Ralph Baruch
| Ralph Baruch | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Rudolph Maximilian Baruch August 5, 1923 Frankfurt, Germany |
| Died | March 3, 2016 (aged 92) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | president and chief executive, Viacom vice president, CBS general manager, CBS Enterprises |
| Spouse(s) | Elizabeth "Lilo" Bachrach (died 1959) Jean Ursell de Mountford |
Rudolph Maximilian "Ralph" Baruch (August 5, 1923 – March 3, 2016) was a CBS executive and the first president and chief executive of Viacom.
Baruch was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923, but his family fled in the mid-1930s to Paris. His father returned to Germany, however, in 1938 to recruit spies for French counterintelligence services, and his name ended up on the Nazi most-wanted list. The Emergency Rescue Committee helped the family immigrate to New York City in 1940.
Baruch was hired in 1943 as an engineer at Empire Broadcasting, and later as an ad salesman at New York's DuMont Network affiliate and with the Los Angeles Times's Consolidated Television Film Sales in the eastern United States.
In 1954, Baruch became an account executive for CBS Films. He later became vice president of CBS and general manager of CBS Enterprises, the company's cable and television syndication division.
Viacom was spun off from CBS Films in 1971 amid new FCC rules forbidding television networks from owning syndication companies.
Under the Viacom brand, Baruch started cable networks including Showtime and Lifetime (originally known as The Cable Health Network). He took the title of chairman of Viacom in 1983, and later acquired Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, which brought networks including MTV, Nickelodeon, The Movie Channel and VH1 into the portfolio. He also was a co-founder of C-SPAN.
...
Wikipedia