User:Byron Laursen/sandbox

‘’’Scott Merrill Siegler’’’ (February 15, 1947- ) is an American television executive and media investor who was instrumental in starting a variety of media ventures, including the TriStar Television studio, Netscape Communications, Pandora Media, and Granada America. [1] He was among the first Hollywood broadcast executives to see the entertainment potential in digital media. In 1993 he formed a partnership with James H. Clark, a.k.a. Jim Clark, departing CEO of Silicon Graphics and founder of Mosaic Communications, the forerunner of Netscape Communications. Their venture preceded the deal described in the Michael Lewis 1999 book “The New New Thing.” [2]

Siegler had previously been vice president of drama development at CBS television network (1980) and vice president of comedy at CBS television network, where he had developed programs such as “Simon and Simon,” “Falcon Crest,” and “Magnum, P.I. ”

Following his tenure at CBS he became senior vice president of Warner Bros television, and there developed and sold hit series such as “Head of the Class,” “Growing Pains,” “V,” and “Night Court.”

He left Warner Bros in 1986 to found the television studio of the new TriStar Pictures, a venture partially owned by Coca Cola and HBO. That studio produced “My Two Dads” and “Werewolf,” among other series. Within a year TriStar merged with the larger and older Columbia Pictures Television. Siegler was named president of the merged entity. That studio was responsible for numerous television series, movies, soap operas and mini-series, including “Married... With Children,” “The Young and the Restless,” and a number of movies which were spun off from the “Hart to Hart” television series. [1]

In 1993 Siegler left Columbia to invest time and money in what was then known as “new media” and is today the internet. He joined the board of Tsunami Media (with CEO Ed Heinbockel and board member Steve Bannon), an early online game company. He joined American Cybercast, the first online entertainment company that successfully produced episodic, advertiser-supported series (“The Spot”, “The Pyramid”) for the internet, and he partnered with Jim Clark, the mercurial computer scientist who had previously founded Silicon Graphics in 1981. Their project was an interactive video game television channel to be produced in conjunction with Nintendo. Clark had the support of Hiroshi Yamaguchi, the video game pioneer and company president. [3]

That project never went past the planning stage in part because Clark had begun pondering the World Wide Web and the commercial possibilities of the internet. Clark invited University of Illinois graduate student Marc Andreessen to his home in Atherton, California in late 1993 to explain the internet and Andreessen’s innovative navigator (“a yellow pages for the internet”) that he called a browser. The University of Illinois internet navigation project had been called Mosaic, and that was the name adopted by Clark for its commercial application, Mosaic Communications. Siegler was a seed investor in that company. [2]

Other investments followed, including Savage Beast Technologies, later renamed Pandora Music, in 2000. [3]

In 2002 Siegler joined Strauss Zelnick as a partner in ZelnickMedia, a private equity firm focused on the media and communications industries. Siegler focused on media companies which employed revenue models different from those being employed by broadcast television. His investments included companies like Cannella Response Television (direct-to-consumer media), OTX (online market research), and ITN Networks (customized national advertising networks). ZelnickMedia currently has a controlling interest in Take Two Media, the company behind the “Grand Theft Auto” online game series. [4]

Siegler ended his association with ZelnickMedia in 2009 and formed Mediasiegler, LLC as a vehicle for his continued media investing.

EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

Siegler was born in Columbus, Ohio, where his father was completing medical school. The family moved to a number of cities, including Boston, Washington, DC, and Memphis, while his father continued his medical training. In 1952 the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and Siegler was a graduate of Shaker Heights High School and Union College, 1969. He majored in English Literature and Philosophy, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated summa cum laude. He edited the college literary magazine, The Idol, and won recognition from the Academy of American Poets for his original verse.

He entered graduate school in 1969 at the University of Toronto, where he met and studied under the influential media theorist Marshall McLuhan, famous for the phrase “The medium is the message” and terms like “cool medium” and “the global village.” McLuhan’s predictions about an always-on, wired world predated the internet by 30 years.

After earning an M.A. from the University of Toronto, Siegler attended Brandeis University, Waltham, Ma. There he studied cinema and documentary film production and received an M.F.A. in 1973. He began writing and producing independent documentary films including “With Intent to Harm” and “Patriotism, Inc,” and in 1976 went to work at WKYC-TV, the NBC-owned station in Cleveland, Ohio. He produced seven documentaries there, including the Emmy-award winning “They Shall Take up Serpents.” He moved to Los Angeles in 1978 to attend the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies.[1]

<ref>In 1978 he met Brandon Tartikoff, who hired him as a current program executive at NBC Television network. After six months Siegler moved to CBS to compete against his friend and mentor. The two remained close friends until Tartikoff’s death in 1997, a relationship described in Tartikoff’s 1992 autobiography, “The Last Great Ride.” [5]

In 1990 Siegler competed on the United States team in the Ninth Annual World Championships of Elephant Polo, held at an airstrip near Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal. The event was chronicled in “Mad Dogs and Pachyderms,” in the December 16, 1991 issue of “Sports Illustrated.” [6]

Siegler has been married three times and has had a son and a daughter. His daughter died in 2010 at the age of 13.

He currently serves on two boards, The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and The Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan investigative journalism organization in Washington, DC.

References

1. Broadcasting & Cable magazine, Oct 4, 1993, p 77. Fifth Estate. Scott Merrill Siegler bio

2. The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, Michael Lewis,Norton, 1999

3. Hollywood Reporter, June 1, 2000, p 4

4. Variety, April 23, 2002, p 6

5. The Last Great Ride, Brandon Tartikoff, Random House, 1992

6. Sports Illustrated Dec 16, 1991. p140. “Mad Dogs and Pachyderms”

Additional Sources

Hollywood Reporter, July 16, 1982, p. 1

Hollywood Reporter, June 10, 1983, p. 1 “WB TV Sales”

Variety, Aug 11, 1999, p. 1

Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jun 17,1980, p. 5: “Siegler VP CBS Drama”

Variety, October 20, 1982 p. 1: “Record Successes at WB TV”

Variety, June 4, 1986, p. 1: “TriStar TV Off to a Fast Start”

Variety, March 3, 1986, p. 1: “Siegler Named President of New TriStar Pictures TV Studio”

Variety, Feb 13, 1989, p. 1: “$37M Plus in TV Production for TriStar TV”

Electronic Media, Nov 7, 1988, p. 1: “Columbia TV Leaders Forging Ahead”

Wall Street Journal, May 20, 1989, p. 6: “How Columbia Racked Up the Most New Series on TV”

Electronic Media, Oct 2, 1989 p. 1: “Sony-Columbia: The Next Giant”

Hollywood Reporter, Aug 11, 1999, p. 1

Variety, April 9, 1980, “Siegler Upped to CBS Drama VP”

Variety April 23, 2002: “Zelnick’s Eye on LA”