The true story of William Randolph Hearst. The man who controlled the largest media empire in the country with 28 newspapers, a movie studio, a syndicated wire service, radio stations, and 13 magazines.
Citizen Hearst: An American Experience Special, Part One airs Thursday, August 8 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV. Part two airs August 15.
Citizen Hearst follows how William Heart used his communications stronghold to achieve political power unprecedented in the industry, then ran for office himself. A man of prodigious appetites and the model for Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, his castle, San Simeon, was a monument to his extravagance. While married to his wife Millicent, with whom he had five sons, he also conducted a decades-long affair with actress Marion Davies, his companion until death. By the time Hearst died in 1951 at the age of 88, he had forever transformed the role of media in American life and politics. Based on The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, David Nasaw’s critically acclaimed biography.