Politics & Power Quote by William S. Paley

Paley’s genius is that he makes a profit motive sound like a public service announcement. “Satisfying the American public” lands as a civic duty, not a business strategy, and that sleight of hand is the point. As CBS’s architect in the era when broadcast networks became national habit-formers, Paley isn’t just defending programming choices; he’s asserting a philosophy of mass culture: legitimacy comes from appetite.

The line “give most of the people what they want most of the time” is a sanitised echo of Mencken’s harsher observation that no one ever went broke underestimating public taste. Paley removes the insult and keeps the mechanism. “Most” does crucial work here: it’s a numbers game presented as democratic ethics. Minority tastes, dissenting politics, messy art, the unpopular but necessary story - all are quietly filed under acceptable loss. The network’s responsibility is redefined as statistical satisfaction.

Then he seals it with “That’s what they expect from us,” a phrase that flips accountability. If audiences expect comfort, repetition, and easy narratives, the industry can shrug off criticism as mere consumer demand. It’s an early, elegant version of “don’t blame the platform.” The subtext is that cultural power is being exercised while pretending it’s merely being obeyed.

In context, Paley is speaking from the command center of a broadcast monopoly that didn’t just reflect America; it curated it, nightly. His phrasing turns a centralized gatekeeping system into the soothing language of customer service - and that’s how mass media sells its influence as inevitability.