Story Highlights
- Historical event:
- 18 September 1927
- CBS is short for Columbia Broadcasting System, and the network's logo is a stylized eye.
The TV network currently known as the CBS started broadcasting on this day in 1927.
Today it is the largest TV network in America, and the second largest in the world (after the British BBC). The CBS started out as a radio network because TV was not yet widespread at the time. CBS is short for Columbia Broadcasting System, and the network’s logo is a stylized eye.
The man most responsible for the rise of the CBS is one William S. Paley, who became director at the age of 26. Under his leadership, the CBS grew from a relatively minor company to one of the three leading American TV networks (along with the NBC and ABC).
The famous director and actor Charlie Chaplin broadcast his first “talkie” (sound film) via the CBS (his voice was practically unknown to the broader public at the time since he had previously directed only silent movies). The CBS also broadcast the famous Orson Welles adaptation of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds in 1938, which caused panic among some American citizens, who really believed that aliens had invaded the Earth.
Some of CBS’s most famous shows include: Big Brother, Survivor, CSI, M*A*S*H, Murphy Brown, Daktari, Dallas, Kojak, Magnum, Walker – Texas Ranger, The Ed Sullivan Show, Wheel of Fortune, NCIS, Mentalist, Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, The Twilight Zone.
