'', It was when Iger ran the entertainment division that ABC was No. It is not a surprise that the producer has accumulated a net worth of multi-million dollars. Jay Tarses. 1 among 18-to-49-year-olds. 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. She realizes now, she says, that the town believes that she will not even be able to program her own fall schedule, that she'll put her shows in front of Eisner and Iger and they'll do the scheduling. As Warren Littlefield, her boss there, put it, ''She completely understood the process.''. 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. Gossip swirled in Hollywood that she solved the problem by claiming that she had been sexually harassed by Don Ohlmeyer, a senior NBC executive. A Disney+ series, The Mysterious Benedict Society, which Tarses worked on as an executive producer is expected to premiere later this year. Tarses says the play is not autobiographical--he has been married for 30 years and has three grown children--but that he had wanted to write for some time about marriage and mortality. The trailblazing TV executive paved the way for women in the entertainment industry as the first woman to head a major broadcast network, ABC. ''Bob'' is Robert A. Iger, the president of ABC Inc. and Tarses' boss, and he has faxed her about a man who swallowed a fish and died -- wouldn't this make a great premise for a mini-series? . ''Hiller and Diller'' is a Disney-produced show, but Valentine isn't crazy about it. When she can't reach him she stares into the middle distance, looking worried. Looking up at the screen, Tarses introduces some ads that flesh out the campaign. She sounds almost convinced. Brandon Tartikoff, NBCs much-admired entertainment chief, became her mentor. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. ''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. The article, which pointedly discussed Ms. Tarsess hairstyle and feminine way of sitting, helped color the rest of Ms. Tarsess career. A veteran television executive, Stuart Bloomberg, was installed above Tarses. Bader nods, apparently uncertain if this is a joke. First, there is Steven Bochco, the creator and executive producer of ''N.Y.P.D. ''What do you think, Dean?'' ''. I just dont want to play anymore, she told The Los Angeles Times when she left ABC. Credit:Getty. Her death was confirmed by a family spokeswoman, who said the cause was "complications from a cardiac. 1, where it had been only four years before. That was when, through her boyfriend, Morton, she began talking to Ovitz. Co. network. ''This means that everything is in flux much sooner than it has to be. Be daring. From Chris Rock to the SAG Awards. [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]. CNNs Sandra Gonzalez contributed to this report. Eager to talk about Laybourne and Newsweek, Tarses dials Morton's cell-phone number. Anyone can read what you share. Upstart broadcast competitors the scrappy Fox, UPN, the WB were siphoning young adult viewers away from the Big Three networks. A huge screen spreads the ABC message, ''TV Is Good.'' 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. Her father is veteran TV producer Jay Tarses, who created such shows as The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. Her brother, Matt, is also a writer-producer. She might sell her house in Pacific Palisades. did she wind up instead as a case study in dysfunctional corporate There was, already, a certain nervousness about her. When they have, the cliche holds: they have to be better than their male equivalents to end up equal. 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.". This is how an easy day turns into something else. (Sweeps are the thrice-yearly, monthlong periods that establish advertising rates for the local stations.) ''We're $(expletive$),'' she says. Ms. Tarses (pronounced TAR-siss) broke a Hollywood glass ceiling in 1996, when she became president of ABC Entertainment. She perfected that understanding as she became a development exec.. "For all her talent and success in entertainment, the thing Jamie was proudest of and most consumed by were her two kids," he said. Tarses served as manager of current comedy programming where she oversaw series such as Cheers and A Different World before she continued to earn various promotions, eventually becoming involved in the development of series such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Blossom, the outlet reported. Her legs folded under her, she rolls her chair back and forth, back and forth. 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. Bader looks surprised. He has left her on her own, which is what he did with Harbert. On the surface, her Some things are systemic problems with ABC. Jamie was a trailblazer in the truest sense of the word, Karey Burke, current president of Disneys 20th Television and previous president of ABC Entertainment, told the Hollywood Reporter in a statement. What she didn't realize was how much she needed him. Her ascension to said power was uncommonly fast. Less than 24 hours after dining with her parents and Morton, Tarses got the news that Bloomberg was being brought in above her. ''When I was president of entertainment, I learned that the worst thing I could be was arrogant,'' he says. '', The Men in Tarses' Life: Ovitz, Morton and Harbert. ''What would the premise be?'' Watch: Retired Army Col. Paris Davis Awarded Medal of Honor, Why Barnes & Noble Is Copying Local Bookstores It Once Threatened, What Floridas Dying Oranges Tell Us About How Commodity Markets Work. 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. ''Don't worry. But being a great developer does not necessarily mean you will succeed as a network entertainment-division president. ''Bloomberg was being told by the boyfriend how to do his job.''. ''In one split second everything changed,'' she says. She was 56. Jamie Tarses, the first female president of a broadcast network, died Monday followingcomplications from a cardiac event last fall, her family confirmed in a statementprovided by Sony Pictures Television, where she had a production deal. At a time when all of the big networks were losing young viewers, Ms. Tarses seemed to speak the language of that coveted audience,the Wall Street Journalwrote at the time. It's another afternoon in May, and Tarses is trying to deal with the usual array of job-threatening problems. ''Style and Substance,'' shooting at a sound stage across the lot, is a highly regarded Disney pilot for CBS with a lead character roughly based on Martha Stewart. he asks. LOS ANGELES A young, female executive arrives in the mens locker room that was broadcast television in the 1990s and snaps a few towels of her own, working with writers to shape juggernaut comedies like Mad About You and Friends. She is so good at spotting hits that she becomes, at 32, the president of entertainment at ABC, the first woman ever to serve as a networks top programmer. 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. The Cast of 'Hanging with Mr. Cooper:' Where Are They Now? ''This is a great day,'' she says. When speaking, he stares into his subject's eyes, as if they were a camera trained on him. Jamie Tarses died in Los Angeles on February 1, 2021, at age 56, according to Tarses' family. Harbert, who had been at ABC nearly 20 years -- his entire professional life -- immediately called Iger in New York, who reassured him that he was not being fired, but would be moved up. ''It was: 'We're not messing around here. ''It's a beautiful day,'' flashes on the screen. she couldn't do the suit part of the job. 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. He doesn't like the Hollywood angle (no TV show about TV writers has succeeded since ''The Dick Van Dyke Show'' in the 60's), and he finds Richard Lewis's character unlikable. She was 56. 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.'' They divorced in 1996. ", Photo: Greg Doherty/Patrick McMullan via Getty, Richard Belzer, 'Law & Order: SVU' Star, Dead at 78. FRIENDS executive Jamie Tarses has died at just 56 after reportedly suffering from complications following a cardiac event. Life is short. They have three children. "She was never happier than when she was with Wyatt and Sloane. During the 1996-97 season only 49 percent of prime-time viewers watched the big three, down from 73.5 percent in 1986. Jamie Tarses, the first-ever woman to oversee programming at a major broadcast network, died on Monday, the New York Times reports. 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. The industry. Jamie Tarses, who became the first woman to head a major network entertainment division during a tumultuous run in the 1990s at ABC, died Monday of complications from a cardiac event last fall, her family confirmed. This in reference to Jamie Tarses, a producer on The Wilds who passed away. 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. Her last project, The Mysterious Benedict Society, is currently listed as in post-production for the Disney+ streaming service. If it works, he'll be confident. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis?