Nickolas Davatzes, who was instrumental in creating the cable television networks A&E and the History Channel, which now reach into 335 million households around the world, died on Aug. 21 at his home in Wilton, Conn. He was 79.<\/p>\n
The cause was complications of Parkinsons disease, his son George said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Davatzes (pronounced dah-VAT-sis) was president and chief executive of A&E, originally the Arts & Entertainment Network, which he ran from 1983 to 2005 as a joint venture of the Hearst Corporation and the Disney-ABC Television Group. He introduced the History Channel in 1995 and remained an aggressive advocate, both within the industry and as a spokesman before Congress, for educational and public affairs programming.<\/p>\n
By the mid-1980s, A&E had emerged mostly through buying programming and building a bankable viewer audience by negotiating distribution rights with local cable systems as the sole surviving advertiser-supported cultural cable service.<\/p>\n
After 60 days here, I told my wife I didnt think this thing had a 20 percent chance, because every time I turned around there was another obstacle, Mr. Davatzes told The New York Times in 1989. I used to say that we were like a bumblebee we werent supposed to fly.<\/p>\n
But they did. A&E became profitable within three years by offering an eclectic menu of daily programming that, as The Times put it, might include a biographical portrait of Herbert Hoover, a program about the embattled buffalo, a dramatization of an Ann Beattie short story and a turn from the stand-up comic Buzz Belmondo.<\/p>\n
We dont want to duplicate The A-Team or Laverne & Shirley, Mr. Davatzes told The Times in 1985. There is a younger generation that has never seen any thought-provoking entertainment on television. Theyve seen a rock star destroying a guitar every 16 minutes, but theyve never seen classical music.<\/p>\n
By network standards, he continued, our viewership will always be limited. But that is the function of cable to present enough alternatives so that individuals can be their own programmers.<\/p>\n
Under the A&E umbrella, the network encompassed a broad mix of entertainment and nonfiction programming. It created a singular identity with scripted shows (100 Centre Street, A Nero Wolfe Mystery) and collaborations like its wildly popular co-production with the BBC of Pride and Prejudice, a mini-series based on the Jane Austen novel starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.<\/p>\n
The network continued to expand its scope to include documentary series like Biography; Hoarders, which might be classified as an anthropological study of compulsive stockpiling; and the History Channels encyclopedic scrutiny of Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n
Mr. Davatzes was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush in 2006. The French government made him a chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1989. He was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 1999.<\/p>\n
After his death, Frank A. Bennack Jr., the executive vice chairman of Hearst, called him the father of the History Channel.<\/p>\n
Nickolas Davatzes was born on March 14, 1942, in Manhattan to George Davatzes, a Greek immigrant, and Alexandra (Kordes) Davatzes, whose parents were from Greece. Both his parents worked in the fur trade.<\/p>\n
After graduating from Bryant High School in Astoria, Queens, he earned a bachelors degree in economics in 1962 and a masters in sociology in 1964, both from St. Johns University, where he met his future wife, Dorothea Hayes.<\/p>\n
In addition to his son George, he is survived by his wife; another son, Dr. Nicholas Davatzes; a sister, Carol Davatzes Ferrandino; and four grandchildren. Another son, Christopher, died before him.<\/p>\n
After serving in the Marines, Mr. Davatzes joined the Xerox Corporation in 1965 and shifted to information technology at Intext Communications Systems in 1978. A friend introduced him to an executive at the fledgling Warner Amex cable company, who recruited him over lunch and had him sign a contract drawn on a restaurant napkin. He went to work there in 1980, alongside cable television pioneers like Richard Aurelio and Larry Wangberg.<\/p>\n
The Arts & Entertainment Network took shape in 1983, when he helped put the finishing touches on a merger between two struggling cable systems: the Entertainment Network, owned by RCA and the Rockefeller family, and the ARTS Network, owned by Hearst and ABC.<\/p>\n
His strategy in the beginning was twofold: to focus on making the network more available to viewers, and not to be diverted by producing original programs, instead focusing on acquiring existing ones.<\/p>\n
If youre in programming, we know that 85 percent of every new show that goes on the air usually fails, said in a 2001 interview with The Cable Center, an educational arm of the cable industry.<\/p>\n
Our overall approach is to create a sane economic model, Mr. Davatzes said in 1985. I like to tell people working for us that we dont eat at 21.<\/p>\n
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Nickolas Davatzes, Force Behind A&E and the History Channel, Dies at 79 - The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nickolas Davatzes, who was instrumental in creating the cable television networks A&E and the History Channel, which now reach into 335 million households around the world, died on Aug. 21 at his home in Wilton, Conn. Continue reading