- Recipient: Television Academy award for distinguished service, 1958; Television Academy's Emmy Award, 1959; two TV Digest Awards, 1960; Producers Guild Award, 1962; Fame Award, 1967; TV Academy's Salute Award, 1972.
- Joining the TV medium in 1947, in the early 1960s, he was credited with helping erode stereotyping of African-Americans on television by distributing a memorandum calling for producers to cast African-Americans in a greater variety of roles.
- Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in 1923 and Brown University in 1927, his autobiography was entitled "As It Happened."
- His broadcasting career began in 1930 when he became the first head of the new radio department at the advertising agency Young & Rubicam. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Young & Rubicam became an important radio program provider, simultaneously producing The Jack Benny Show, Fred Allen's Town Hall Tonight, and The Kate Smith Hour, among others.
- Was active in American broadcasting as a writer, producer, and network programming executive for over 40 years, and was notable as the CBS executive who championed the 1950s anthology drama "Playhouse 90"; his efforts to develop high-quality programming was self-described as "mass with class."
- Ex-brother-in-law of Barbara Whiting.
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