike" Wallace is an American journalist, former game show host, actor and media personality. During his 60+ year career, he has interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers....
on The Mike Wallace Interview - Laflin & Rand Powder Company