[BC] Frank Stanton is dead

[Jeffrey Kopp]

>[Scott:]  ... Frank Stanton did a little of everything along the way ... not to
>mention being responsible for CBS' incredibly high graphic standards
>over the years.

Among other things, he kept the "eye" logo, introduced in 1952, which has proved
one of the ore enduring brandings in U.S. marketing. "The next season, when Bill
Golden prepared to design a new symbol, Stanton overruled him: 'Just when you're
beginning to be bored with what you've done is when it's beginning to be noticed by
your audience.'"
http://www.cbs.com/specials/cbs_75/eye.shtml

(Although Golden attributed his inspiration to hex symbols on Shaker barns he'd
noticed when driving in Pennsylvania Dutch country, I can't help but notice its
similarity to the test-card tuning symbol used by the BBC in the 1930s:
http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/testcard/bbc_tune.html Although as far as I can tell, nobody on this side of the pond paid much attention to what the Beeb was doing
back then outside of RCA.)

The network's ubiquitous employment of a variant of the Bodoni typeface known as
Didot (aka CBS Didot) was significant, as it lent print credibility to television in an era
when it was not yet fully trusted by the public. (Pre-1964, many folks would wait for
the newspaper to confirm what they'd seen or heard on the air.) I think I've read that
Stanton even specified its use on all the clocks and the elevators in Black Rock.