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He was able to buy back his half-interest in Columbia within three years because he never lost touch with the jazz age. He discovered Crooner Morton Downey, used him to entice Camel Cigaret advertising from N. B. C. He has been radio impresario for Kate Smith, Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, the Mills Brothers, Ben Bernie and many another crooner, hummer, lullaby singer. Yet his chief interest has been in better music for the radio. He signed the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra for one of Columbia's sustaining programs. Conductor Toscanini embarrassed him acutely by kissing him on both cheeks. Other Paley innovations: Columbia's "American School of the Air," its "Church of the Air," the world's first regular network broadcasting television station W2XAB.
Columbia's executive offices are elegant, many of its announcers have elegant Oxford accents. President Paley does not object: it is good showmanship. His own office is almost like Hollywood. In a smartly swiveling chair he sits, barking orders, telephoning California, London, Berlin. His subordinates seldom carry out his orders when he first gives them. He often changes his mind. His habits are extravagant, jazz-age habits: he borrows and lends with no thought of repayment, seldom has a cigaret in his pocket, has seen his cook only once in two years. Spending-money slips through his fingers, but he brags about the time he lived on $25 a week. He does not brag of the fact that Congress Cigar Co. which he put on its feet was recently sold for $12,000,000. He talks in extravagant metaphor, sometimes mixed. A favorite expression: "Not a red dime!" He keeps young men around him (average Columbia age: 27). But it has been two years since he sent friends a ten-foot banner with the legend: "A Very, Very Merry Christmas from Bill Paley."