Fred Silverman (born September 13, 1937 in New York City) is an American television executive and producer. He worked as an executive at CBS, ABC and NBC and was at least partly responsible for bringing to television such programs as Scooby-Doo (1969-1986), All in the Family (1971 - 1979), The Waltons (1972 - 1981), Roots (1977), and Charlie's Angels (1976 - 1981).
Biography
Silverman graduated from Syracuse University and then earned a Master's degree from Ohio State University and went to work for WGN-TV in Chicago, Illinois overseeing children's programming. He soon moved to CBS and took over responsibility for daytime programming and later, took charge of all of entertainment programming.
Silverman was one of the people responsible for the "rural purge" of 1971, which eliminated many popular country-oriented shows, such as Green Acres, from the CBS schedule.
In 1975, Silverman became head of ABC Entertainment and greenlit more popular shows of the day such as Starsky and Hutch (1975 - 1979). He brought ABC's ratings from third place to first place. Although he was very successful with ABC, Silverman left to take on the presidency of NBC. His three year tenure at NBC was rocky and most of the shows conceived during that time were flops. By the end of his tenure his reputation at the network had become so bad that Saturday Night Live came close to airing a sketch in which Silverman would have been compared to the delusional Adolf Hitler towards the end of the Third Reich.
Silverman left the networks and formed The Fred Silverman Company to produce shows to sell to television. He had several hits including Matlock (1986 - 1995) and In the Heat of the Night (1988 - 1994).
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