Nickolas Davatzes, Force Behind A&E and the History Channel, Dies at 79

Nickolas Davatzes, who was instrumental in generating the cable tv networks A&E and the History Channel, which now get to into 335 million homes around the planet, died on Aug. 21 at his home in Wilton, Conn. He was 79.

The induce was issues of Parkinson’s sickness, his son George said.

Mr. Davatzes (pronounced dah-VAT-sis) was president and chief govt of A&E, at first the Arts & Enjoyment Community, which he ran from 1983 to 2005 as a joint enterprise of the Hearst Corporation and the Disney-ABC Tv Group. He launched the Heritage Channel in 1995 and remained a forceful advocate for academic and community affairs programming, endorsing it inside of the business and in appearances before Congress.

By the mid-1980s A&E had emerged as the sole surviving advertiser-supported cultural cable assistance, largely by shopping for programming and making a bankable audience by negotiating distribution rights with community cable methods.

“After 60 times below, I informed my wife I did not think this matter experienced a 20 % opportunity, mainly because each time I turned about there was a different impediment,” Mr. Davatzes informed The New York Moments in 1989. “I used to say that we ended up like a bumblebee — we weren’t supposed to fly.”

But they did. A&E became financially rewarding in 3 a long time by offering an eclectic menu of everyday programming that, as The Times set it, “might involve a biographical portrait of Herbert Hoover, a program about the embattled buffalo, a dramatization of an Ann Beattie small story and a switch from the stand-up comedian Buzz Belmondo.”

“We do not want to duplicate ‘The A-Team’ or ‘Laverne & Shirley,’” Mr. Davatzes instructed The Occasions in 1985. “There is a more youthful technology that has by no means observed any considered-provoking leisure on television. They’ve viewed a rock star destroying a guitar every 16 minutes, but they’ve never ever noticed classical audio.

“By community specifications,” he continued, “our viewership will usually be limited. But that is the purpose of cable — to existing ample options so that folks can be their individual programmers.”

Underneath the A&E umbrella, the network encompassed a broad blend of leisure and nonfiction programming. It produced a singular identity with scripted reveals (“100 Centre Road,” “A Nero Wolfe Mystery”) and collaborations, like its wildly well known co-production with the BBC of “Pride and Prejudice,” a mini-collection centered on the Jane Austen novel starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

The network ongoing to extend its scope to contain documentary series like “Biography” “Hoarders,” which might be classified as an anthropological examine of compulsive stockpiling and the Historical past Channel’s encyclopedic scrutiny of Adolf Hitler.

Mr. Davatzes was awarded the Countrywide Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush in 2006. The French authorities designed him a chevalier of the Buy of Arts and Letters in 1989. He was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Corridor of Fame in 1999.

Right after his loss of life, Frank A. Bennack Jr., the government vice chairman of Hearst, called him “the father of the Record Channel.”

Nickolas Davatzes was born on March 14, 1942, in Manhattan to George Davatzes, a Greek immigrant, and Alexandra (Kordes) Davatzes, whose dad and mom have been from Greece. The two his dad and mom labored in the fur trade.

Following graduating from Bryant Higher Faculty in Astoria, Queens, he acquired a bachelor’s diploma in economics in 1962 and a master’s in sociology in 1964, both equally from St. John’s College, where by he met his long run spouse, Dorothea Hayes.

In addition to his son George, he is survived by his spouse yet another son, Dr. Nicholas Davatzes a sister, Carol Davatzes Ferrandino and four grandchildren. An additional son, Christopher, died ahead of him.

After serving in the Marines, Mr. Davatzes joined the Xerox Company in 1965 and shifted to information and facts technologies at Intext Communications Programs in 1978. A buddy released him to an government at the fledgling Warner Amex cable enterprise, who recruited him around lunch and had him signal a contract drawn on a cafe napkin. He went to do the job there in 1980, along with cable tv pioneers like Richard Aurelio and Larry Wangberg.

The Arts & Entertainment Network took form in 1983, when Mr. Davatzes assisted put the ending touches on a merger among two struggling cable programs: the Enjoyment Network, owned by RCA and the Rockefeller loved ones, and the ARTS Community, owned by Hearst and ABC.

His system in the beginning was twofold: to emphasis on creating the network extra offered to viewers, and not to be diverted by generating primary courses, instead concentrating on obtaining existing ones.

“If you’re in programming, we know that 85 per cent of each new clearly show that goes on the air generally fails,” Mr. Davatzes said in a 2001 interview with The Cable Heart, an instructional arm of the cable market.

“Our over-all strategy is to make a sane economic product,” he mentioned in 1985. “I like to explain to persons performing for us that we never eat at ‘21.’”