Robert Edmonds Kintner (September 12, 1909 – December 20, 1980) was an American journalist and television executive who served as president of both the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Early life The son of Albert H. Kintner and the former Lillian M. Stofflet, Robert grew up in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Stroudsburg High School in 1927. Kintner next attended Swarthmore College, where he served as editor of the college newspaper, the "Phoenix", during his senior year until graduating in 1931. Following his graduation, he spent the three months of the summer of 1931 doing publicity for the Buck Hill Falls, where he started a weekly newspaper called "The Breeze". Two years later, the New York Herald Tribune hired him as its White House correspondent. From 1938 to 1941, he paired with Joseph Alsop to write a nationally syndicated column called "Capital Parade". Military service During World War II, Kintner served in the U.S. Army Air Force, leaving the service in 1944 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was discharged on medical grounds in 1944, having been injured in an airplane crash. Upon his discharge he joined ABC, which had been created in 1943 following the divesture of NBC's Blue Network. Network executive Kintner was hired by ABC to do public relations work. He rose rapidly at the then-small network, and served as its president from 1949 to 1956. Kintner is credited with making ABC more competitive with the older and better-established networks NBC and CBS who also had radio networks. ABC cut deals with Warner Bros. Television and Walt Disney to provide programming, it aired the bulk of the Army-McCarthy hearings and televised two hit shows, Disneyland that had a massive hit with Davy Crockett and Cheyenne, the first hour long television Western that triggered the television trend to Westerns that dominated the medium's entertainment lineups through 1963. Kintner then led NBC from 1958 to 1965. His NBC tenure was marked by his aggressive effort to push NBC News past CBS News in rankings and prestige. The news department was given more money, leading to notable coverage of the 1960 presidential election campaign and the prominence of the Huntley-Brinkley Report. Quiz-show scandals Kintner was forced to defend NBC at the height of the quiz-show scandal of 1959–60, testifying to the United States Congress that NBC and the other networks were victims of the