Worthington Miner had an outstanding career in both the theater and television; he also worked for a brief period as a producer of feature films. At the age of 39, Miner abandoned his successful career as a theater director to enter the fledgling television industry, becoming general director of television at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) on August 28, 1939. His work in television has been recognized by his contemporaries and followers as crucial in creating the foundations of modern television.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed limited commercial-television broadcasting to begin in July 1941 despite the outbreak of war and legal battles over technical issues that had delayed the introduction of television in the United States. For the first ten weeks, Miner produced and directed the entire 15-hour weekly schedule at CBS and eight to ten hours a week thereafter until the war forced live television off the air in late 1942.

It was not until the regular television schedule returned in 1948 that Miner developed his first major success, The Toast of the Town, emceed by Ed Sullivan. This program, later under the title The Ed Sullivan Show, went on to run for 23 seasons. It was followed closely by the much-acclaimed Studio One, which Miner produced and often wrote and directed as well. He also produced The Goldbergs and the award-winning children’s program Mr. I. Magination, both well-known examples from the “Golden Age” of television.

It has been said by insiders that the real “Mr. Television” was not Milton Berle (as he was called in the 1950s) but Miner. This judgment stems primarily from Miner’s development of the basic techniques used in television. In addition to being a major creative force as a writer, producer, and director, Miner is credited with establishing many crew positions and assigning production responsibilities to those positions, which are still in use today. Working in an untried medium and drawing on his technical and operational experience in the theater, Miner developed new staging practices and created camera techniques that exploited the limited technical and financial resources available to television during its earliest stages of growth.

In contrast to his famed counterpart, producer Fred Coe at the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), who developed a stable of television writers, Miner concentrated on the technical and aesthetic problems of mounting and broadcasting a production, particularly from a directorial point of view. In the process, he discovered what became known as “Miner’s Laws,” which were adopted by directors throughout the television industry. He fostered the directing talents of such luminaries as Franklin Schaffner, George Roy Hill, Sidney Lumet, and Arthur Penn, all of whom went on to fame in television and other media.

In 1952, as a result of a contract dispute, Miner left CBS for NBC. His hopes for achievements there were dashed with the firing of creative head Pat Weaver; Miner languished under NBC’s employ. Despite producing two series, Medic and Frontier, and a few stunning successes with the drama anthology Play of the Week (most notably Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh), Miner left television in 1959. He was disappointed with the direction the medium had taken.

Miner’s achievements in television cannot be over-estimated. He did not change the face of television; he created it. No one in his time had an equal grasp of both the creative and the technical dimensions of the television medium. Many, if not all, of his ideas remain in use today, warranting the statement that Miner was a true television pioneer.