Robert E. Kintner

Robert E. Kintner (September 12, 1909 – December 20, 1980) was an American journalist and television executive, who served as president of both the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

A native of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Kintner graduated from Swarthmore College in 1931. Two years later, the "New York Herald Tribune" hired him as its White House correspondent. From 1938 to 1941, he paired with Joseph Alsop to write a nationally syndicated column called "Capitol Parade".

During World War II, Kintner served in the U.S. Army Air Force, leaving the service in 1944 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

After the war, Kintner was hired by ABC to do public relations work. He rose rapidly at the then-small network, and served as its president from 1949 to 1956. During his ABC presidency, Kintner was credited with moves that pushed ABC closer to competitiveness against NBC and CBS, when ABC cut deals with Warner Bros. and Walt Disney to provide programming, when the network aired the bulk of the Army-McCarthy hearings, and when two of the Warner and Disney offerings, "Disneyland" and "Cheyenne", became hits that influenced television programming, particularly the latter: "Cheyenne" provoked a television trend to Westerns that helped dominate the medium's entertainment offerings through the mid-1960s.

Kintner then led NBC from 1958 to 1965. His NBC tenure became highly regarded for his aggressive push to make the network's news operations competitive with CBS, particularly with his rising budget allocations to the news operation, the network's coverage of the 1960 Presidential election campaign, and the emergence of "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" as perhaps America's most viewed nightly news program for several years. Kintner at NBC was also compelled to defend his network at the height of the quiz show scandals of 1959-60, testifying to the United States Congress that NBC and the other networks as well as viewers were victims of the quiz show rigging, and that his and other networks had taken steps toward wresting production control of programming from advertisers whose pressures had been seen as key players in the scandals.

Kintner returned to Washington, D.C. in 1966 after President Lyndon B. Johnson named him to be his Cabinet secretary. Kintner had to resign and retire from work the following year, however, because his eyesight was failing.

Kintner was married twice and had three children.

References

* Schmemann, Serge. "Robert E. Kintner, Ex-Head of ABC and NBC, Dies". "New York Times" 23 Dec. 1980: B15.
* The Museum of Broadcast Communications, [http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/K/htmlK/kintnerrobe/kintnerrobe.htm "Robert E. Kintner"]