'The right guy in the right place at the right time,' he steadied the ship after the ill-fated merger with AOL, then stepped in briefly for Leslie Moonves at CBS Corp.
Parsons died at his Manhattan home of bone cancer, Ronald S. Lauder, a member of the Estée Lauder board and a close friend,In September 2018, Parsons was named interim chairman of CBS after chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves resigned following allegations of sexual harassment. He was a key player in negotiating the Moonves exit and in appointing COO Joseph Ianniello as acting CEO. He also brought in six new directors.
“At that moment,” he said, “they were not looking for a visionary or necessarily Mr. Charismatic or someone to replicate the dimension of a mogul.” He added: “Almost nobody recalls that I was the CEO who had the largest recorded loss in the history of American corporations. For the year 2002, my first annual report, we took a write-down of $99 billion. Stunning.”, began to consider a merger in the late 1990s.
“The value proposition with AOL was, ‘We have a walled garden and you have to pay to get in — and once in, the world is yours, so you’ll be happy to pay us $14.95 a month,’ ” he explained. “But the walled-garden model was starting to break down. All these new services were offering content for free. That model just collapsed.”
Gathering 300 top staffers together, Parsons brought in a Gulf War leader, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, to speak to them. “Norman was asked, ‘What are your rules of leadership?’ ” said Parsons. “He said, ‘I have two. Rule No. 1: When put in a position of command, take charge, make decisions. And rule No. 2 is: Do what’s right.’ ” Added Parsons: “I tend to subscribe to that.”
Born on April 4, 1948, Richard Dean Parsons was raised in Queens, one of five children of an electrical technician and a homemaker. He was clearly bright and in those early school years was allowed to skip two grades, but then he coasted and had an undistinguished time as a student at the University of Hawaii.
Parsons stayed at the White House for three of the Ford administration’s four years before leaving to seek a job that paid more and allowed him to spend time with his burgeoning family that included his wife, Laura Bush, a child psychologist whom he had met as a student, a boy and two girls, one of whom is transgender.
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