Ralph M Baruch

The father of Viacom, Ralph Baruch, died in Manhattan at the age of 92 on 03 March 2003, reports the New York Times. The refugee from Nazi Germany turned Viacom, a small cable and syndication company spun off by CBS in 1971, into a communications and entertainment giant. CBS turned Viacom into a publicly owned company with Baruch as president and CEO after the FCC ruled that TV networks could no longer own cable systems or syndicate programmes in the US. He was previously CBS vice president and CBS Enterprises general manager. As the head of Viacom, Baruch bought radio and TV stations and cable systems across the US. He began with Showtime and the Cable Health Network (now Lifetime) and started producing and distributing television programs. He took the title of chairman in 1983 and two years later, with Terrence Elkes as CEO, acquired Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, giving Viacom MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel. The deal completed Viacom’s transformation into the diversified entertainment and communications giant, which was taken over by Sumner Redstone for USD 3.4 billion in 1987. Baruch also played a leading part in getting Congress to pass the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, which deregulated the cable industry. His first wife, Elizabeth “Lilo” Bachrach, a fellow refu­gee from Frankfurt, died in 1959. Survivors include his wife of 52 years, the former Jean Ursell de Mountford of New York; four daughters from his first marriage; and three grandchildren.