Jamie Kellner, TV Executive Who Started Fox and WB, Dies at 77

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Jamie Kellner, a media executive who helped build Fox Broadcasting into a thriving television network with shows such as “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “The Simpsons” — and who went on to create the WB network, known for the angsty “Dawson’s Creek” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — died on June 21 at his home in Montecito, Calif., near Santa Barbara. He was 77. The cause was cancer, said Brad Turell, a family spokesman. Mr. Kellner was one of the most successful television executives of his generation, whose knack for capturing young viewers — first men at Fox, then women at WB — lured viewers away from the Big Three networks that had ruled television for nearly 40 years. Mr. Kellner believed ABC, NBC and CBS were ignoring viewers under 35 and were hamstrung by middle-of-the-road taste. Rupert Murdoch, Fox Inc.’s owner, and Barry Diller, its chairman, recruited Mr. Kellner from the television syndication business in 1986 and installed him as president of the Fox Broadcasting Company. Its aspiration to be the first new TV network since ABC in 1948 was broadly derided. But from the debut in 1987 of its first series, the lowbrow family sitcom “Married … With Children,” which was shown on six Murdoch-owned stations and a string of independent ones that Mr. Kellner helped stitch together, the new network began stealing the Big Three’s audience.