An independent producer and former president of Paramount Pictures, Brandon Tartikoff served from 1980 to 1991 as the youngest and most accomplished president of NBC's entertainment division. During his tenure at NBC, Tartikoff developed a blockbuster Thursday-night lineup that helped the ailing network rank number-one in primetime for the first time in 30 years.

     Tartikoff, an admitted "child of television," confessed that he once dreamed of being the next Ed Sul­livan, but his television career began at the local level. After undergraduate work in broadcasting at Yale, Tar­tikoff broke into the business at WTNH in New Haven, Connecticut. Driven to make it to the big leagues, he soon landed a job at the ABC-owned-and-operated WLS in Chicago, the third-largest market in the country. He worked under the tutelage of Lew Erlicht, his eventual rival.

     In the mid- 1970s, ABC President Fred Silverman was impressed by Tartikoff's high-camp promo for a series of "monkey-movies" dubbed "Gorilla My Dreams." Silverman recruited Tartikoff for manager of dramatic development at ABC. Three years later, the up-and-coming 30-year-old "boy wonder" of television was snatched up by third-place NBC, where Sil­verman had become president in 1978. Tartikoff was named head of the entertainment division, where he stayed for the next 12 years, the longest any individual has held that position.

     NBC's ratings breakthrough came in 1984, when Tartikoff happened to see Bill Cosby doing a monologue on The Tonight Show. Convinced Cosby's family-based banter would make for an excellent sitcom, Tartikoff recruited the comedian and producers Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey. The resulting Cosby Show not only helped resurrect the failing sitcom format, but became the building block for a Thursday­ night schedule that included Family Ties, Cheers, and Night Court.

     Tartikoff was at the helm for the development of Hill Street Blues, produced by MTM Entertainment, which exploded in popularity among its fiercely loyal audience in its second season after receiving critical acclaim and an armload of Emmy awards in its first. He shepherded An Early Frost, the first made­-for-television movie about AIDS, through production. Miami Vice was also conceived under Tartikoff; according to executive producer Michael Mann, the head of entertainment presented him with a short memo which read: "MTV. Cops."

     By 1991, when Tartikoff left NBC  to  head Paramount Pictures, the network had been  ranked first  in the ratings for six consecutive years. Tartikoff was replaced by Warren Littlefield. A series of organizational changes at Paramount and a near-fatal auto accident later led Tartikoff out of the studio arena and into the realm of independent production. Tartikoff passed away due to Hodgkins disease on August 27, 1997.