Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1959)

OUR RESPECTS TO . . . Charles Henry Tower A management dream for the broadcasting industry comes true today (July 6) on the campus of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in Boston. Sixty station owners and executives are going back to school. Their lessons will deal with broad management problems. Charles Tower, age 39, as NAB's broadcast personnel and economics director has long nursed this idea. He feels the typical station manager has come up from specialization — selling, programming, technical and the other typical forms of broadcast operation. In these pursuits many owners and managers simply haven't been able to find time to receive instruction in basic management problems of the type for which Harvard is renowned. The idea of university training for management is not new to industry in general, but it's an innovation for broadcasters. Advertising Federation of America, for example, has a one-week course at Harvard, also with a July 6 starting date. This compares with the fortnight-long instruction for broadcasters. Every two years Mr. Tower has been taking some form of advanced management training of this type and he's a recognized specialist in the subject. University training of this type has some definite "nots." It's not a cookbook solution to broadcasting problems. This type of problem is taken up at the NAB's fall conferences where station operators can match experiences on specific issues. Not a Cure-All • Nor is the Harvard course designed to tell an operator how to build up a 24.3 rating at 3 p.m. Tuesday. Rather it will go into the tools that are needed to run a business — ways to face up to problems. Mr. Tower spends at least half the day on the telephone, consulting with broadcasters on their management and staff developments. He has been in charge of the NAB department since 1955. Station operators and his fellow executives at NAB say he has the most receptive ears and counseling voice in the industry. A bit on the campus side in his manner and habits, he sports a crewish sort of hairdo in contrast to his long-hairish reading tastes. He loves to play squash at the University Club in Washington and wields a competent racquet. "Chuck" Tower — and that's the way the broadcasting industry refers to him — had his first management experience nearly two decades ago at Williams College in Massachusetts where he managed the football team. Tall and stringy, he assumed this role because his lack of heft didn't fit him for front line or end-run duty. Native to Campus • Campus life was natural for Chuck. His father taught at Philips Academy-Andover and later became dean. Naturally his secondary educational training was at this wellknown prep school where sons of faculty members could attend tuitionfree. After getting his liberal arts degree at Williams, with a political science major and economics minor, he entered Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1942. At the time the Navy was operating courses at the school to develop an officer reserve for the supply corps. He attended continuously— was commissioned an ensign and received his degree in industrial administration. Prior to graduation he received a medical discharge from the Navy. Armed with his graduate degree, Chuck Tower quickly lined up a job that took advantage of his advanced training and introduced him to the manufacturing end of the broadcasting industry. He went to work right off the campus at RCA in Camden, N.J., as junior methods engineer. This job included manufacturing cost control and NAB's Chuck Tower Specialist: personnel and economics personnel relations among other duties. Two years later he joined the National Labor Relations Board as field examiner, working out of the Pittsburgh and Boston offices. In Pittsburgh he met Barbara Schupp, whose father was with NLRB. They were married in June 1946. Law Degree Too • That year Mr. Tower decided he wanted another degree— law. He had an offer to teach at the Boston U. School of Business Administration. This set up the chance to combine law study with a salary. For 24 months he taught and studied, graduating with his law degree and later passing the Massachusetts state bar. At the time Richard P. Doherty, NAB employe-employer relations director, was looking for an assistant. Mr. Doherty, too, had taught at Boston U, and was familiar with the Tower background. On Feb. 2, 1949, Chuck Tower went to work at NAB's Washington headquarters and soon was neckdeep in the labor and economic complications that confront broadcast management. His first speaking contact came at an NAB district meeting held in the Poconos when Mr. Doherty went to Europe on an international mission. This was the first contact many broadcasters had with NAB's assistant labor director. They were pleasantly surprised when this boyish, somewhat retiring speaker opened up with a relaxed, professional platform manner and went right to the heart of their labor problems. His industry appearances are now familiar. He keeps an audience at ease by talking without text, a technique he embraced after once feeling that a prepared speech had struck with the impact of an overage pumpkin. The Towers have three children — David 12, Chris 7, Sandra Lee 2'/2.-He is a member of the Unitarian church. He teaches business management at American U. in Washington. Besides the University Club he belongs to the Harvard Club of Washington. As usual this autumn he will conduct clinics for management at NAB's regional conferences. These are what he calls nuts-and-bolts sessions. At NAB's annual conventions his labor and management sessions have capacity audiences. Around the industry more people are familiar with his station economic reports and reviews of labor developments than any of the NAB services. His role at the Harvard course, he says, will be "chief kibitzer." He thought up the idea and basic planning of the seminar. If the project lives up to his hopes, he believes it will be the first step in a greatly broadened program of executive training in broadcasting. BROADCASTING, July 6, 1959 '..107