Richard Leibner, pioneering agent of Tv information stars, dies at 85

Richard Leibner, the accountant-turned-agent who turbocharged the professions of a lot of Tv set journalists, died Tuesday soon after a long illness. He was 85.

Jay Sures, vice chairman of expertise company UTA (which acquired Leibner’s business N.S. Bienstock in 2014), stated in an inside memo that Leibner died at his dwelling in Manhattan surrounded by relatives associates.

“Richard will be remembered as the agent who reworked the information business,” Sures claimed in the memo. “To say that Richard was legendary and more substantial than everyday living is genuinely an understatement.”

About a practically 6-ten years job, Leibner was identified as a fierce negotiator for a who’s who of network Tv set information stars which includes Diane Sawyer, Mike Wallace, Norah O’Donnell, Ed Bradley, Invoice Whitaker and Charlie Rose. Former purchasers, numerous of whom he represented for a long time, continued to check with with him following his retirement in 2022.

Leibner had the capacity to understand changes in the Tv set information landscape and then capitalize on them.

When legendary sporting activities Television executive Roone Arledge took more than ABC News in the late 1970s, he instructed Leibner to carry him clients from CBS and NBC who believed they were underpaid. Leibner swung into motion and lifted the earning energy in the course of the whole Television information sector as a consequence.

As portion of Arledge’s recruitment push, he aggressively pursued CBS Information star Dan Alternatively. Alternatively stayed at CBS, but Leibner applied the provide as leverage to get him named as successor to “CBS Night News” anchor Walter Cronkite — even though the task had been promised to the network’s Washington correspondent Roger Mudd. Rather’s new assignment came with a document-setting deal that paid $2.2 million a year.

When Ted Turner introduced CNN in 1980, Leibner introduced the mogul recognized names these types of as Daniel Schorr, who gave the nascent cable information operation believability.

“Richard broadened the definition of talent in the television information business enterprise and improved its price enormously,” Andrew Heyward, a former CBS Information president, stated in a 2022 interview. “Not just for the massive-title stars, but for other individuals that might not be in the prime echelon. You experienced this phenomenon of associate producers strolling all over expressing, ‘I have a further calendar year in my contract’ with no irony. This was a new detail.”

Some network information executives were being not delighted with how Leibner’s company disrupted their business design. Ed Joyce, a CBS Information president in the early 1980s, referred to the Bienstock agency as “flesh peddlers.” Leibner preserved his aim was to get consumers “a fairer share of what the business enterprise is grossing.”

Leibner was born in Brooklyn and graduated from the College of Rochester. He joined his father’s New York Town accounting company in 1964. Most of their customers were the music publishers and tiny record organizations that operated out of the legendary Brill Setting up in Times Sq..

Leibner and his father eventually joined forces with Nate Bienstock, a lifetime insurance plan salesman whose shoppers bundled CBS Information commentator Eric Sevareid and author John Steinbeck. As extra journalists started off accomplishing tv operate in the 1960s, Bienstock started off managing contracts for them as a aspect enterprise.

The younger Leibner noticed Bienstock and the development of the Television set news. Correspondents and anchors covering the Vietnam War and the civil legal rights motion became house names. Before long, Leibner was representing tv information talent.

“The big businesses had been all centered on videos and tv and producing the massive money in offer charges,” Leibner instructed The Times in a 2022 interview. “We ended up specialists, and that’s how we obtained the foothold and obtained forward of most people.”

By the conclude of the 1970s, Leibner’s consumer roster involved Somewhat, Morley Safer, Wallace and Andy Rooney, all portion of the cast of “60 Minutes” as it grew into the most popular information software.

Leibner represented Sawyer when she became the 1st girl correspondent on “60 Minutes,” and Bradley, the program’s to start with Black journalist. He later engineered Sawyer’s move to ABC Information, where she eventually grew to become anchor of “ABC Earth Information Tonight.”

Leibner’s enterprise grew with the assist of his wife, Carole Cooper, a former Tv business producer he satisfied on a blind day in 1962. She joined Bienstock in 1976, encouraging produce the occupations of Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, whom she nevertheless signifies at UTA, where by she continues to do the job.

Leibner said Cooper complemented him, normally softening his brash persona.

“She is aware of my excesses,” Leibner stated. “She knows when to prevent me from telling filthy jokes. She also had additional self-assurance in my capability to get threats and do matters than I even assumed. I guess our relationship has lasted as long as it has, and has been as excellent as it is, simply because we’re not scared to be vital and sincere with each and every other.”

In new yrs, Leibner devoted substantially of his time to a spouse and children foundation, which contributes to companies that deliver scholarships for learners seeking to get into the Television information business. He was also a main supporter of the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation, which homes the papers of journalists at the College of Maryland.

Leibner is survived by Cooper and two sons, Jonathan and Adam, who is also an agent at UTA, and four grandchildren.