For James Thomas Aubrey Jr., 46, president of CBS-TV, the weekend promised to be a good one. He had gone to Miami to celebrate Jackie Gleason's 49th birthday, fully aware that his presence was itself a salute to Gleason's TV success. For Jim Aubrey was always conscious of his power.
A Princeton graduate (cum laude, '41), conventionally handsome, inwardly tense and outwardly relaxed, he was the boy wonder who stepped into his job five years ago and played the complex, competitive, split-timing game of network programming with such relentless drive and consummate skill that by last year eight of the top ten Nielsen-rated night shows bore CBS's eyeprint, as did all ten of the top daytime entries.
His choices, of course, had cheapened TV. But by commercial standards, he was a success, and CBS paid him a $124,000 salary, plus $100,000 bonus and an option on 65,000 CBS shares (worth $2,995,000 last week). He had the touch, or thought he did, though he was far more overbearing than a really successful man need be.
The legends of his ruthlessness were many. It took him just two minutes for a curt "Not a chance" to dash weeks of work on a new format by Garry Moore. He often told the tale of how he had called in a vice president, allowed him to ramble on for 35 minutes, then abruptly told him he was through.
No Elaboration. But on this Friday afternoon in Miami, James Aubrey was not planning to fire anyone. The Gleason party, complete with June Taylor dancers, was over. The TV king was ready for a good time. And then the telephone in his Fontainebleau suite rang. It was New York, and it was someone with enough authority to order him back immediately. No weekend, no pretty girls, no fun; instead, airport, jet, worry.
At 1:30 Saturday afternoon, still brushing the sunshine out of his hair, he was in Manhattan's Regency Hotel with CBS Board Chairman William Paley and CBS President Frank Stanton, a onetime psychology professor whose somewhat academic manner is quite a contrast to Aubrey's sleek flamboyance. The session lasted 30 minutes, and almost no one knew it had taken place. But at 3 Sunday afternoon, Stanton sent a terse telegram to New York papers that Aubrey had "resigned," although his "outstanding accomplishments need no elaboration; his extraordinary record speaks for itself."
Arms Twisted. It might have been expected that a tough boss would be toughly sacked. But the real show-biz touch was to leave everything else to gossip and speculation. The first reaction was to invoke the adage that he who lives by the ratings can die by the ratings. A year ago, CBS's Nielsen rating lead was 22.5 to NBC's 18.8 and ABC's 17.6. But all this season the three networks have been in a near dead heat. Had Aubrey lost his magic? He had once made a purseful of profits from sows' ears such as The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. But this year ABC had doped out Aubrey's own patterns and produced hits like the gimmicky Bewitched and the slyly prurient Peyton Place. Moreover, the outlook for next year was not good. Big CBS sponsors, such as Lever Bros., General Foods and Bristol-Meyers, took hunks of their business elsewhere.