Jamie Kellner, a media government who helped construct Fox Broadcasting right into a thriving tv community with exhibits like “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “The Simpsons” — and who went on to create the WB community, recognized for the angsty “Dawson’s Creek” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — died on June 21 at his residence in Montecito, Calif., close to Santa Barbara. He was 77.
The trigger was most cancers, stated Brad Turell, a household spokesman.
Mr. Kellner was some of the profitable tv executives of his technology. His knack for capturing younger viewers — first males at Fox, then ladies at WB — lured viewers away from the Large Three networks that had dominated tv for practically 40 years.
Mr. Kellner believed that ABC, NBC and CBS have been ignoring viewers below 35 and have been hamstrung by middle-of-the-road style. Rupert Murdoch, the proprietor of Fox Inc., and Barry Diller, its chairman, recruited Mr. Kellner from the tv syndication enterprise in 1986 and put in him as president of the Fox Broadcasting Firm.
Its aspiration to be the primary new TV community since ABC in 1948 was broadly derided. However from the debut in 1987 of its first sequence, the lowbrow household sitcom “Married … With Youngsters,” which was proven on six Murdoch-owned stations and a string of unbiased ones that Mr. Kellner helped sew collectively, the brand new community started stealing the Large Three’s viewers.
By 1992, with exhibits like “Melrose Place,” concerning the social lives of 20-somethings, Fox was No. 1 with viewers 18 to 34. “We don’t really want anybody over 50 years of age to succeed with our marketing strategy,” Mr. Kellner informed The New York Occasions.
He resigned in 1993 after seven years at Fox. By then, Mr. Diller had left, and Mr. Kellner and Mr. Murdoch had clashed over Mr. Murdoch’s need to pivot to older viewers and extra mainstream exhibits.
Inside months, Mr. Kellner was conjuring up WB, formally the Warner Bros. Community. He introduced with him former Fox colleagues, together with Garth Ancier as chief programmer.
Mr. Kellner “was a visionary within the tv enterprise,” Susanne Daniels, Mr. Ancier’s lieutenant, who went on to turn out to be president of MTV and head of authentic content material at YouTube, stated in an interview. He “felt that Rupert Murdoch was making a mistake attempting to, quote-unquote, ‘develop up’ the Fox community,” she added, “and that was a chance for the WB community to ascertain a technique of attracting a youthful viewers who Fox was abandoning.”
Inside just some years, Tuesdays in prime time on WB, anchored by “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Dawson’s Creek,” had turn out to be “a cult evening on tv for youngsters and 20-somethings,” Lawrie Mifflin wrote in The Occasions in 1998.
Mr. Kellner’s major job on the networks he constructed was to reel in promoting to pay for exhibits, and to corral affiliate stations to broadcast them. However he may be hands-on in encouraging promising writer-producers and in shaping content material.
He helped ignite the careers of J.J. Abrams (“Felicity,” “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”), Kevin Williamson (“Dawson’s Creek,” “Scream”) and Joss Whedon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The Avengers”).
Mr. Turell, who was a part of Mr. Kellner’s mind belief at WB, recalled Mr. Kellner suggesting to the producer Aaron Spelling (“Beverly Hills, 90210”) {that a} sequence a few preacher and his teenage daughter might seize the underserved viewers of non secular viewers. By that time, Mr. Kellner was himself the daddy of a teenage daughter.
The sequence that resulted, “seventh Heaven,” with Jessica Biel, ran for 11 seasons and was the community’s highest-rated present.
Mr. Kellner, who owned 11 p.c of WB, cashed out after the community’s mother or father firm, Time Warner, merged with America On-line in 2000. He turned chairman and chief government of the brand new behemoth firm’s Turner Broadcasting System, succeeding Ted Turner. Moreover persevering with to supervise WB, Mr. Kellner now additionally ran CNN and different properties. He moved from California to Atlanta, the place Turner Broadcasting was primarily based.
In a profile that yr, the Occasions reporter Jim Rutenberg described Mr. Kellner as “square-jawed and road powerful although he now lives luxuriously.”
At CNN, which was struggling in opposition to the upstart cable information channels Fox Information and MSNBC, Mr. Kellner rehired the monetary anchor Lou Dobbs, introduced on Anderson Cooper as a morning anchor and put in a revered journalist, Walter Isaacson of Time journal, as chief government.
However a quickly shifting media panorama undermined a few of Mr. Kellner’s ambitions. “Give us six months to a yr,” he boasted in 2001, “we can be nicely forward of Fox.” Roger Ailes, the top of Fox Information, hung Mr. Kellner’s phrases in giant letters as a taunt on the wall of his newsroom.
The modifications Mr. Kellner delivered to CNN didn’t arrest the onslaught of Fox, which carved out a distinct segment with conservative viewers. A proposed merger of CNN with ABC Information that Mr. Kellner favored was known as off in February 2003.
That month, he introduced that he would step down when his contract ended and return to California. He retired from tv in 2004, on the age of 57.
James Charles Kellner was born on April 18, 1947, in Brooklyn, certainly one of 5 kids of James Kellner, a commodities dealer, and Jean (Mahan) Kellner, a librarian.
Early on, Jamie aspired to be a instructor. Ultimately, nevertheless, he entered the TV business by an government coaching program at CBS.
He first struck programming gold in his mid-30s, teaming with Lorne Michaels, the creator of “Saturday Evening Reside,” to chop early episodes of “S.N.L.” to half-hour, then promote them in syndication to unbiased stations. It was that monitor document that led to his recruitment by Fox.
Mr. Kellner’s first marriage led to divorce. His survivors embody his spouse of 38 years, Julie Smith Kellner; their son, Christopher Kellner; a daughter from his first marriage, Melissa Kellner; two brothers, Thomas and Ronald; and three grandchildren.
In retirement, Mr. Kellner left the leisure world behind for private passions. He sailed his ketch, the Irishman, world wide, and began a vineyard, Cent’Anni, in California’s Santa Ynez Valley.
