1/19/13 review of the book The General: David Sarnoff and the Rise of the Communications Industry

(Image: Amazon)

Here is my January 19, 2013, review of the book The General: David Sarnoff and the Rise of the Communications Industry, by Kenneth Bilby.

Unlike my later Twitter reviews, I did not post this all in one thread. Instead, I posted each tweet separately.

The tweets are below for your convenience.

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Tweet 1. Finished reading The General: David Sarnoff and the Rise of the Communications Industry, by Kenneth Bilby.

T2. Sarnoff interested me as a character after I'd read Tube: The Invention of Television. T3. In Tube RCA's success in TV seemed to me to be the result of David Sarnoff, the businessman, and Vladimir Zworykin, the inventor, as a team. T4. I was eager to learn what kind of businessman Sarnoff was. So I checked out The General from @JCPL.

T5. Sarnoff was part inventor. His mentor was Marconi. His development as a businessman was furthered by Owen Young, more of a statesman.

T6. Sarnoff's career epochs are in my opinion political and inventive epochs: spotting, developing, and standardizing innovations. T7. The ability Sarnoff had to guide his company up through the color TV years had to do with his willingness to partake devoutly in politics. T8. But the dynamic of Sarnoff versus inventors is often portrayed as one of a David versus a Goliath i.e. with Farnsworth, Armstrong, etc.

T9. And obviously the RCA/GE/Westinghouse patent pool battle versus indie radio makers would be spurned by many contemporary anti-patent people. T10. The battle of RCA v AT&T over radio stations was a Goliath (as David) versus Goliath battle on principles similar to the indie radio battle. T11. But AT&T cornered the radio market through advertising. RCA's Sarnoff wasn't an advertiser but a merchandiser. He hated advertising.

T12. Sarnoff ran his RCA as a means for the development of widespread, standardized technology, but with the heart of a flamboyant inventor.

T13. The greatest relationship in the book is between Sarnoff and Bill Paley of CBS. The innovative merchandiser v the programming advertiser. T14. Sarnoff's oligopolist match, Paley remained friend & rival of Sarnoff from the talent raids of radio through to Sarnoff's final days.

T15. Sarnoff's RCA was a company of men, not charts, in an era where corporations were becoming entities of their own. T16. RCA fought for individuation but became an entity as a human-like hybrid. Naturally it'd be re-engulfed by GE, a less hybrid corporation.

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I should mention I checked this book out from the Jefferson County Public Library system in Colorado.