Even so, Tarses was criticised at times as showing poor judgment. Prepares New Rules on Investment in China, Twitters Revenue, Adjusted Earnings Fell About 40% in December, Opinion: Yes, Theres a Housing Crisis. [15], In 2005, Tarses partnered on a production company called Pariah Productions with producer Gavin Polone. ''It's been a year and there are still the rumors. a meteoric rise that at one point made her the youngest person and only FRIENDS executive Jamie Tarses has died at just 56 after reportedly suffering from complications following a cardiac event. After graduation, in 1985, she spent a year as a production assistant on ''Saturday Night Live'' in New York, then went back to Los Angeles and joined the casting department at Lorimar, working on shows like ''Perfect Strangers.'' Lewis, meanwhile, has just been left by his second wife and is rearing two uncontrollable children. It's all new.' To some, she was the victim of a misogynistic television industry. ''You can discuss the pros and cons of every show only so many times, and then you have to render a decision. Tarses was a television executive who developed and worked on some of the most significant broadcast programs in the '90s, including Friends, Frasier, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Sports Night. Every network longs for NBC's Thursday- night ''Friends''-''Seinfeld''-''E.R.'' Weeks later, when the network announces that a 47-year-old ABC executive named Stuart Bloomberg will become chairman of ABC Entertainment -- will be put in charge of Tarses and loom as an invitation for her to leave -- she will seem almost relieved. I just dont want to play anymore, she told The Los Angeles Times when she left ABC. ", "Jamie Tarses Dies: Trailblazing TV Executive & Producer Was 56", "Tarses-Morton Split Blamed for Sitcom Downfall", "Jamie Tarses, Executive in a Hollywood Rise-and-Fall Story, Dies at 56", "Jamie Tarses, first female TV network entertainment head, dies at 56", "Fox Developing Family Comedy 'Bastards' From 'Butter' Scribe", "Amazon Studios Names Full Cast of 'Really' Comedy Pilot From Jay Chandrasekhar and Jamie Tarses", "Milwaukee's new show now called "Backyards and Bullets", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jamie_Tarses&oldid=1134947833, This page was last edited on 21 January 2023, at 17:30. She learned the television business through osmosis -- her father had a complicated relationship with his bosses, most notably Brandon Tartikoff, then president of NBC entertainment, who adored Jay Tarses but challenged him. ''And that's her problem. He swiftly promoted Tarses to the networks comedy development department, where she worked on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which turned Will Smith into a household name; the oddball Wings, set at a New England airport; and Blossom, centered on a teenage Mayim Bialik. Tarses came from a show-business family. Her brother, the comedy writer Matt Tarses, has credits like Scrubs and The Goldbergs.). ''What would the premise be?'' Some people spent more time trying to assassinate internal rivals than actually doing their jobs., After a year at ABC, Tarses, who had alienated some colleagues by not returning calls and missing morning meetings, gave the journalist Lynn Hirschberg unfettered access for an 8000-word cover story in The New York Times Magazine. Tarses preferred the creative process of production over the jockeying necessary to get ahead in the network hierarchy. Now there is cable and the Murdoch-owned Fox Network and homes with two or three TV sets tuned to different shows and computers linked to the World Wide Web. Tarses ponders a moment and then writes her fax reply: ''We already have a mini-series about a guy who swallows a penny and dies and a woman who takes too big a bite of steak and dies, but if you want this, too, we'd be happy to do it.''. I gave Jamie the keys and I have no plans to ask for them back. It is an afternoon in early may, near the end of pilot season, the frantic time when TV executives decide on their schedules of shows for the fall, and Jamie Tarses, the 33-year-old president of ABC Entertainment, is driving her Range Rover from her office in Century City to a meeting across town. But Harbert was a loyal company man, and he adapted. You may change your billing preferences at any time in the Customer Center or call At NBC she had served up a steady supply of hit sitcoms, including Mad About You, Frasier and Friends.. After quitting ABC in 1999, Ms. Tarses avoided the spotlight and remade herself as a producer. When Tarses took the ABC job, she hated the network's old branding approach and solicited bids from new agencies, eventually choosing TBWA Chiat/Day. I love television, I really do.. Jamie Tarses, the first woman to head a network entertainment division, has died. ''Someone said this job was supposed to be fun,'' she adds, smiling grimly. She joined NBC in 1987 in the current comedy programming division (shows already on the air), where she monitored scripts for shows like Cheers and A Different World, starring Lisa Bonet. Jamie Tarses, the producer and groundbreaking TV executive who as president of ABC Entertainment from 1996-99 became the first woman to serve as head a network entertainment division, died. Jamie's new. ''But I don't understand the mechanism by which somebody could take down the president's schedule and put up a new one,'' she says. ''It really bugged me. Brandon Tartikoff, NBCs much-admired entertainment chief, became her mentor. You think of her as a girl, and it changes how you do business with her. We will miss her greatly.. 2 in network entertainment -- though with a better title. ABC decided to pass on the new version of ''Roseanne'' (and so, eventually, did every other network), and there are very few anchor shows left for the fall schedule. [7], Tarses left NBC in 1996 amidst a significant amount of press coverage. As a spotlight comes up on the executive, the chair swivels around, revealing Tarses. At ABC, she ran into a political minefield the network had recently been acquired by Disney and left the job after three years. ''I actually like this part,'' she says by phone from her temporary offices at ABC near Lincoln Center. [18][19] Tarses was a consultant for Studio 60. Iger can leave her alone for only so long. She had smarts, drive, family connections, money, the mentor everyone wished they had, very good looks, absolutely everything going for her, Mr. Mandel said. He also fought for ''Twin Peaks'' and ''N.Y.P.D. "She unabashedly loved television and was an executive who made writers feel safe and heard. She had smarts, drive, family connections, money, the mentor everyone wished they had, very good looks, absolutely everything going for her, Mr. Mandel said. "She was never happier than when she was with Wyatt and Sloane. 'The Last Don.' All Rights Reserved. ABC badly needed fresh hit shows, and Ms. Tarses, who had worked at NBC, had a reputation for serving up a steady supply especially zeitgeist-tapping sitcoms. Life is short. But from the start, Tarses was faced with many in Hollywood looking to tear her down be it rivals jealous of her age, or the sexism that persists today but was still rampant in 1996. '', See the article in its original context from. ''. The piece portrayed Tarses as a nervous girl who swung erratically between arrogance and insecurity. He has the confidence of a man who is accustomed to good fortune. ''This may sound sexist, but women are emotional and Jamie is particularly emotional. From Chris Rock to the SAG Awards. [20] Later, she had a company called FanFare Productions at Sony Pictures Television. You won't find a network schedule without two 10 P.M. hits, and I told that to Jamie.''. He has heard the talk -- that Tarses is not up to the challenge. ''It used to be, you could have a hit show and that would turn around a network,'' explains Warren Littlefield, president for entertainment at NBC. ''I hear the first run-through went great.''. And he had, in Tarses' case, an explosive means of setting her free: sexual harassment. She was the president of ABC Entertainment from 1996 to 1999, the firs. Katie Couric Calls Barbara Walters 'the OG of Female Broadcasters' in Tribute After Her Death, Paying Tribute to the Celebrities Who Have Died in 2023. [2][28] She was a volunteer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Prominent members of the TV community, along with members of her own staff, have rattled off their grievances to Iger, and he is starting to worry: maybe Tarses is not the one. And sometimes she hates my advice, but it's her division to run. Roseanne could sing it.'' She was highly creative herself and, of course, came from a family of writers. (Her father, Jay Tarses, wrote for The Carol Burnett Show and created The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, an acclaimed comedic drama, from 1987 to 91. The work is a blast. She makes the promise and then she has Iger make the phone call. During Tarses tenure at ABC, the networks successes included hit sitcom Dharma & Greg, writer-producer Aaron Sorkins Sports Night, The Practice from David E. Kelley and Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, which introduced actor Ryan Reynolds. Tarses attended Williams College in Massachusetts, studying play structure and receiving a theatre degree in 1985. Jamie had a remarkable ability to engage writers to understand their twisted, dark, joyful, brilliant complexity and really speak their language and help them achieve their creative goals, said Warren Littlefield, who was NBCs president of entertainment from 1991 to 1998. ''This is the pre-lunch mess,'' she says, sorting through piles of tapes and scripts and memos and inch-thick demographic breakdowns on each and every network show. She had invented a new. (Mr. Tartikoff was 31 when he took over at NBC.) Then, as part of a restructuring, yet another manager, Lloyd Braun, was placed over her in what was essentially a demotion. This in reference to Jamie Tarses, a producer on The Wilds who passed away. Vicious infighting ensued in what The Wall Street Journal later deemed a case study in dysfunctional corporate relationships.. [10][11] From 1996 to 1999, she was president of ABC Entertainment. She was a production assistant on Saturday Night Live in New York for a season before returning to Los Angeles in 1986 to become a casting director for Lorimar Productions. Her hair, a mass of curls that falls past her shoulders, is piled up on her head like a corona. 1 among 18-to-49-year-olds. We are delighted that you'd like to resume your subscription. '', But for Tarses it's as good as over. Her death was confirmed by a family spokeswoman, who said the cause was "complications from a cardiac. First, there is Steven Bochco, the creator and executive producer of ''N.Y.P.D. She was the president of ABC Entertainment from 1996 to 1999, the first woman and one of the youngest people to hold such a post in an American broadcast network. Jamie Tarses, the first woman to run a network entertainment division, died Monday morning due to complications from a cardiac event she suffered last fall. What lawsuit? Upstart broadcast competitors the scrappy Fox, UPN, the WB were siphoning young adult viewers away from the Big Three networks. Tarses was the daughter of Jay Tarses, a successful writer and producer known for the innovative 1980s TV series The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and Buffalo Bill. A 1997 New York Times profile indicated she likely inherited her independent streak from her father. Tarseswho spent nearly a decade as an executive at NBC and has produced such series as Happy Endings, Franklin & Bash, and the upcoming TBS comedy Your Family or Mine was the lucky bidder. Tarses decides to call Iger in New York for his advice. ''It was lonelier than I thought,'' Tarses says afterward. The traditional way is to develop a show that catches on with this group. 2 in the entertainment division, she was responsible for urban-hip hits like ''Caroline in the City,'' ''Mad About You'' and most of all ''Friends'' -- are saying she is not up to being a president. '', This is in March. ''In one split second everything changed,'' she says. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/13/magazine/jamie-tarses-fall-as-scheduled.html. This is not presidential. Tarses held several executive producer roles throughout the 2000s. As a well-reputed producer and TV executive, Jamie Tarses has a beautifully written biography on Wikipedia. ''Do you want me to use euphemisms?'' ''What do you think, Dean?'' A key part of his job would be to guide Tarses. Tarses says. In 1998, ABC hosted more than 100 television critics and entertainment journalists from across the United States at a promotional event in Pasadena, Calif. ABC stars were also invited, including a young Ryan Reynolds, then appearing on a sitcom called Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. As the evening wore on, reporters witnessed Ms. Tarses and Mr. Reynolds go outside and become amorous. Tarses considers this for a moment. You may cancel your subscription at anytime by calling ABC has very few 8 P.M. hits, and without 8 P.M. hits to hook a viewer for the evening, a network cannot succeed in the ratings. '' And she is not wrong to be worried. Before she blasted through glass ceilings for female executives in the TV industry, Tarses played a major role in the development of modern TV classics, including two tentpole entries in NBCs iconic Thursday night must-see TV lineup: Friends and Frasier., Despite being a mega power player, Tarses once humbly said, [Im] a genuine fan of the medium. ''Bloomberg was being told by the boyfriend how to do his job.''. He began working with the brand as an Editorial Intern in early 2020, before later transitioning to a freelance role, and then staff positions soon after. Jamie Tarses, Trailblazing TV Exec, Dies at 56 she asks, regaining her equilibrium. He doesn't look left or right and he rarely gestures. The Cast of 'Hanging with Mr. Cooper:' Where Are They Now? ''It's fine to have the desire to be head of a network,'' Harbert says, ''but when it comes to Jamie, it's hard to know exactly what happened. At NBC, she had had an exacting sense of what an 18-to-49-year-old urbanite would watch. And I don't know if I'll get the credit if we succeed. ''I thought they were out of their minds. Shewas responsible for overseeing shows includingAaron Sorkins Sports Night, The Practice from David E. Kelley;Dharma & Greg; and Ryan Reynolds debut, Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place. At the time of her departure, the Wall Street Journal recognized her for her "ability to recognize hot ideas, writers and stars.". So, on a Sunday evening in mid-February last year, Harbert, who was still unaware of the Tarses discussions, received a phone call at home from Warren Littlefield informing him that Jamie Tarses was about to be given his job. Tarses and her team huddle in a corner, underneath two large TV monitors. Jamie Tarses Children. From the first, no one believed that the marriage of Harbert and Tarses would work. ''Wednesday night at 10 is key,'' Harbert explains. He is tall and handsome and has a steady, focused gaze. . The implication, in all the talk, was that this was not how a network executive acted -- this was how a girl acted. Her bosses, including Robert A. Iger, then chairman of the ABC Group, had been applying patches to the situation. She is in a good mood this morning. After successfully overseeing production of NBC hits Cheers and A Different World, she went on to develop a string of beloved hits for the network such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Wings, NewsRadio, Mad About You and Blossom., Tarses was promoted in 1994 to senior vice president of primetime series making her second-in-command to then-entertainment president of NBC Warren Littlefield, who has said her development skills were extraordinary., In a statement to Deadline, Littlefield said, In her NBC days, surrounded by superstar executives, she stood out. He was pursuing this plan with Robert Morton, the longtime executive producer of Letterman's show. Although popular with writers and producers, Bloomberg can be awkward with more corporate types. ", "We are deeply saddened by the loss of our longtime friend and client," the agency said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE. Now, before heading off to a cast run-through of a promising half-hour comedy, ''Dharma and Greg'' -- it's about a mismatched San Francisco couple: she's a free spirit, he's an assistant D.A. ''Take this calendar and peruse it,'' Bader says. He was 57 years. The Walt Disney Company had purchased ABC shortly before Ms. Tarses arrived, heightening Wall Street scrutiny and intensifying corporate politics. 3. ''Don't worry. She left ABC with one popular sitcom, Dharma & Greg, and one comedy that was a hit with critics, Aaron Sorkins Sports Night. You have to be so clear on what that network sensibility is that if you wake up your most junior employee at 2 A.M. and say, 'What is this network about?' ''Roseanne is the lowest-rated show of the time period with blacks. She needs a protector, and without Harbert or Ovitz, she was left with Iger, who was 3,000 miles away in New York and not interested in watching out for her on a daily basis. Jay Tarses was born on 3 July 1939 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. 2. HBO was moving into original programming with shows such as Sex and the City, further diluting the talent pool. Iger seems certain of Tarses, certain of the future. Tarses, who is avoiding the agent-producer hard sell by spending most of her free time at Morton's apartment, rather than at her suite at the Four Seasons, actually seems to be, for the first time in nearly a year, happy. The ads seem to discourage viewing; they seem to emphasize why TV is, in fact, bad, and they don't successfully replace ABC's old-fashioned image with anything concrete. He has been married to Rachel Newdell since June 9, 1963. You think of her as a girl, and it changes how you do business with her.. ''And I counseled Jamie, never be arrogant. Ms. Tarses (pronounced TAR-siss) broke a Hollywood glass ceiling in 1996, when she became president of ABC Entertainment. Such was the show business life of Jamie Tarses, who died on Monday in Los Angeles at 56. ''It was a disaster.''. Last year, Eisner, who is very hard to please, beat Harbert up about his chosen shows. Iger tells Tarses to make a low offer and if Carsey and Werner don't accept it, then pass. She was a mentor and friend, and many of us owe so much to her., Jamies creative genius sparked culture-defining shows that have spanned decades. She ultimately resigned in 1999. It's just business with them. ABC was a snake pit in those days, said Jon Mandel, who ran MediaCom, a television ad-buying agency. appreciated. In 1987, she moved to NBC after she was hired by Brandon Tartikoff, then president of NBC Entertainment. Harbert could leave after six months if he so desired. She fought for them. ''I would have understood it if they did this in October, if my schedule failed, but. When Eisner would finally agree to put something on the air, he would harangue Harbert about the price for the number of episodes ordered. And the final call on many of these things is her call. Jamie Tarses died in Los Angeles on February 1, 2021, at age 56, according to Tarses' family. That's O.K.''. What she didn't realize was how much she needed him. As Tarses enters, she is greeted by her comedy staff -- Carolyn Ginsburg and Suzanne Bukinik and her newest employee, Rob Dwek, who was just announced as Tarses' new No. Ms. Tarses and NBC denied the story, as did Mr. Ovitz, but it continued to hound her, making the young Ms. Tarses appear as someone who would do anything to get ahead, as Ms. Hirschberg wrote. She asked why, and Iger told her, simply, that she needed the help. As president for entertainment, Tarses must oversee the development of 40-odd pilots, prime-time shows that she hopes will plug ABC's ratings holes. She then worked as a casting director for Lorimar Productions, filling roles for mid-run Perfect Strangers. This comes after an intensive week of pilot screenings in Los Angeles attended by, among others, Bloomberg, Iger and Eisner. She had the ability to make writers feel safe and to get the most out of them. Tarses is survived by her partner Paddy Aubrey and their two children, Wyatt and Sloane, as well as her parents, Rachel and Jay, siblings Mallory and Matt, sister-in-law Katie Tarses, three nieces, and a nephew, per The Hollywood Reporter. She is survived by her partner Paddy Aubrey; their children, Wyatt and Sloane; her parents, Jay and Rachel Tarses; her siblings, Matt and Mallory Tarses; her sister-in-law, Katie Tarses; three nieces; and a nephew. ''It's emasculating,'' she says at one point, choosing a strange word. The indiscretion contributed to a narrative that had congealed around Tarses: she was too impetuous for such a big job. he repeats. Be resilient. . ''This means that everything is in flux much sooner than it has to be. '', The fact that Tarses is a woman, the first woman ever to be an entertainment chief at one of the big three networks, did not concern ABC, although, not surprisingly, her being a woman has turned out to be a complicating factor. ''I did know in making this decision,'' Iger says, ''that Jamie would react negatively.'' I had anticipated that he was going to come in and wipe the board off and say goodbye. He swiftly promoted Ms. Tarses to the networks comedy development department, where she worked on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which turned Will Smith into a household name; the oddball Wings, set at a New England airport; and Blossom, centered on a teenage Mayim Bialik. By the end, ABC had changed 13 hours out of a 22-hour schedule. The Tarses family said donations can be made in her honor to the Young Storytellers project. That doesn't happen with Les Moonves at CBS'' -- that network's entertainment chief -- ''or Warren Littlefield at NBC. Her mind worked at an incredible pace and she loved to challenge it. ''It was better than we thought it would be,'' says Betsy Frank, an advertising executive and close observer of the television business. Bader looks surprised. Tarses was the President of ABC Entertainment from 1996 to 1999. During her time with ABC, Tarses saw success with projects including Dharma & Greg, Sports Night and The Practice. '', At the party after the announcement, in the American Festival Cafe in Rockefeller Center, Tarses is beaming. Jamie Tarses threw in the towel at Disney-owned ABC last week, resigning her post as president of ABC Entertainment after some three years on the job. But she is worried that she may need the show. After graduating from Williams College, she became an assistant casting executive on Saturday Night Live before joining Lorimar Television. The rest of the room is spare -- the chairs and tables are light-pine country-cozy, there are two overstuffed couches covered in pink chintz and there's a very big TV. Did you encounter any technical issues? ''It's up against the birth of the baby on 'Mad About You' '' -- the NBC hit that helped push ''Roseanne'' off its Tuesday-night perch. And under whose direction? The cause of death was heart complications from a. Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, referred to her as Minnie Mouse in one article and scarily ruthless in another. Jamie Tarses, the first-ever woman to oversee programming at a major broadcast network, died on Monday, the New York Times reports. But the same could be said about any guy in Hollywood especially then and none of them had the added pressure of breaking a glass ceiling.. Still, Jamie Tarses is not just any woman, and the criticisms of her are personal and specific: it is this 33-year-old, this woman, with her mix of insecurity and ambition, confidence and self-destructiveness, brilliance and lack of executive skills, who has them wondering. He would say that they were hateful, horrible people who should be shot on sight.. I always felt I had to do it on my own. Disney's original thought had been to give the network a more conspicuously family-oriented identity. The cause of death was heart complications from a cardiac event last fall, according to a family statement. In the last couple months, it has become clear that while Iger is on her side, he is also in New York and is not particularly interested in her pilot whirl. Jamie Tarses, one of the most dynamic television executives of her era who helped build NBC's Must-See TV lineup and went on to become the first woman to lead a Big Three network programming . Several television pilots failed but she ultimately found a few modest hits, including My Boys, a comedy created by Ms. Thomas and centred on a female sportswriter, and Happy Endings, a sitcom that dusted off the Friends formula. Tarses stares off for a moment, lightly drumming the side of her chair. ''Hiller and Diller'' is a Disney-produced show, but Valentine isn't crazy about it. Jamie Tarses attends the Women In Film 2018 Crystal + Lucy Award at The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. The article, which pointedly discussed Ms. Tarsess hairstyle and feminine way of sitting, helped color the rest of Ms. Tarsess career. ''And how you say it and when you say it determines how successful you'll be at the job. The rest of this nonsense I dont need.. Tarses made a lot of people a lot of money, yet consider the standards to which she was held in the oh-so liberal, self-congratulatory, enlightened world of 1990s Hollywood. 'My Way.' ''Jamie was an excellent developer of shows,'' says Littlefield, her former boss. In terms of the series programming, there will be no change. ", Photo: Greg Doherty/Patrick McMullan via Getty, Richard Belzer, 'Law & Order: SVU' Star, Dead at 78. Nicholas has previous work experience with Billboard, POPSUGAR, Bustle and Elite Daily. Jamie Tarses, the first female president of a broadcast network, died Monday following complications from a cardiac event last fall, her family confirmed in a statement provided by Sony. Born in Pittsburgh in 1964, Tarses was a graduate of Williams College. There wasnt a puzzle, mystery, or riddle she couldnt solve, which made her a brilliant editor, storyteller, and producer.". Tarses broke a Hollywood glass ceiling in 1996 when she became president of ABC Entertainment. She knows that ABC badly needs a ratings boost -- last week the network nearly sank into fourth place, behind Fox, which has seven fewer hours of prime-time programming each week. A superstar TV executive, Tarses was instrumental in developing such iconic shows as NBC's Friends and Frasier and reached the pinnacle of the network . When Tarses was hired by ABC, at an estimated salary of $2 million a year for five years, ABC had a rather vague identity: rural- and family-oriented in the half-hour comedies (''Roseanne'') and tougher and more adventurous in the hourlong dramas (''N.Y.P.D. It was that accusation again: girl. We're going to move on.' A lot of it was pure sexism, said Betsy Thomas, a screenwriter and friend. They joked about it at dinner. Jamie Tarses, a veteran of NBC's Must See TV era who went on to lead ABC Entertainment, died Monday following complications from a cardiac event last fall, according to Tarses' family. ''He had no place in the process,'' Iger explains. The work is a blast, she told the Los Angeles Times after her departure from ABC in 1999. Tarses looks relieved, and she and Bader begin discussing the May sweeps. When she left NBC we knew she would be missed but opportunity knocked at ABC, Littlefield said. Tarses was only 32 when she was named president of ABC Entertainment in June 1996. they can tell you in their sleep.''. Tarses grew up in the business -- her father, Jay Tarses, created, among other groundbreaking shows, ''The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,'' the first so-called dramedy. ABC's plan was that Harbert would be placed in a newly created position, chairman of entertainment, and Tarses would report to him.