Richard Leibner, the officer- turned- agent who turbocharged the careers of many Television journalists, died Tuesday after a lengthy illness. He was 85.
Leibner passed away at his apartment in Manhattan surrounded by family people, according to Jay Sures, vice president of the talent agency UTA, which purchased his company N. S. Bienstock in 2014, in an inner memo.
Sures wrote in the letter,” Richard may be remembered as the representative who transformed the media business.” ” To state that Richard was classic and larger than life is truly an insult”.
Over a roughly six- generation job, Leibner was known as a harsh negotiator for a who’s who of community TV news stars including Diane Sawyer, Mike Wallace, Norah O’Donnell, Ed Bradley, Bill Whitaker and Charlie Rose. After his retirement in 2022, he continued to consult with his previous customers, many of whom he had worked with for years.
Leibner was able to identify changes in the TV media environment and make money off of them.
When famed activities TV professional Roone Arledge took over ABC News in the late 1970s, he instructed Leibner to bring in clients from CBS and NBC who he thought were underpaid. Leibner took to the stage and, as a result, increased earning power across the whole TV news sector.
As part of Arledge’s selection pull, he aggressively pursued CBS News sun Dan Rather. Instead of staying at CBS, Leibner used the present as leverage to secure his appointment as Walter Cronkite’s replacement, despite Roger Mudd, the show’s Washington correspondent and bsp, receiving the task.  , Rather’s fresh task came with a document- placing lease that paid$ 2.2 million a year.
Leibner brought the giant well-known names like Daniel Schorr to the newly established cable news activity when Ted Turner launched CNN in 1980.
” Richard broadened the definition of expertise in the tv news business and increased its price enormously”, Andrew Heyward, a former CBS News chairman, said in a 2022 meeting. Not just for the big-name stars, but also for people who may not be in the top echelon. You had this occurrence of associate producers yelling,” I have another year in my contract,” without irony. This was a new thing”.
Some network news executives were unhappy with how Leibner’s company altered their business model. Ed Joyce, a CBS News president in the early 1980s, referred to the Bienstock agency as “flesh peddlers”. Leibner argued that his goal was to “award a fairer share of what the business is grossing.”
Leibner graduated from the University of Rochester after receiving his birth in Brooklyn. In 1964, he started working for his father’s New York City accounting firm. The music publishers and small record companies that operated out of the infamous Brill Building in Times Square were the majority of their clients.
Leibner and his father eventually joined forces with Nate Bienstock, a life insurance salesman whose clients included CBS News commentator , Eric Sevareid , and author John Steinbeck. Bienstock began negotiating contracts for them as a side business as more journalists began producing television work in the 1960s.
Bienstock and the expansion of the TV news industry were both observed by the younger Leibner. The civil rights movement and the Vietnam War were well-known correspondents and anchors. Soon, Leibner was representing television news talent.
In a 2022 interview with The Times, Leibner stated that” the major agencies were all focused on making the big money with package fees.” ” We were specialists, and that’s how we got the foothold and got ahead of everybody”.
By the end of the 1970s, Leibner’s client roster included Rather, Morley Safer,  , Wallace , and , Andy Rooney, all part of the cast of “60 Minutes” as it grew into the most popular news program.
Leibner represented Sawyer when she became the first woman correspondent on “60 Minutes”, and Bradley, the program’s first Black journalist. He later engineered Sawyer’s move to ABC News, where she eventually became anchor of” ABC World News Tonight”.
Leibner’s business grew with the help of his wife, Carole Cooper, a former TV commercial producer he met on a blind date in 1962. She joined Bienstock in 1976, helping develop the careers of Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, whom she still represents at UTA, where she continues to work.
Leibner said Cooper complemented him, often softening his brash personality.
” She knows my excesses”, Leibner said. She knows when to stop me from making offensive remarks. She also believed in my ability to take chances and act in ways that I had no idea. Because we do n’t shy away from being critical and open with one another, our marriage has endured as long as it has and has been as good as it has.
Leibner has spent a lot of his time working for a family foundation, which supports organizations that sponsor scholarships for students interested in entering the TV news industry. He also backed the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation, which houses the University of Maryland’s library’s press releases.
Leibner is survived by Cooper and two sons, Jonathan and Adam, who is also an agent at UTA, and four grandchildren.
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