Brandon Tartikoff, the one-time Wunderkind of NBC and chief architect of 1980s "smart TV" shows such as "The Cosby Show," "Hill Street Blues" and "L.A. Law," died Wednesday in Los Angeles at age 48.
Tartikoff had long battled Hodgkin's disease, or cancer of the lymph nodes. He was undergoing chemotherapy at UCLA Medical Center after being hospitalized earlier this year with his third recurrence of the disease. It was diagnosed when he was just 23.As president of NBC Entertainment from 1980 to 1991, Tartikoff set the foundation for what the industry now boasts of as its golden age.
He introduced such ground-breaking comedies as "Cheers," "Family Ties" and "The Golden Girls," as well as the cop drama "Miami Vice," whose pulsating, rhythmic style influenced shows for a decade and transformed struggling actor Don Johnson into the sex symbol of the '80s.
"Cheers" ran for 11 years and was considered by many the best-written pure comedy, setting a precedent for the humor of "Seinfeld," which is based almost exclusively on dialogue and carefully crafted characters.
Ambitious and competitive, Tartikoff's work at NBC was responsible for moving TV from the side-lines to the front lines of social controversy, and doing it with strong, candid writing.
Born Jan. 13, 1949, in Long Island, N.Y., Tartikoff broke into television in 1971, a year after graduating with honors from Yale. He worked in the promotion department at ABC before joining NBC in 1977.
At NBC, he worked for chief programmer Fred Silverman. Three years later, he succeeded Silverman, becoming at age 31 the youngest network entertainment pres-ident.
Brash and self-assured, his first few years on the job were shaky. But NBC was patient. By the middle of the decade Tartikoff had made the network No. 1 with hits like "The A-Team," "Cheers," "My Two Dads" and "The Cosby Show." He also brought NBC an aura of critical favor for shows such as "Hill Street Blues" and "St. Elsewhere." By the late '80s, NBC would stay atop the network heap for 68 straight weeks.
On New Year's Day in 1991, Tartikoff and his then 8-year-old daughter, Calla, were involved in a car accident in Lake Tahoe, Nev., while he was driving his daughter to a bowling alley. It put him in the hospital for eight weeks and left his daughter in a coma for six.
That year Tartikoff and his wife moved to New Orleans to be near his daughter's rehabilitation specialist, and he left NBC to become chairman of Paramount Pictures.
In 1992, Tartikoff resigned from Paramount to spend more time with his family. He became head of New World Entertainment in 1994 and ran his own television production company, but few of the Tartikoff-produced shows were hits. Even so, he remained a considerable force in Hollywood.
Tartikoff is survived by his wife, the former Lilly Samuels, a dancer with the New York City Ballet whom he married in 1982. The couple had two children, daughters Calla and Elisabeth.