Jamie Kellner
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Jamie Kellner, the charismatic and wily executive who expanded the television landscape by helping birth the Fox and WB networks in 1987 and 1995 respectively, had died. He was 77 years old.
Kellner died Friday at his home in Montecito, Calif., after a battle with cancer. The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
While still at the top of WB, Kellner was given additional responsibilities in March 2001 overseeing TBS, TNT and CNN as chairman and CEO of Time Warner’s sister company, Turner Broadcasting System. But he only stayed there for two years, ousted in March 2003 with more than a year left on his contract.
During this time, Kellner was president of the station ownership group ACME Communications – named for the company in the Warner Bros. Road Runner cartoons. – from its launch in 1997 until its liquidation in 2016. He was the rare network television executive who also had a handle on station affairs; In fact, ACME’s first nine stations were affiliated with the WB.
The younger Kellner was president of Orion Entertainment Group when he was among the first people hired by Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller in February 1986 to develop a network at Fox to compete with CBS, NBC and ABC.
As founding chairman and chief operating officer of Fox Broadcasting Co., he focused on building the affiliate network, selling programs to advertisers and establishing relationships with producers.
“One of the first tests we do (with a show) is: Would any of the three networks do this? And a lot of times, if the answer is yes, then we disqualify it,” Kellner said. The New York Times in March 1987. “We have no reason to exist if we want to do what they have already done. »
Married with children kicked off Fox’s first official prime time night on Sunday, April 5, 1987, and The simpsons, Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Square And In living color would arrive later. He also led the creation of the Fox Children’s Network.
Kellner resigned in January 1993 – Diller had resigned 11 months earlier – and got a place on the board of Fox Inc.. But after launching a fourth broadcast network, he joined Warner Bros. in November 1993, eager to start a fifth.
Kellner received an 11 percent stake in The WB, Warner Bros. taking 64 percent and Tribune Co. 25 percent. (The network was built around six independent Tribune-owned stations, including WPIX in New York and KTLA in Los Angeles.)
After beating the bushes in a bitter battle for affiliates with new network rivals UPN, Kellner celebrated The WB’s kickoff when The Wayans brothers. broadcast on January 11, 1995, five days before the launch of UPN.
The family drama 7th Sky was the WB’s first big hit, followed by other popular shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Dawson Creek, Felicity And Charm.
“He sometimes had a detached side similar to that of Mr. Spock,” former WB executive Suzanne Daniels wrote of Kellner in her 2007 book. Final seasonco-written with VarietyThis is Cynthia Littleton. “He was not easily excitable, but he demonstrated such obvious passion and dedication that he inspired a team of young executives, none more so than me.”
James Kellner, one of five children, was born in Brooklyn in 1948 and raised on Long Island. His father, also James, was a Wall Street commodities broker; his mother, Jean, volunteered with the North Shore Hospital Auxiliary for more than three decades. He was an avid sailor who competed in yacht races in his youth.
Kellner earned a degree in marketing from Long Island University’s CW Post campus, then joined the CBS executive training program in 1969 with the help of his father.
Mentored by Hank Gillespie, he landed a job in the network’s program sales division and joined that unit when it spun off as Viacom Enterprises, becoming vice president of programming, development and sales. first broadcast.
In 1978, Kellner joined producer-distributor Filmways, where he came up with the idea to summarize the 90-minute film. Saturday Night Live episodes in a half-hour format ideal for syndication. After Orion Pictures acquired Filmways in 1982, he oversaw programming, home video, pay television and syndication there and presided over the launch of Cagney and Lacey and a restart of Hollywood Squares.
At Fox, it was his innovative idea to counterprogram a live episode of In living color opposite the 1992 Super Bowl halftime show, broadcast on CBS. Those halftime shows were boring, but that would soon change: Michael Jackson performed in 1993.
As Fox Broadcasting’s No. 2 executive behind Diller, he received a 1 percent stake in the network. When he left after seven years, he received compensation of $10 million to $15 million, “a fraction of what he hoped to get from his involvement with the World Bank,” according to Final season.
At his next stop, Kellner reunited with Garth Ancier – he had hired him as president of entertainment at Fox – and they scheduled an evening of “urban” sitcoms, including The Wayans brothers, The Steve Harvey Show And The Jamie Foxx Show. The new network would target a younger audience that the maturing Fox had abandoned.
“Jamie Kellner was the perfect CEO model. Always intelligent, sometimes pugnacious, always thoughtful and often smiling, Jamie gave a lot of insight to the executives who had the chance to work for him. He ended conversations with: “Do we know what we are doing? When things didn’t go as planned (and sometimes they didn’t), there was no anxiety, just a ‘next time we’ll do it differently’,” John D. Maatta, former executive vice president and chief operating officer of The WB Television Network, wrote in a statement. “The atmosphere created by Jamie Kellner and Garth Ancier at The WB was a once in a lifetime moment for which I will always be grateful.”
After a public and prolonged bidding war, Kellner licensed the supernatural drama from 20th Century Fox Television. Buffy the Vampire Slayercreated by Josh Whedon and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, will air on UPN after its fifth season (and its WB contract) ends in May 2001.
The WB paid $1 million per episode in licensing fees. UPN ended up shelling out more than $2.3 million per episode for 44 episodes over the show’s final two seasons.
Kellner owned a 5.3 percent stake in ACME when he founded it with Tom Allen, former chief financial officer of Fox Broadcasting, and station manager Doug Gealy. The company acquired underperforming stations in markets such as St. Louis; Salt Lake City; Albuquerque; Portland, Oregon; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Dayton, Ohio; and Knoxville, Tennessee. One report called the relationship between ACME and WB “vaguely incestuous.”
ACME had nine stations when it raised about $105 million in an IPO in September 1999. It grew to 12 stations before beginning the process of exiting the company in 2003.
Kellner didn’t endear himself to professional wrestling fans when he canceled World Championship Wrestling broadcasts on TBS and TNT in one of his first programming decisions at Turner. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to bring CNN into its battle with the new Fox News Channel and pushed for the network’s merger with ABC News.
After being replaced by Phil Kent, Kellner remained with The WB until his contract ended in June 2004, when Ancier – who had left The WB for a top job at NBC before returning – Jordan Levin and Jed Petrick took over. This would be his last big job.
“It seems like only yesterday that the partnership between Warner Bros. and Jamie began, as he and Bruce (Rosenblum) flew across the country in every size of plane and in every type of weather, by signing affiliates,” Barry, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros., said. Entertainment. Meyer then said. “Jamie and his team brought their vision to life beyond the expectations of all those naysayers who loudly proclaimed that there was no room for more than four broadcast networks. Boy, were they wrong.
Kellner saw The WB disappear in September 2006 when Warner Bros. and CBS Corp. replaced it and UPN with a single network, The CW.
Survivors include his second wife, former entertainment banker Julie Smith; his daughter, Melissa Kellner Berman, who worked with television producer Greg Berlanti as a development executive; son Christophe; and siblings Thomas, Ronald and Nancy. His sister Karen died in 2005 at the age of 44.
“I don’t think there is another person in the history of television who can say that they helped launch two major new broadcast networks (Fox and The WB),” Berlanti wrote in a tribute. “Jamie Kellner was a titan and a visionary in our industry and yet everyone who is lucky enough to work for him as a director or showrunner will remember him as a warm, funny, charismatic mentor, friend, husband and friend , creative and kind.
He continued: “He has dedicated his television life to fostering and banking on generations of talent, in front of and behind the camera. I know I speak for so many others when I say my life was changed by the Camelot type house he created for all of us who worked at the WB. We will miss him very much.