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Television Tightrope
How I Escaped Hitler, Survived CBS, and Fathered Viacom
Publication Date: April 30, 2007
Ralph M. Baruch with Lee Roderick
ISBN: 0-9673432-2-4
400 pages including photos, source notes and index
List Price: $27.95 U.S. $34.95 Canada
Distributed by Independent Publishers Group
Subjects:
Biography, Broadcasting, Cable Television, History, Entertainment, Business
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Distributed by Independent Publishers Group, Chicago, IL
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description
If you get more than a handful of television channels, thank Ralph Baruch. Facing great odds, Baruch—once a top executive at CBS and founder of Viacom—led the pivotal battles against broadcasters, regulators, and legistlators that pried Washington's fingers from the neck of cable television and set it soaring.
CBS spun off tiny Viacom, led by Baruch. The parent had 28,000 employees, the child 200. CBS and federal agencies piled on oppressive conditions that nearly strangled Viacom in its crib. But Viacom survived to become the world's largest entertainment company—returning nearly three decades later, in 1999, and buying CBS. Tightrope is also an intimate memoir. As Nazis poured into Paris in World War II, teenaged Ralph led the escape of his family, carrying his grandmother over the Pyrenees Mountains to Spain and then freedom.
Ralph’s first wife died tragically, leaving four young daughters. Years later he fell in love with a remarkable woman who would anchor Ralph through all the turbulence ahead. He had survived Hitler, CBS, feckless government bureaucrats, and greedy outsiders who coveted Viacom. But—until too late—he failed to see the slash of the knife wielded by some insiders bent on buying and carving up the company Baruch had led since its birth. Ralph, however, had not yet played his last card. In the wings was Boston businessman Sumner Redstone. In a titanic takeover struggle, he wrested Viacom from the cabal of insiders. It remained to be seen if Redstone would also carve up and sell off Viacom—as analysts predicted—or continue to build the global enterprise envisioned by Ralph Baruch.
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