The Behaviorist in the Boardroom: The Research of Frank Stanton, Ph.D.

Abstract

In 1946, at the age of 38, Frank Stanton was named President of CBS. While much of Stanton's work as a corporate executive has been chronicled, his accomplishments as one of America's earliest scholars of radio audience measurement remain neglected in media scholarship. This article reviews Stanton's research efforts between 1933 and 1942, and in doing so it places his work within the contexts of contemporaneous social and psychological media inquiry. Discussions of Stanton's methodological approach, his innovative dissertation, his scholarship, and his collaboration with key figures in the history of communication research are informed by primary and secondary sources.The young researcher immediately recognized the opportunity. Relaxing in his living room on a Sunday evening in October 1938, Frank Stanton tuned into CBS radio to catch Orson Welles's adaptation of War of the Worlds. As the powerfully realistic drama unfolded, Stanton sensed the singularity of the moment. Before the program finished he hurried from his Jackson Heights apartment to the parking garage, jumped into his car, and sped across the East River to the Madison Avenue headquarters of CBS. The broadcast ended just as Stanton's car pulled up. Three years earlier, Stanton had been hired by the network to improve its audience research efforts; on this night he rushed up to his desk and quickly telephoned his friend and colleague, communication scholar Paul Lazarsfeld. The two agreed upon a set of survey questions that could illuminate the just-completed remarkable mass media moment. With the blare of police sirens in the background-and panicked CBS executives preparing Welles's impromptu press conference a few floors awayStanton typed out the questionnaire. He then phoned the company CBS used for fieldwork, specifying the survey's key social and economic variables. A systematic survey began first thing the next morning-on Halloween (Buxton & Acland, 2001, pp. 212-216).As this and other episodes demonstrate, Frank Stanton devoted much of his life to understanding the cultural, social, and psychological effects of the mass media. When he died on December 24, 2006, at the age of 98, he left a series of complex, Michael J. Socolow (Ph.D., Georgetown University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine. His research interests include the history of broadcast regulation and network competition.

Data dependencies and funding prospects: A 1930s cautionary tale

“…The relationship with Stanton was far more productive. The future CBS president, Stanton was then the network's research head, and supplied the radio project with reams of data (Socolow, 2008;Lazarsfeld, 1940, p. viii).…”