NBC’s Sarnoff responded to CBS’s ratings victory by declaring open programming war

Evidence

But this time, however, Sarnoff wasn’t content to lose gracefully. In 1953, he would appoint his own star programmer, giving him license to wage total war. As David Halberstam would later write, never had there been a “competition…so fierce…with weapons so inane.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 452