Ex-L.A. Chamber Head : Banowsky Big on New Broadcasting Venture

For the past several months, former Pepperdine University President William S. Banowsky has been developing a new episode in his varied career--this one in broadcasting--and it’s one that his mother isn’t too crazy about.

During his 49 years, Banowsky has been a Church of Christ minister, a fund-raising and campus-building marvel at Pepperdine University and president of the University of Oklahoma--a seven-year stretch that was interrupted by a six-week “brief misadventure” as the first paid president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

But last December, Banowsky was persuaded by Edward L. Gaylord--one of the nation’s richest men and head of an Oklahoma City-based publishing empire--to leave the University of Oklahoma. Banowsky agreed to become president of Gaylord Broadcasting Co., the nation’s largest privately owned broadcasting company and a subsidiary of Gaylord’s Oklahoma Publishing Co.

Knew Little About Industry

“My mother thinks that I have had a very unfortunate progression,” Banowsky quipped, “from the highest calling (as a minister) to Christian education to public education to business. But I think it all hangs together.”

In a recent interview, Banowsky admitted that he knew very little about the broadcasting industry when he resigned from the University of Oklahoma. But Banowsky said he has “always enjoyed an avocation for broadcasting” that consisted of earning a doctorate in communications from USC, serving on the boards of the Public Broadcasting System and KCET-TV, conducting a weekly television show on KNBC-TV and later hosting “Bill Banowsky Visits” on an Oklahoma City television station.

“It is a transition going into the business world,” Banowsky said. “If someone had invited me to be in the oil business or the computer business (rather than broadcasting), it would have been much more difficult because I came from an academic background.”

Revitalize Firm

Edward Gaylord--like Banowsky, a conservative Republican--hired Banowsky to revitalize Gaylord Broadcasting, which owns seven television stations, two radio stations, Opryland USA (including the Grand Ole Opy, a hotel and convention center, an amusement park, video production facilities and a cable network in Nashville, Tenn.) and one-third of the Texas Rangers baseball team (with an option to buy the entire franchise).

Dallas-based Gaylord Broadcasting also has a television production subsidiary in Los Angeles called Gaylord Productions.

Banowsky wouldn’t discuss Gaylord Broadcasting’s financial situation, noting that Oklahoma Publishing is a privately held company that doesn’t report financial results. However, Banowsky described an estimate made by Standard & Poor’s of $350 million in annual revenue as “a very inadequate guess.”

Gaylord Broadcasting accounts for about half of Oklahoma Publishing. The family-run empire also includes the Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, a newspaper in Colorado Springs, Colo., an oil and gas operation and a real estate business.

What was needed at Gaylord, Banowsky said, was a shift in operating philosophy to take advantage of the enormous changes that have occurred in the broadcast industry during the last few years. The proliferation of independent television stations and the growth of cable have caused the once-huge profit margins of many broadcast operations to narrow, he said.

“Mr. Gaylord felt that business as usual would not work in this climate,” Banowsky said. “Part of my mission was to come in to assess the new competitive climate and to determine what we had to do in the ‘80s and ‘90s--because no group was more profitable than ours and to maintain that vitality would be tougher.”

More Aggressive

Since he arrived, Banowsky has replaced the general managers of four of Gaylord Broadcasting’s television stations. The company has become more aggressive in program acquisition for its five independent and two network-affiliated stations.

Gaylord also has become more aggressive in purchasing rights to television programs and in developing its own projects, he said.

Among its current projects is “Stone Pillow,” a CBS television movie starring Lucille Ball as a New York bag lady that Gaylord is producing in association with executive producer Merrill Karpf and director George Schaefer.

“Right now we have more under way than all the rest of what we’ve ever done altogether,” Banowsky said.

Gaylord wants to buy five more television stations, probably in the Sun Belt, to bring it to the new limit of 12 allowed by the Federal Communications Commission, but recent prices paid for television stations have been too high, Banowsky said. Gaylord was second in the bidding for KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, which sold for a record $510 million, and also bid unsuccessfully for Evening News Assn., publisher of the Detroit News and owner of several television stations.

Banowsky said Broadcasting magazine recently ranked Gaylord Broadcasting as the nation’s ninth-largest broadcasting company based on the number of households that its programs reach.

“Within the industry we are very well known by everyone,” Banowsky said. “Outside the industry we’ve been a very well-kept secret.

“That’s part of the tradition of the Gaylord family,” he said. “Mr. Gaylord has the motto that ‘the whale only gets harpooned when it spouts.’ ”

Won’t Go Public

Banowsky said that neither Gaylord Broadcasting nor Oklahoma Publishing Co. is an acquisition candidate and that there is no interest in going public. “This is first and foremost a family company,” he said.

Banowsky said his move to Gaylord Broadcasting was something “I weighed quite carefully,” in part because of his short stint in late 1982 at the Los Angeles chamber.

Banowsky quit after only six weeks to return to the University of Oklahoma, saying at the time that taking the job was a “major mistake in judgment.”

“That brief misadventure created in my soul a sense of great caution,” he said.

“There was no mystery to it,” Banowsky said of his quick arrival and departure. Banowsky said he realized that he would be manager of the chamber no matter what his title or job description as the man who would lead the revitalized chamber to new levels of business activism.

“The only reason I made that career mistake with the chamber, which is the only thing like that in my life, is because I love Los Angeles so much,” said Banowsky, a Texas native. “I was lured--I’m not a chamber type.

“It was just one of those things, and everyone gets one. In golf they call it a ‘mulligan.’ . . . The gentlemen give you a second tee.”

Banowsky has long been mentioned as a possible contender for various political offices. “But I’ve never run,” he protested.

“I’ll be 50 years old in the spring,” Banowsky said. “I would say that my time is past. But with President Reagan setting such an example, I would hate to say that anything is impossible.”