John D. Backe, a former bomber pilot who rose to become chief executive of CBS, returning it to first place among prime-time television viewers in the late 1970s before being ousted in a power struggle with the network’s unforgiving founder, William S. Paley, died on Oct. 22 in Gladwyne, Pa., near Philadelphia. He was 83.
The cause was heart failure, his son, John, said.
Mr. Paley had also fired Mr. Backe’s predecessor, Arthur R. Taylor, after ratings (but not revenues) had fallen, and programming executives had quit. But unlike Mr. Taylor, Mr. Backe was viewed as a victim of his own strategic success, particularly in pursuing marketing and technological innovations that Mr. Paley had seemed slow to embrace.
Mr. Backe (pronounced BOCK-ee), then in his mid-40s, had initially seemed in sync with his septuagenarian boss. On the day he was elevated to president, in October 1976, he and Mr. Paley even wore identical blue ties with tiny white polka dots.
Mr. Backe got the job after propelling the CBS publishing division’s earnings to $24 million from $3 million in barely two years. His new mission: to restore CBS to ratings prominence.
Continue reading the main storyThe following May he was promoted to chief executive, becoming only the second to hold that post besides Mr. Paley, who had founded CBS 50 years earlier. Mr. Backe was widely expected to succeed Mr. Paley as chairman.
Respected for his management prowess, Mr. Backe, even though he lacked broadcast experience, was determined to rouse CBS from the complacency it seemed to be languishing in after two decades as the nation’s most popular network, a reign that ended when it fell behind ABC.
Mr. Backe restructured the company, creating separate divisions for entertainment and sports programming; reduced the defection of local affiliated stations to other networks; and increased advertising-driven revenue every year by restoring CBS to first place in the all-important prime-time ratings.
In doing so he abandoned Mr. Taylor’s decision to cede part of prime time to tamer family programming, choosing instead to compete with ABC’s bolder fare with shows like the nighttime soap opera “Dallas” and “Trapper John, M.D.,” an offshoot of the groundbreaking comedy “M*A*S*H.”
After naming Mr. Backe, Mr. Paley retreated somewhat from management affairs, being preoccupied with his ailing wife, Barbara Paley (known as Babe), and an autobiography he was writing. But after she died at 63 in 1978 and the book was finished, he reasserted his prerogatives as chairman and as CBS’s largest single stockholder.
“In effect, he wanted his corporation back, but by then things had changed,” Mr. Backe told The New York Times in 1980.
“The industry was evolving rapidly, with cable and the new technology,” he said, “and he didn’t understand it. He resisted a lot of the things we wanted to do.”
Those desired initiatives included investments in cable television, theatrical and TV movies, and home video. Mr. Paley would constantly challenge his executives with questions, Mr. Backe said, causing frustrating delays and crippling what had been a productive working relationship.
“He was capable of great charm,” Mr. Backe said, “and when he knew what was going on, he could ask very good questions. When he didn’t, he used the devil’s advocate role to take people off base. He’d just keep asking questions, until finally you gave up.”
Some industry observers said that while Mr. Paley could be a mercurial boss, Mr. Backe did not do enough to cultivate his support for innovation.
The showdown finally came when Mr. Backe, then 47, learned that Mr. Paley, 78 at the time, was considering replacing him. Mr. Backe issued a him-or-me ultimatum to the board, whose directors had mostly been handpicked by Mr. Paley. They sided with the chairman.
Stunning the broadcasting industry, Mr. Backe abruptly resigned on May 8, 1980, three years after Mr. Paley had promoted him to chief executive. He was replaced by Thomas H. Wyman, the fifth CBS president in nine years.
John David Backe was born in Akron, Ohio, on July 5, 1932. His father, also named John, worked for the B.F. Goodrich Rubber Company. His mother was the former Ella Enyedy.
Mr. Backe’s wife, the former Katherine Elliott, died last year. In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Kimberly Marr; six grandchildren; a great-grandson; and a sister, Patricia Ohendorf.
Mr. Backe graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1954 with a degree in marketing. (He later earned a master’s degree in business administration from Xavier University in Cincinnati.) After enlisting in the Air Force, he served as a B-47 bomber pilot for the Strategic Air Command.
He subsequently worked for General Electric before entering the publishing industry, joining Silver Burdett, a textbook division of General Learning Corporation (a joint venture of G.E. and Time Inc.). He rose to president of the division and then of the parent company.
Mr. Backe was recruited by CBS for its publishing division in 1973. It included Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Popular Library, which published paperbacks, and two dozen magazines, including Field & Stream and Road & Track. As head of the division, Mr. Backe engineered the acquisition of Fawcett Publications.
After leaving CBS, he became president of Tomorrow Entertainment, a leading television production company. He later founded the management company the Backe Group, as well as a mass-market paperback publishing company, a magazine publishing company and an advertising agency. He also invested in communications companies.
A few months after Mr. Backe’s sudden departure from CBS, Mr. Paley publicly expressed qualms about how it had played out.
“I began to question whether he was the right person to lead the company on his own, and I decided we should do a re-examination,” Mr. Paley told The Times, adding: “The evaluation wasn’t complete, and we hadn’t decided anything, but when Backe found out about it, he took offense and demanded the showdown. We probably handled the Backe thing wrong.” (Mr. Paley died in 1990 at 89.)
Mr. Backe was described in The Times as “shocked but not entirely surprised” by his sudden ouster; as early as six months after he became chief executive, there were rumors afloat that Mr. Paley was having second thoughts about the promotion.
Which may explain the Snoopy statue Mr. Backe kept on a mantle behind his desk. Beneath the faithful beagle’s paws was the plaintive lament “What did I do to deserve all this?”
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