Thomas Murphy

Thomas Sawyer Murphy (May 31, 1925 – May 25, 2022) was an American broadcasting executive, and was chair and chief executive officer of Capital Cities / ABC, Inc. until 1996. Together with fellow Capital Cities executive Daniel Burke, Murphy engineered the acquisition of the American Broadcasting Company in 1986 for $3.5 billion. Murphy and Burke, who served as president and chief executive of ABC until 1994, are credited with increasing the profitability and efficiency of ABC. His father, Charles, was a lawyer involved in Democratic Party politics and later worked as a judge in the Judiciary of New York; his mother, Elizabeth (Sawyer), was a homemaker. Murphy initially studied at Princeton University, before enlisting in the US Navy and serving from 1943 to 1946. He then studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in 1945. in 1954 and hired Murphy to run the WROW stations as their new general manager. Although Murphy did not have any broadcast experience, his leadership and conservative financial restraint helped bring WROW-TV (now WTEN) to profitability three years later. In December 1957, Hudson Valley merged with Durham Television Enterprises, owners of WTVD in Durham, North Carolina, to form Capital Cities Television Corporation, which later became Capital Cities Broadcasting Corp. in 1960 and Capital Cities Communications thirteen years later. The merger was engineered by Murphy and the man who replaced him as WTEN's station manager, Daniel B. Burke, who became ABC's president. In 1995 Capital Cities / ABC was bought by Disney. He was a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway, General Housewares Corp., Texaco, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and IBM Corporation and a life trustee and honorary vice chair of New York University.

Personal life and death Murphy was married to Suzanne Crosby Murphy until her death in 2009. Together, they had four children: Emilie, Thomas Jr., Kathleen, and Mary. 1996 NATPE Lifetime Achievement Award