Jeff Gralnick, who worked for ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, died at his home on May 9. Gralnick spent 20 years at ABC and most recently was a consultant to NBC News President Steve Capus. Earlier at NBC, he served for three years an executive producer of the NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw, helping make the broadcast the top-rated evening news show.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Sada Thompson, the durable matriarch of stage and screen who won a Tony Award for her portraits of three sisters and their mother in the 1971 […]
LOS ANGELES (AP) — With his boyish looks and his thick head of blond hair, Jackie Cooper seemed to be eternally young. He was “Skippy,” taking the popular comic strip […]
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Emmy Award-winning TV producer Roger Gimbel, who worked with stars including Bing Crosby and Sophia Loren, has died. He was 86. Spokesman Dale Olson said Thursday […]
Exclusives
LONDON (AP) — Elisabeth Sladen, a star sidekick of the “Doctor Who” series and a popular children’s show actress, has died of cancer Tuesday, the BBC said. She was 63. […]
Larry Fraiberg, president of Group W TV Stations from 1980 to 1986 has died at 89. He also was president of Metromedia after holding GM slots at stations in Washington and New York.
He was nominated four times for directing Academy Awards, and actors in his films won 17 Oscars. But Lumet himself never won. Lumet did receive an honorary Oscar in 2005 for lifetime achievement. Network, a scathing view of the television business, proved to be Lumet’s most memorable film and created an enduring catch phrase when crazed newscaster Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) exhorted his audience to raise their windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Sherril Wightman Taylor, former CBS and National Association of Broadcasters executive, died last Wednesday, March 30, 2011, at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center. He was 87. During his long career in […]
David Smith, president and CEO of Mission Broadcasting, died of a massive heart attack over the weekend. Mission owns 16 stations — based mostly in smaller markets in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Texas — but they are operated by Nexstar Broadcasting as part of duopolies.
Tack Nail: Reporter, Character, One Of A Kind
Dawson “Tack” Nail, long-time executive editor of Warren Communications News and Communications Daily, died March 25. Here, William O’Shaughnessy, president-CEO of Whitney Radio, parent company of WVOX-AM and WRTN-FM Westchester, N.Y., offers some personal reflections on the man who was one of the most prominent reporters covering broadcasting and telecommunications in Washington for the past 50 years.
Barry Ackerley, former owner of the Seattle SuperSonics and former chairman and CEO of The Ackerley Group, died Monday morning. He was 76. Ackerley Group owned 18 TV stations in California, Colorado, Oregon, New York and Alaska.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Ferlin Husky, a pioneering country music entertainer in the 1950s and early ’60s known for hits like “Wings of a Dove” and “Gone,” died Thursday. He […]
Bill Monroe, a Washington journalist best known for moderating the NBC Sunday talk show Meet the Press during the 1970s and ’80s, died this morning in suburban Washington. He later became Washington editor of the Today show and won a prestigious Peabody award for his work. He also served as president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
GRENADA HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Kenneth Mars, an actor best known for his over-the-top performance as a German playwright in the original movie version of “The Producers,” died on Saturday […]
