Brandon Tartikoff (
January 13,
1949 —
August 27,
1997) was a television executive who was credited with turning around NBC's low
prime time reputation with such hit series as
Hill Street Blues,
L.A. Law,
ALF,
Family Ties,
The Cosby Show,
Cheers,
Miami Vice,
The Golden Girls,
Knight Rider,
The A-Team,
St. Elsewhere,
Night Court,
Hunter,
Highway to Heaven,
Matlock,
Remington Steele,
A Different World,
227 and
Empty Nest.
Tartikoff also helped develop
Punky Brewster, for which he named the title character after a girl he had a crush on in school.
Brandon, the pet dog on
Punky Brewster, was named after Tartikoff. He was also involved in the creation of
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and
Beggars and Choosers.
Biography
Early life and career
Born in
Freeport, New York, Tartikoff was a graduate of the
Lawrenceville School and
Yale University, and started his career at
WLS-TV in
Chicago, Illinois. While attending Yale, Tartikoff worked as an account executive and sales manager of
WNHC-TV in
New Haven, Connecticut and
Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale, he took a series of jobs in advertising and local television. Tartikoff spent vacations in Los Angeles looking for a job in network television.
His parents were both survivors of the
collision of two 747s on
Tenerife,
Canary Islands in 1977.
[Newsweek 3/1977]
Career at NBC
Tatrikoff was hired as a program executive at
ABC in 1976. One year later, he moved to NBC (after being hired by
Dick Ebersol to direct comedy programming). Tartikoff took over programming duties at NBC from
Fred Silverman in 1981.
At age 31, Tartikoff became the youngest president of NBC's entertainment division.
When Tartikoff took over, a writers' strike was looming, affiliates were defecting and the network had only three
prime time shows in the Top 20:
Little House on the Prairie,
Diff'rent Strokes and
Real People).
Johnny Carson was reportedly in talks to move his landmark late-night talk show show to ABC. The entire cast and writers of
Saturday Night Live had left that late-night sketch-comedy series, and their replacements had received some of the show's worst critical notices. By 1982, Tartikoff and his new superior, the highly well-regarded former producer
Grant Tinker, turned the network's fortunes around.
As head of
NBC's Entertainment Division, Tartikoff's successes included
The Cosby Show, for which Tartikoff had pursued actor-comedian
Bill Cosby to create a pilot after having been impressed by Cosby's stories when Cosby guest-hosted the
Tonight Show 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.
[ Knight Rider was inspired by a perceived lack of leading men who could act, with Tartikoff suggested a talking car could fill in the gaps in any leading man's acting abilities.]
During the casting process of Family Ties, Tartikoff was unexcited about Michael J. Fox for the role of Alex P. Keaton.
Johnny Carson broke the news of his retirement in February 1991 to Tartikoff at the Grille in Beverly Hills. For several days only Tartikoff and, at the time, NBC Chairman Bob Wright knew of the planned retirement.
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."
Appearances on NBC's shows
During his time at NBC, he made appearances in several of the network's shows. He hosted Saturday Night Live in 1983 and appeared as himself in an episode of Saved by the Bell, where, very tongue-in-cheek, he shortly entertains the notion of a "show about a high school principal and his kids," before scoffing at the idea. During his 1983 appearance on Saturday Night Live, one skit featured Tartikoff in a black leather ensemble, with the words "Be There" spelled out in rhinestones on the back of his jacket. "Be There" was NBC's slogan during the 1983 - 1984 season, a fitting example of clever hidden advertising. He also appeared as himself in episodes of Night Court and ALF, and in the background of one of the final episodes of Cheers. David Leisure also played Tartikoff in an episode of ALF.
Post-NBC career
He left NBC in 1991, moving to Paramount Pictures to become its chairman. A year later, Brandon left that post to spend more time with his daughter, Calla, who was injured in a car crash near the family's Lake Tahoe home.
In 1994, he made his comeback to national TV with Last Call, a short-lived late-night discussion show he produced. That same year he also produced The Steven Banks Show for PBS. Later that year, he began a brief run as chairman of New World Entertainment. Just prior to his death, 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.
Family
Tartikoff was married with 2 daughters. Wife Lilly Tartikoff and daughter Calla own a restaurant in West LA called Colony Cafe.
Death
Tartikoff died on August 27, 1997 from Hodgkin's Disease, with which he had three separate bouts over 25 years.
The Deep Space Nine sixth-season premiere "A Time to Stand" began with a title card reading "In memory of Brandon Tartikoff." A similar card appeared at the end of the ninth-season premiere, "The Butter Shave," of Seinfeld.
He was interred in Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
Parodies
Tartikoff was parodied in the 1989-1990 CBS series The Famous Teddy Z as network president "Landon Tarmac."
