As Broadcasting & Cable Goes Dark, a Former Editor In Chief Reflects on the 93-Year Legacy of Magazine

It was early February 2004 and barely a week into my tenure as editor in chief of Broadcasting & Cable when I first got to see the power of the venerable trade publication in action. Word had surfaced that Comcast was making a hostile $51 billion bid to acquire Disney, and only minutes later, it was B&C’s star reporter John Higgins who had a direct line to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and his lieutenants as they crisscrossed the country on the corporate jet to rally support from the financial community.

The bid failed in the end, but the terrific cover story in that week’s issue made sure Comcast’s ambitions (fulfilled years later, when it successfully acquired NBCUniversal) were part of the historical record on corporate media ownership. And that exemplified B&C’s vital role as a chronicler and occasional watchdog for what remains the most dynamic and consequential industry of the past century.

This all came to mind as the melancholy messages from friends and former colleagues rolled in with the news that Broadcasting & Cable, after 93 years, will go dark for good.

Broadcasting (as it was originally known) began publication on Oct. 15, 1931, after its legendary founder, Sol Taishoff, had decided that the radio industry needed “its own Editor & Publisher,” the must-read trade publication of the newspaper business. According to those who knew him, Taishoff had both a sense of humor and an unshakeable belief in the First Amendment. Although accounts that he had trademarked the tagline “The Magazine of the First Amendment” may be apocryphal, he undoubtedly led his enterprise in that spirit, insisting that all perspectives had a voice.

Likewise, several longtime editors who preceded me, including the late Don West, founder of the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame, and Harry Jessell, who went on to found the still-influential industry newsletter TVNewsCheck, put this ethos front and center when they were at the helm. The 75th Anniversary Edition of B&C, which I had the privilege of editing in 2006, celebrated the magazine’s record of defending “the industry’s First Amendment rights with unbridled passion.”

From its earliest days, “when radio was king,” the magazine kept a critical eye on politics, news, entertainment and advertising — and where they all intersected. In 1933, it covered President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s seminal fireside chats, which used the combined power of the CBS and NBC radio networks to communicate so effectively to a Depression-ravaged nation. In 1941, it reported on the staggering $100 per hour it cost to broadcast the first TV commercial. The following year, at the height of World War II, it revealed how CBS had cut 20 percent of commercials from newscasts and banned jingles, among other “undue gaiety.”

As it became a must-read for anyone who worked in or aspired to work in the broadcast industry, Broadcasting didn’t shy away from examining television’s growing influence, for good or ill. In its coverage of the televised House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, led by the demagogic Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and the subsequent CBS documentary, anchored by Edward R. Murrow, that led to McCarthy’s downfall, the magazine noted that Murrow’s broadcast had “touched off one of the heaviest audience responses in CBS history,” with the favorable outweighing the unfavorable by more than 9 to 1.

Looking back at my years at the helm of B&C, from 2004 through the summer of 2007, I can see how much my tenure coincided with the upheaval and uncertainty in the media industry that ultimately led to the publication’s demise. YouTube’s emergence, ABC/Disney selling their series on iTunes, and the joint venture that birthed Hulu quickly come tumbling to mind. We covered all the disruption this portended for the information and entertainment economy, often before the mainstream business press had a clue about what it all meant. One prescient story from that period, entitled “Wall Street Has Seen the Future and It’s All Tech,” speculated on the coming on-demand universe. Another from 2006, entitled “TV to Go,” predicted mobile phones would be essential to understanding the medium’s future.

In 2004, at the height of the runaway success of American Idol, our investigative piece headlined “Your Vote Doesn’t Count” revealed how overwhelmed televoting systems were effectively shutting out thousands upon thousands of fans’ votes for their favorite contestant. Another big story from that year explored a then-novel “copy-splitting” technology that could dynamically deploy Campbell’s soup spots to cable subscribers in cold northern regions and V8 spots to those in warmer climes.

We stayed true to B&C’s Washington roots, too, thanks to regulatory savant John Eggerton’s incisive reporting on the Federal Communication Commission during an era of unrestrained mergers and acquisitions and debates over censorship. In 2006, we wrote about how the commission had become so backlogged that media companies were forced to put “millions of dollars and years of planning on hold.” A cover story earlier that year, “The FCC’s Full-Frontal Assault on TV,” showed the Republican dominated commission was playing a time-suck game of foolish indecency rulings that were “confusing, inappropriate and downright frightening.” In the wake of a 2007 FCC report on violence on TV, I had Taishoff and my other B&C forbearers in mind when I wrote in my weekly column that, “when lawmakers usurp the role of the marketplace and decide what’s profane, too violent, or too sexy, it’s bad policy.”

Covering the business of news was also essential to Broadcasting & Cable, whether it was good, bad or ugly. Our 2006 story, “Why Journalists Risk Their Lives to Cover Iraq,” spotlighted the sense of mission that drives news at its best. We covered the painful cuts that continue to spread like an incurable virus through the news industry. We applauded when local news stations produced incredible work during hurricanes and tornadoes.

I realize now how fortunate I was to be at B&C in the mid-2000s, when there was money and corporate support to invest in great journalists and designers who helped to bring a venerable magazine boldly into the present. We had “a hitters’ row” of reporters and editors, including veterans of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and others.

And I knew then how fortunate I was to work with the great, aforementioned John Higgins. He was the utterly fearless guy who would ask anybody the tough questions — anytime, anyplace, no matter how lofty their title. Two weeks before he died in November 2006, we’d been camped out in my office working all our sources to determine who would be the new CEO of Discovery. When we confirmed it would be David Zaslav, Higgins beamed. “You and I have the most fun of anybody here,” he said. “We’re out there. We get to write. We’re in the mix.”

For more than 93 years, this great publication was indeed an essential ingredient in the industry mix. It will be missed.