CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye

1975, 1976 Signet edition
Robert Metz
CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye
Original price unknown, purchase price $1.65
Very worn paperback
C+

A fascinating book could be written about the first half-century of CBS, but this book isn't it.  Metz has an ability to make everything, even gossip, or the defeat of plans to launch color TV in the 1940s, less interesting.  He also has a gift for the tortured metaphor/simile, as when he says that something could be "counted on the fingers of a leper's hand," or a merger that he compares to a marriage, for two or three pages, including a digression that brings up a new bride's batch of rice.

Still, this book does record what CBS was like from the early days of radio up till just before dark horse ABC shot to #1 in the ratings and changed the game.  (How's that for mixed metaphors?)  CBS founder Bill Paley was in 1975 still resisting retirement, but he did eventually withdraw, so that when he died fifteen years later, he owned less than 9% of the stock.