Michael Harold Dann (September 11, 1921 – May 27, 2016) was an American television executive. Dann was vice president of programming at

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

from 1963 to 1970, having worked there since leaving

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

in the late 1950s. He took a pragmatic approach to programming, opting not to enforce a personal vision for the network other than to try to get more viewers without regard to

key demographic The key demographic or target demographic is a term in commercial broadcasting that refers to the most desirable demographic group to a given advertiser. Key demographics vary by outlet, time of day, and programming type, but they are generally co ...

s. To this effect, he commissioned a number of rural sitcoms for the network (a format he personally hated) and, in 1967, canceled all of the network's profitable, but low-rated, game shows. He believed in the notions of

hammocking Hammocking is a technique used in broadcast programming whereby an unpopular television program is scheduled between two popular ones in the hope that viewers will watch it, using the analogy of a hammock hanging between two strong and established ...

and

tent-pole programming In broadcast programming and motion pictures, a tent-pole or tentpole is a program or film that supports the financial performance of a film studio or television network. It is an analogy for the way a strong central pole provides a stable structu ...

, in which a new or struggling sitcom could be made more successful by putting more successful shows before and after it. Many of Dann's approaches to programming would be reversed when

Fred Silverman Fred Silverman (September 13, 1937 – January 30, 2020) was an American television executive and producer. He worked as an executive at all of the Big Three television networks, and was responsible for bringing to television such programs as '' ...

replaced Dann in 1970; Silverman orchestrated the "

rural purge The "rural purge" of American television networks (in particular CBS) was a series of cancellations in the early 1970s of still-popular rural-themed shows with demographically skewed audiences, the majority of which occurred at the end of the ...

" and took the network into a sleeker, more urban-oriented direction. After leaving CBS, Dann joined the upstart Children's Television Workshop, where he spearheaded the

Sesame Street international co-productions ''Sesame Street'' international co-productions are adaptations of the American educational children's television series ''Sesame Street'' but tailored to the countries in which they are produced. Shortly after the debut of ''Sesame Street'' in th ...

. He was born in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

in September 1921. Dann died in May 2016 at the age of 94.

References

External links

Museum.tv

* 1921 births 2016 deaths Businesspeople from Detroit American television executives CBS executives CBS Vice Presidents of Programs 20th-century American businesspeople {{US-tv-bio-stub