With a breakfast-time disquisition on "Stresses Within the Communist Bloc," Washington's WTTG TV last week began to broadcast a series of uncompromisingly erudite lectures on international affairs by professors of New York's Columbia University.* Behind this brainstretching venture, which drew a rare rave from FCC Chairman Newton Minow, stood an unlikely figure: Investment Banker Armand Grover Erpf, 64. In 26 years as a partner in Manhattan's prestigious Carl M. Loeb. Rhoades & Co.. elfinlike Armand Erpf has displayed an uncanny nose for investment opportunities that has led fellow financiers to label him "a professionals' professional.'' But whenever possible. Erpf likes to combine commercial profit with intellectual advancement—and in his eminently successful pursuit of both goals he has made himself perhaps Wall Street's closest approximation of Renaissance man.
The Urge to Educate. The Columbia television lectures are characteristic of Erpf's operations. Seven years ago, one of his investment sorties resulted in the creation of a profitable TV and outdoor-advertising chain called Metromedia. Inc.out of the ruins of the old Du Mont network. Recently, when he heard that Metromedia had an empty half hour of broadcast time in the morning, ardent Columbia Alumnus ('17). Erpf grabbed up the free time and got the lecture series under way with the financial backing of Columbia Associates, an organization of Columbia College well-wishers that he heads. The purpose of the programs, says Erpf, is to permit "adult people in this time of trouble and tensions to have not only the solace of entertainment but the spur of education." By no means inciden tally, the TV series also may well turn a profit for Columbia Associates.
It was at least partly Erpf's urge to educate at a profit that led him to invest in the Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. after it dropped Collier's Magazine in 1956. In the five years since, Crowell-Collier has gone from losses to profits ($4,000,000 last year), and currently Erpf and his investing partners are adding new companies to Collier's at a two-a-year clip. Last week, for well under $1,000,000, Crowell-Collier bought New York's famed Bren-tano bookstore chain, which, like all conventional booksellers, has been hard hit by department-store and discount-house competition.
The Brentano purchase, explains Erpf, "adds to the bookishness of the company" and fits in with his dream of "changing publishing into a modern corporate enterprise to bring education to the masses." If his dream is realized, predicts Erpf, "we'll have a renaissance here that will make the Italian Renaissance look like a pond next to the ocean—and Crowell-Collier could become more interesting to investors than U.S. Steel."