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Jamie Kellner is an American former television executive. He was founding president of Fox Broadcasting. Kellner was chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a division of Time Warner which includes TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network from 2001 to 2003. He was the chairman of station ownership group ACME Communications, a post held from the company's founding until its folding in 2016.
Kellner was born to an Irish Catholic family in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island, [1] New York.
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After college he participated in the CBS Executive Training Program and after CBS disposed of its syndication division, he rose to the rank of vice president for first-run programming, development, and sales at Viacom. In 1978, he accepted a job as executive of Filmways, a film and television producer and distributor. [2]
In 1982, after Filmways was taken over by Orion Pictures, he served as president of its Orion Entertainment Group, where he oversaw and supervised their programming and syndication activities including the launch of Cagney and Lacey . [2] In 1986, he was the first executive hired by Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller to develop a fourth television network to compete with the big three. At Fox, he was charged with building the affiliate network, selling programming to advertisers, and the establishment of relations with program producers. [2]
Kellner was present at the creation of the Fox Broadcasting Company and held the position from 1986 to 1993. [3] Among the shows that emerged during Kellner's seven years at Fox were The Simpsons , Married... with Children , Beverly Hills, 90210 , Melrose Place and In Living Color . Those shows held the fledgling "web" together until Fox shocked the television world by winning partial rights to the National Football League (NFL) in 1994 from CBS; that, as well as channel upgrades in many markets due to Fox's alliance and merger with New World Communications, made Fox a legitimate fourth network. [3]
Kellner then spent seven years at the helm of the WB Television Network. He helped launch the new broadcast network in 1994. During his tenure, Kellner began by championing urban sitcoms, but eventually steered the network in the direction of teen and family-oriented dramas. 7th Heaven , Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Gilmore Girls , Dawson's Creek , Felicity and Charmed all premiered during Kellner's presidency.
Kellner was made head of Turner Broadcasting System in 2000. He was ultimately the one who made the decision to cancel World Championship Wrestling (WCW) programming on Turner's networks in 2001. The once-powerful WCW was the largest wrestling promotion in the world popularity-wise in the mid-1990s, besting its rival World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now known as the WWE) head-to-head on Monday nights for 83 consecutive weeks. By 2001, it was declining, and lost roughly $60 million the previous year. [4] A combination of resurgent competition from WWF, as well as many bad booking and financial decisions had all but killed WCW's fanbase and profitability. With WCW no longer being financially viable, and AOL Time Warner wanting nothing to do with the product further (desiring to move in a different direction), Kellner canceled all WCW programming on TBS and TNT. This left WCW without a television contract, and hastened its eventual purchase of assets by WWF chairman Vince McMahon.
In the book The Death of WCW by Bryan Alvarez and RD Reynolds, Kellner is listed as the official "killer" of WCW, insofar as he made the official call to remove it from Turner Networks. [5] In the book NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW by Guy Evans, it is said that a key condition in WCW's purchase deal with Fusient Media Ventures was that Fusient wanted control over time slots on TNT and TBS networks, regardless of whether these slots would show WCW programming or not. This influenced Kellner's decision to ultimately cancel WCW programming. WCW's losses were then written-off via purchase accounting; according to Evans: "in the post-merger environment, the new conglomerate was able to 'write down' money losing operations, essentially eliminating those losses because of their irrelevancy moving forward." [6]
Kellner and his wife, Julie, have one child, and he also has a daughter from his previous marriage. [2]
TNT is an American basic cable television channel owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) that launched on October 3, 1988. TNT's original purpose was to air classic films and television series to which Turner Broadcasting maintained spillover rights through its sister station TBS. Since June 2001, the network has shifted its focus to dramatic television series and feature films, along with some sporting events, as TBS shifted its focus to comedic programming.
World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was an American professional wrestling promotion founded by Ted Turner in 1988, after Turner Broadcasting System, through a subsidiary named Universal Wrestling Corporation, purchased the assets of National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) territory Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP).
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Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. was an American television and media conglomerate founded by Ted Turner in 1965. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it merged with Time Warner on October 10, 1996. As of April 2022, all of its assets are now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The headquarters of Turner's properties are largely located at the CNN Center in Downtown Atlanta, and the Turner Broadcasting campus off Techwood Drive in Midtown Atlanta, which also houses Turner Studios. Some of their operations are housed within WBD's corporate and global headquarters inside 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan's West Side district, and at 230 Park Avenue South in Midtown Manhattan, both in New York City, respectively.
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Noah Anthony Schiavone is an American sports announcer, professional wrestling commentator and podcaster. He is currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW) where he serves as the play-by-play commentator for Collision, color commentator for Dynamite and Rampage, then also as senior producer. He has previously worked for Jim Crockett Promotions, the World Wrestling Federation, World Championship Wrestling (WCW), and Major League Wrestling (MLW). In addition to his work in wrestling, Schiavone has also worked as a broadcaster for the Gwinnett Braves/Stripers of Minor League Baseball and Georgia Bulldogs football.
The nickname Fingerpoke of Doom (FPOD) refers to an infamous incident in American professional wrestling which occurred on January 4, 1999, at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia, during a live broadcast of Nitro, the flagship show of World Championship Wrestling (WCW).
Craig Leathers is a wrestling director and producer best known working for World Championship Wrestling's telecasts. He worked with Eric Bischoff for many years during the mid to late 1990s. In 1995, Leathers was hired as television director for Ted Turner's WCW Monday Nitro, and later became executive producer of the show.
Billionaire Ted is a series of comedic sketches that ran on World Wrestling Federation (WWF) programming in 1996. They were created to parody media mogul Ted Turner, who owned rival World Championship Wrestling (WCW), and several WCW wrestlers, including Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage. The skits consisted of mocking Turner and WCW by referencing the age of their wrestlers as well as bringing up concerns about steroids. The skits were viewed as gradually becoming more malicious rather than parody, as they were broadcast in addition to the WWF chairman Vince McMahon complementing them with anti-Turner press advertisements outside of WWF programming. The skits were ended by USA Network president Kay Koplovitz, who felt they had moved away from parody and towards mirroring McMahon's personal opinions of Turner and WCW.
WCW Saturday Night is an American weekly Saturday night television show on TBS that was produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Launched in 1971 initially by Georgia Championship Wrestling, the program existed through various incarnations under different names before becoming WCW Saturday Night in 1992. Although initially the anchor show of the Turner Broadcasting-backed wrestling company, the September 1995 premiere of WCW Monday Nitro airing on sister station TNT usurped the show's once preeminent position in the company, as the primary source of storyline development and pay-per-view buildup.
WPCH-TV, branded on-air as Peachtree TV, is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by locally based Gray Television alongside CBS affiliate and company flagship WANF, and low-power, Class A Telemundo affiliate WKTB-CD. WPCH-TV and WANF share studios on 14th Street Northwest in Atlanta's Home Park neighborhood; WPCH-TV's transmitter is located in the Woodland Hills section of northeastern Atlanta.
In broadcast programming, counterprogramming is the practice of offering television programs to attract an audience from another television station or cable channel airing a major event. It is also referred when programmers offer something different from the rival's program as an alternative to increase the audience size.
In professional wrestling, the term Black Saturday refers to Saturday, July 14, 1984, the day when Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (WWF) took over the time slot on Superstation WTBS that had been home to Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW) and its flagship weekly program, World Championship Wrestling, for 12 years. McMahon's purchase led to a longstanding rivalry between himself and WTBS owner Ted Turner, who later bought GCW's successor Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) and formed his own company under the World Championship Wrestling (WCW) name.
World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was an American professional wrestling promotion that existed from 1988 to 2001. It began as a promotion affiliated with the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) that appeared on the national scene under the ownership of media mogul Ted Turner and based in Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to the launch of WCW as a separate promotion, the "World Championship Wrestling" name was used for a television program produced by NWA promotions Georgia Championship Wrestling and Jim Crockett Promotions on TBS; the name came from an Australian wrestling promotion of the 1970s.
Kevin Reilly is an American media executive who served as the Chief Content Officer of HBO Max and the president of TNT, TBS, and truTV. In addition to his position at WarnerMedia, Reilly has also held executive positions at FX, NBC, and Fox, and has championed successful programs such as The Sopranos, Empire, The Office, 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, The Shield, ER, Law & Order and Glee, among others.
TNT Sports is the division of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) that is responsible for sports broadcasts on its parent company's streaming service Max and on their various cable channels in the United States, including TBS, TNT, and TruTV. It also operates the online digital media outlets for the NCAA, NBA, PGA Tour, and PGA of America. TNT Sports also operates the sports news website Bleacher Report, as well as NBA TV on behalf of the NBA. It also owns a minority share in the MLB Network. Internationally, the division is branded as Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe, which operates Eurosport.
The Monday Night Wars or Monday Night War was an era of mainstream televised American professional wrestling, from September 4, 1995 to March 26, 2001, in which the World Wrestling Federation's Monday Night Raw and World Championship Wrestling's (WCW) Monday Nitro were broadcast opposite each other in a battle for Nielsen ratings each week. It largely overlapped with the Attitude Era, a period in which the WWF used the term "WWF Attitude" to describe its programming from November 9, 1997 to May 6, 2002.
TBS, stylized as tbs, is an American basic cable television network owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery U.S. Networks division of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). It carries a variety of programming, with a focus on comedy, along with some sports events, including Major League Baseball, Stanley Cup playoffs, NCAA men's basketball tournament and the weekly professional wrestling show AEW Dynamite. As of September 2018, TBS was received by approximately 90.391 million households that subscribe to a pay television service throughout the United States. By June 2023, this number has dropped to 71.3 million households.
The following is a historical overview television coverage provided the National Wrestling Alliance's territories. The NWA began in 1948 as a governing body for a group of independent professional wrestling promotions.
