Brandon Tartikoff was an American television executive who was the president of NBC from 1981 to 1991.
19 Facts About Brandon Tartikoff
2.
Brandon Tartikoff was involved in the creation of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Beggars and Choosers.
3.
Brandon Tartikoff spent vacations in Los Angeles looking for a job in network television.
4.
Brandon Tartikoff was hired as a program executive at ABC in 1976.
5.
Brandon Tartikoff took over programming duties at NBC from Fred Silverman in 1981.
6.
At age 32, Brandon Tartikoff became the youngest president of NBC's entertainment division.
7.
When Brandon Tartikoff took over, NBC was in last place behind ABC and CBS, and the very future of the network was in doubt.
8.
Brandon Tartikoff wrote a brainstorming memo that simply read "MTV cops", and later presented the memo to series creator Anthony Yerkovich, formerly a writer and producer for Hill Street Blues.
9.
Knight Rider was inspired by a perceived lack of leading men who could act, with Brandon Tartikoff suggesting that a talking car could fill in the gaps in any leading man's acting abilities.
10.
Jerry Seinfeld credited Brandon Tartikoff with saving Seinfeld from cancellation during its first four years of struggling ratings.
11.
Brandon Tartikoff wrote in his memoirs that his biggest professional regret was cancelling the series Buffalo Bill, which he later went on to include in a fantasy "dream schedule" created for a TV Guide article that detailed his idea of "The Greatest Network Ever".
12.
Brandon Tartikoff was played by David Leisure in "Prime Time," episode five of season two of ALF.
13.
Brandon Tartikoff left NBC, moving to Paramount Pictures to become its chairman from July 1,1991.
14.
Just over a year later, Brandon Tartikoff left that post to spend more time with his recovering daughter in New Orleans.
15.
Just prior to his death, Brandon Tartikoff served as the chairman of the AOL project Entertainment Asylum, for which he teamed with Scott Zakarin to build the world's first interactive broadcast studio.
16.
In 1982, Brandon Tartikoff married Lilly Samuels and the couple had two daughters, Calla Lianne and Elizabeth Justine.
17.
Brandon Tartikoff's parents were survivors of the collision of two 747s in Tenerife, Canary Islands, in 1977.
18.
Brandon Tartikoff died on August 27,1997, at age 48 from Hodgkin lymphoma, a disease with which he had three separate bouts over 25 years.
19.
Brandon Tartikoff was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.