Brandon Tartikoff was a graduate of Yale University, and started his career out at WLS-TV in Chicago. He switched jobs to ABC in New York in the mid-1970s, and moved to NBC in 1977 where he became a programming executive hired by Dick Ebersol. Tartikoff took over programming duties from Fred Silverman in 1980. In 1982, Tartikoff had a second recurrence of Hodgkin's disease, which he was first diagnosed with and beat in the 1970s. Tartikoff was responsible for many programming hits during his years at the helm of NBC. In 1985, he finally got NBC back up to number one. He left NBC in 1991, and moved over to Paramount Pictures and became its chairman. Tartikoff left Paramount eighteen months later to help care for his daughter, injured in a 1991 car accident. He formed his own production company in 1995, and died of a third recurrance of Hodgkin's disease in 1997.
