Goldenson Is Remembered as the Visionary Behind ABC

Broadcasting pioneer Leonard H. Goldenson was memorialized Friday in Manhattan for his vision and risk-taking that built ABC into one of the three pillars of network television.

The last surviving and least well-known among broadcasting contemporaries David Sarnoff, founder of NBC, and CBS founder William S. Paley, the modest Goldenson died Dec. 27 at the age of 94.

As a late third entrant in what was then a two-network world, ABC, which Goldenson acquired in 1951, had to take enormous risks and, in doing so, revolutionized the business, as memorial speakers made clear.

“When you begin as No. 3, you figure out how to compete in a different way,” said Thomas Murphy, former chairman of Capital Cities/ABC. It was to Murphy’s Capital Cities Communications that Goldenson sold ABC in 1986.

Among his achievements, Goldenson persuaded movie studios to begin filming programs for television, at a time when studios saw the nascent medium as a potential threat. He spent heavily to bring sports to the network and to build a premier news department, personally wooing Barbara Walters to leave NBC, the newscaster recalled. He saw early on the potential of cable, insisting through years of losses that sports network ESPN would one day be the powerhouse it became, Murphy said.

Goldenson’s daughter Loreen Arbus noted that he was a friend of eight U.S. presidents, yet the memorial service had the feel of a family affair, drawn heavily from the ranks of ABC employees of the last several decades. One speaker, Michael Eisner, cited Goldenson’s graciousness on Eisner’s very first day as a junior ABC employee; Eisner went on to become chairman of Walt Disney Co., which bought ABC in 1996.

Roone Arledge, who built both ABC’s sports and news departments for Goldenson, evoked ABC’s pull-together family mentality, noting that Sarnoff ran NBC like an engineer, as a medium to sell TV sets; Paley ran CBS “like he bought a painting, with great style and to great applause,” and Goldenson ran ABC “like a candy store with the boss living upstairs.”

About 1,000 people turned out for the service at Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El, including News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox network followed a similar scrappy game plan to success. Numerous CBS executives past and present, including former President and Vice Chairman Frank Stanton, former Chairman Larry Tisch and current President and Chief Executive Mel Karmazin, also attended, as did CBS founder Bill Paley’s son, William C. Paley.

Several speakers recalled Goldenson’s insistence on being addressed by his first name; actress Marlo Thomas said she compromised by calling him “Uncle Leonard,” which led to gossip column items that she was his niece and that’s how “That Girl” got on the air.

Goldenson was also remembered for his efforts to fight cerebral palsy--daughter Genise, who died in 1973, was born with the condition--which led to the establishment of United Cerebral Palsy, one of the nation’s largest charitable health organizations, and to his work championing public access for Americans with disabilities.