Bennack Jr., the executive vice chairman of Hearst, called him “the father of the History Channel.” He was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 1999.Īfter his death, Frank A. The French government made him a chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1989.

Davatzes was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. 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. Under the A&E umbrella, the network encompassed a broad mix of entertainment and nonfiction programming. But that is the function of cable - to present enough alternatives so that individuals can be their own programmers.” “By network standards,” he continued, “our viewership will always be limited. They’ve seen a rock star destroying a guitar every 16 minutes, but they’ve never seen classical music. “There is a younger generation that has never seen any thought-provoking entertainment on television. “We don’t want to duplicate ‘The A-Team’ or ‘Laverne & Shirley,'” Mr. 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.” “I used to say that we were like a bumblebee - we weren’t supposed to fly.”īut they did. Davatzes told The New York Times in 1989. “After 60 days here, I told my wife I didn’t think this thing had a 20 percent chance, because every time I turned around there was another obstacle,” Mr. 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.īy 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.

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. The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his son George said.

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.

Bbc pride and prejudice 1985