After graduating from Columbia University with AB and MS degrees, Ed joined BBDO as a trainee in the Radio-TV Research Department in 1955. He specialized in TV program performance and time period analysis, and soon rose to head the department. Ed moved into the agency's Media Department in 1960 as Head of Media Research, and soon took on a variety of new business and media planning assignments. He initiated the Agency Media Research Director's Council and helped to launch many initiatives, such as bringing demographics into the media planning/buying process. Ed was also integral in Bill Simmons' launch of his syndicated multimedia audience/marketing service in 1963, working with Bill to develop new metrics such as viewer attentiveness, which was introduced in the mid-1960s.
Ed became BBDO's Media Director in 1969 and a director of the agency several years later. While at BBDO, he conceived the idea for an annual media cost guide, and with partner Marty Herbst, created Media Market Guide.
Ed left the agency business in 1975 and soon partnered with Media Industry Newsletter publisher, Bill Barlow, in a new venture. Ed reprised his media cost guide concept, which became an ad-supported quarterly in 1978, and developed the idea for a monthly magazine designed for the top 1,000 advertisers, Ad Forum. Both were sold to Adweek in 1985.
In 1982, Ed founded Media Dynamics, Inc., a publishing and consulting company. Media Dynamics' publications include TV Dimensions, Cross-Platform Dimensions (formerly Intermedia Dimensions), Magazine Dimensions, Consumer Dimensions, Radio Dimensions and Internet Dimensions. Media Dynamics has also published the newsletter, Media Matters, since 1986 and created a collection of Special Reports that focus on targeted areas of the media, like spot TV, cable, ad receptivity, CPMs and upfront cost estimates.
In addition, Media Dynamics, Inc. has spent several decades consulting on a variety of media issues, most notably agency/client interactions on the media function, the hiring of independent media buying services and the evaluation of agency/media buying performance.
Ed formed the consultancy, Ephron, Papazian and Ephron, with Erwin Ephron and Mike Ephron in 1989, and many consulting projects were brought to fruition. Ed also created a national TV CPP/CPM estimating service called Netcost, and a spot radio version called SPARC. Both of these were sold to SQAD in 2000.
Between 2001-2003, Ed, along with Mike Ephron and Steve Blacker, initiated a unique ad receptivity concept that was product-specific and showed how well various media targeted such ad receptives. This culminated in a national study in 2003, sponsored by many agencies and the media.
Ed is also the author of TV Now and Then: How We Use It; How It Uses Us, which examines the history of television from an insider's perspective.