Tarses has promised Marty Adelstein, Kelley's agent, that she will get him the 10 P.M. Wednesday time slot, but in the end Eisner and Iger do not want to move Diane Sawyer, a co-anchor of ''Prime Time Live.'' ''Don't worry. Watch TV.'' Be daring. Nicholas Rice is an Associate Editor for PEOPLE Magazine. ''Take this calendar and peruse it,'' Bader says. Such was the show business life of Jamie Tarses, who died on Monday in Los Angeles at 56. HBO was moving into original programming with shows such as Sex and the City, further diluting the talent pool. 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. A Disney+ series, The Mysterious Benedict Society, which Tarses worked on as an executive producer is expected to premiere later this year. 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. In June 1996, at just age 32, Tarses became the first woman to be named entertainment president at a major network when she took the role at ABC. Even so, Ms. Tarses was criticized at times as showing poor judgment. '', This was to be the last season of Roseanne's show, but her producers, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, have contacted Tarses about a new version for fall. Once someone is typecast in Hollywood, even as an executive, getting people to see that person in a different light can be a never-ending battle. Tarses stares a second, as if to say, What did I do now? She was highly creative herself and, of course, came from a family of writers.. Tarses looks relieved, and she and Bader begin discussing the May sweeps. A key part of his job would be to guide Tarses. ), After graduating from Williams College, she started her career in 1985 as an assistant at "Saturday Night Live" andmoved to NBC Entertainment two years later, where she helped developiconic TV shows including "Friends" and "Mad About You. The family moved to suburban Los Angeles, where her father became a successful sitcom writer (first on The Bob Newhart Show). [2] At the time of her departure she had one sitcom, one comedy, and one legal drama on ABC's schedule. Or silently suffering through another attack. For some in the community, Tarses' oversleeping confirmed rumors about her after-hours behavior -- her being out on the town with Morton or friends, staying out until all hours of the night. She gave an early voice to some of the industrys most prolific storytellers, and boldly led ABC at a time when the industry saw very few women in leadership roles, Dana Walden, Chairman of Entertainment, Walt Disney Television, said in a statement. ", Betsy Thomas, a friend and collaborator, also shared a statement, noting, "Jamie had such a true love for movies, television, theater, books and ideas that both transcended her work and absolutely inspired it. Whether or not the charges were true, Tarses' timing smacked of opportunism. Tarses considers this for a moment. 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. There was, already, a certain nervousness about her. 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. Eisner's standard was always something like ''Happy Days'' during the 70's, because that's when he worked at ABC. Iger can leave her alone for only so long. The piece portrayed Ms. Tarses as a nervous girl who swung erratically between arrogance and insecurity. ''She did great,'' Iger says, sounding relieved. a meteoric rise that at one point made her the youngest person and only There is something distinctly feline about her. ''It's been a year and there are still the rumors. When Eisner would finally agree to put something on the air, he would harangue Harbert about the price for the number of episodes ordered. ''TV Is Good,'' more than the new schedule, reflects Tarses' age. When she arrived at ABC in the spring of 1996, Ms. Tarses was the second-youngest person ever to be the lead programmer of a network. Every network longs for NBC's Thursday- night ''Friends''-''Seinfeld''-''E.R.'' 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. Once Tarses accepted Ovitz's offer to go to ABC, there was the matter of her existing contract. Jamie Tarses, the pioneering former ABC Entertainment president, died at 56 after suffering complications from a cardiac event last fall, according to her family. Tarses became president of ABC Entertainment in 1996, following a successful run as a comedy development executive at NBC, where she participated in the launch of Friends, Frasier and other popular sitcoms during the networks Must-See TV heyday. ''Jamie was an excellent developer of shows,'' says Littlefield, her former boss. ''It was a disaster.''. Tarses was exposed to television from an early age:Her father, Jay Tarses, created NBC's "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd," as well as "Buffalo Bill." Valentine has cast a shadow. The agents and studios take over entire floors of hotels, set up conference rooms, install extra phone lines and lobby for their shows, new and old. The newest ABC star-to-be, Jenna Elfman, from ''Dharma and Greg,'' wanders by and embraces Tarses. ABC's plan was that Harbert would be placed in a newly created position, chairman of entertainment, and Tarses would report to him. 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 is so good at spotting hits she becomes, at 32, the president of entertainment at ABC, the first woman to serve as a networks top programmer. [21], Tarses was co-producer of My Boys, a comedy about a female sports reporter starring Jordana Spiro, on TBS cable television network from November 28, 2006, until September 14, 2010. Her age, along with her status as the first woman to have that prestigious job, resulted in an unusual amount of scrutiny, often negative. When she arrived at ABC in the spring of 1996, Tarses was the second-youngest person to be the lead programmer of a network. ''I didn't get Wednesday night at 10, and ABC will be blocked from being a very successful network until they launch another 10 P.M. hit. I always felt I had to do it on my own. Jamie Tarses attends a 1998 screening of From The Earth To The Moon in Century City, California. Not long before Harbert left, Ovitz was fired from Disney after only 14 months. Tarses was the wunderkind who was behind much of NBC's "Must See TV" success, including "Friends" and "Frasier" and she came from TV royalty, as her father Jay Tarses is a well-known TV. Her client's room choice surprised Shamshiri. Jamie Tarses Affair Is a Case Study Of a Meltdown on the Small Screen - WSJ About WSJ News Corp is a global, diversified media and information services company focused on creating and. But their job descriptions overlapped, and in January of this year Harbert decided to exercise his six-month option. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1964, according to Variety, Tarses later graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She was 56. Tarses returns to her seat below the monitor. But being a great developer does not necessarily mean you will succeed as a network entertainment-division president. Some people spent more time trying to assassinate internal rivals than actually doing their jobs., After a year at ABC, Ms. Tarses, who had alienated some colleagues by not returning calls and missing morning meetings, gave the journalist Lynn Hirschberg unfettered access for an 8,000-word cover story in The New York Times Magazine. Iger, she believes, is her protector, and she knows (or thinks she does) how to keep up the flirt. It is true that Hollywood can be sexist, and it is difficult to be the first woman anything, and turning around ABC would be a tough job for anybody. WME, the agency that represented Tarses, said in a statement: "We are deeply saddened by the . '', ''This is the best taping we've had so far,'' she says to Bukinik. No, You Cant Build Here, Opinion: About Those Free Tickets to Hong Kong, Opinion: China Remains the Worlds Pandemic Risk. ''I did know in making this decision,'' Iger says, ''that Jamie would react negatively.'' Men have an easier time having mentors. ''Do you want me to use euphemisms?'' Getty Images. Whether Tarses' style bothered Harbert is hard to say. CNNs Sandra Gonzalez contributed to this report. He created and produced The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and The Slap Maxwell Story, co-created Buffalo Bill (with Tom Patchett), and was an executive producer for The Bob Newhart Show.. Tarses was born in Baltimore, Maryland.He graduated from Williams College in 1961. ''TV Is Good'' is a huge departure for ABC, a message likely to be lost on its rural, heartland base. Murdoch has survived scandal after scandal. Ms. Tarses resigned in 1999. The cause of death was heart complications from a. As a spotlight comes up on the executive, the chair swivels around, revealing Tarses. She sounds almost convinced. As an executive and producer, she was a champion for storytellers, having been raised by one of the all-time greats. The trailblazing TV executive paved the way for women in the entertainment industry as the first woman to head a major broadcast network, ABC. ''Look,'' she says, putting out her cigarette, ''I come to the party not being the most trusting person in the world, but I have to believe in the work. She was the ultimate fan. Tarses and her team huddle in a corner, underneath two large TV monitors. I have a job to do, and if I do it well everything should be O.K.'' ''I'm cautiously optimistic,'' Iger will say. She had the ability to make writers feel safe and to get the most out of them. ''It's emasculating,'' she says at one point, choosing a strange word. The Prime Video surprise hit was the last show Tarses launched before she had a stroke in the fall of 2020, just a . At NBC, she had had an exacting sense of what an 18-to-49-year-old urbanite would watch. Sara James Tarses (March 16, 1964 February 1, 2021) was an American television producer and television studio executive. You may cancel your subscription at anytime by calling Anyone can read what you share. Her death was confirmed by a family spokeswoman, who said the cause was "complications from a cardiac. ''I hear the first run-through went great.''. She had shepherded the cuddly Mad About You and the neurotic Frasier to NBCs prime-time lineup. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, How NBCs Must See TV risk takers of the 90s are still launching groundbreaking TV. Friends, which she had helped develop, was the envy of every network. Tarses' day began with a pile of scripts, breakfast at 8 with an agent at the Peninsula Hotel (''He was 15 minutes late,'' she keeps mentioning) and some talk concerning casting for a pilot about a genie. And yet, there are those, like Ovitz, who underestimated Iger's corporate savvy. ''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. ", WME, the agency that represented Tarses, remembered her as a "pioneer in every sense. Her ascension to said power was uncommonly fast. A new ad appears. . Sign In. 'Grey's Anatomy' Cast: Where Are They Now? By the end, ABC had changed 13 hours out of a 22-hour schedule. First the sexual harassment charges; now this. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. Credit:Getty. ''I'd never read a script before,'' Iger recalls, sitting in his enormous office near Lincoln Center late one afternoon in March. Tarses was a television executive who developed and worked. "Women are emotional,. Tarses was a consultant on another Sorkin show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a 2006 NBC drama set inside a Saturday Night Live-type sketch comedy show. Tarses is conflicted about autonomy: she craves the power, but it brings out her insecurities. Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, referred to her as Minnie Mouse in one article and scarily ruthless in another. The Cast of 'Hanging with Mr. Cooper:' Where Are They Now? So were cable channels. "For all her talent and success in entertainment, the thing Jamie was proudest of and most consumed by were her two kids," he said. After graduating from Williams College, she became an assistant casting executive on Saturday Night Live before joining Lorimar Television. The role of Jamie Buchman ultimately came down to two people: Hunt and Teri Hatcher. It's all new.' Agents and studio heads and prominent producers and even employees of the Walt Disney Company, ABC's parent corporation, have been predicting Tarses' fall from the moment she got the job in June of last year. Tarses, who was 32 when she took the job, had a tumultuous three-year run at ABC at a time when it was still being absorbed into the Walt Disney Co., which had acquired the network a year before she arrived. Ms. Tarses in 2018. A kind of last straw may have come when Tarses gave the go-ahead to a fall pilot -- which Eisner and Iger had turned down for the schedule -- as a midseason replacement show; furious, Iger ordered her to cancel the show. She began her career in 1985 as an assistant at Saturday Night Live and later became a casting director at Lorimar. 'The Last Don.' She had shepherded the cuddly Mad About You and the neurotic Frasier to NBCs prime-time lineup. Iger knows that turning ABC around will be difficult. (Sweeps are the thrice-yearly, monthlong periods that establish advertising rates for the local stations.) 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. 'Hiller and Diller.' . So how There's some sexism and some ageism, but the truth is very complex. In a statement, 20th Television president Karey Burke said, Jamie was a trailblazer in the truest sense of the word. ''Hiller and Diller'' is a Disney-produced show, but Valentine isn't crazy about it. She left ABC with one popular sitcom, Dharma & Greg, and one comedy that was a hit with critics, Aaron Sorkins Sports Night. ''Why were you watching CBS?'' ''I'm kidding, Jeff,'' Tarses says. She then worked as a casting director for Lorimar Productions, filling roles for mid-run Perfect Strangers. Born in Pittsburgh in 1964, Tarses was a graduate of Williams College. I'm new. She came in under cruel and unusual circumstances, and TV is still a male-dominated, chauvinistic world, and they just do not want that young, articulate, talented, outspoken woman to succeed. Tarses stares off for a moment, lightly drumming the side of her chair. Her age, with her status as the first woman to have that prestigious job, resulted in an unusual amount of scrutiny, often negative. Others stubbornly viewed her as a callous climber. Blue''). Three years ago, Jamie Tarses arrived at ABC television as a 32-year-old Tarses smiles. ", Photo: Greg Doherty/Patrick McMullan via Getty, Richard Belzer, 'Law & Order: SVU' Star, Dead at 78. Jamie Tarses Dies at 56: Cause of Death. '', But for Tarses it's as good as over. a case study in dysfunctional corporate relationships. ''I actually like this part,'' she says by phone from her temporary offices at ABC near Lincoln Center. Dwek is not well known, and although he is said to have good taste, he is mostly seen as someone who will not threaten his boss. Jamie's new. Jamie Tarses, the TV executive and producer who was the first woman to head a Big Three network entertainment division, was remembered Monday by former colleagues and television executives as a. Tarses death was confirmed by her family. Here, she helped develop Friends, Mad About You, Frasier, NewsRadio, and Caroline in the City. ''And how you say it and when you say it determines how successful you'll be at the job. ''I need this to work,'' Tarses says. She had smarts, drive, family connections, money, the mentor everyone wished they had, very good looks, absolutely everything going for her, Mr. Mandel said. Writer: The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. Even decades after she had left ABC, Ms. Tarses continued to serve as a lightning rod in Hollywood. 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. In the weeks that follow she will decide to stay at her job at least for a while, and ABC will issue statements maintaining that the new, arrangement is going to work just fine. 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., Jamie Tarses, Executive in a Hollywood Rise-and-Fall Story, Dies at 56, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/business/media/jamie-tarses-dead.html. 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 . In the fall of '95, Morton began dating Tarses, then separated from Dan McDermott, head of Dreamworks Network Television. 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. [15], Tarses was the subject of what Bill Carter of The New York Times called an "unflattering profile" written by Lynn Hirschberg in The New York Times Magazine in July 1997, in which she "was portrayed as an embattled executive whose competence and professionalism was being questioned in Hollywood show business circles".[13][16][17]. 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. ''Hey, Bob,'' she says, as Bader listens in. He talks, but she doesn't seem to hear. Perhaps he is right, the show isn't really as good as she imagines. ''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. More from Variety. Vicious infighting ensued in what The Wall Street Journal later deemed a case study in dysfunctional corporate relationships.. Just two weeks before, the rumor was that Stuart Bloomberg was being brought from New York to supervise Tarses. All network heads make promises they can't keep, but they deal with it. She was a mentor and friend, and many of us owe so much to her. 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. Her hair, a mass of curls that falls past her shoulders, is piled up on her head like a corona. It's no wonder I feel a little paranoid and beat up.''. TERI HATCHER WAS ALMOST JAMIE. While still hugely profitable, the big three networks can no longer be complacent and are scrambling for solutions. Bader looks surprised. She does not want to talk about the problems with Iger, or the problems Iger believes she was having inside the office and out. 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. William Morris Endeavor, the agency that represented Tarses, paid tribute toher in a statement to USA TODAY.
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