Unlike his rival or early broadcasting's other important figures, Paley, as mentioned, had no feel for technology, whose future he could barely see into the following week. He never, for instance, understood the potential of FM radio, seeing it merely as a threat to AM. And when it came to television, his myopia would prove prodigious. Seeing the early screens, he assumed they would remain too small to attract home consumers. By the mid-1930s, with television already showing serious potential in Europe, Paley shook his head and succeeded in personally lobbying the FCC to slow it down or block it. Frank Stanton, longtime CBS executive, explained that "Bill did not want television, for he thought it would hurt radio." At the time, Paley "didn't see any profit in TV at all."

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 350