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Jac Venza (December 23, 1926 – May 28, 2024) was an American
public television Public broadcasting (or public service broadcasting) is radio, television, and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service with a commitment to avoiding political and commercial influence. Public broadcasters receive f ...
producer who was directly responsible for most of the theatre and music programs that have been seen on PBS from its creation in 1970. From the early 1960s until his retirement in 2005, Venza brought such programs as '' NET Playhouse'', '' Live from Lincoln Center'', '' American Playhouse'', '' American Masters'', and '' Great Performances'' to millions of viewers. He won a Personal
Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Foster Peabody, George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and in ...
in 1998.


Life and career

Jac Venza was born in
Chicago, Illinois Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
, on December 23, 1926. He began his career on CBS in the 1950s, where he began to notice the scarcity of programming devoted to the
fine arts In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creativity, creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function ...
on television. It was his dream to bring more of it to the home screen on a regular basis, but he did not receive a full opportunity to do so until the creation of
National Educational Television National Educational Television (NET) was an American non-commercial educational, educational terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It op ...
, where it soon became possible, thanks largely to Venza, to see great dramatic literature regularly performed by some of the world's most renowned actors. A then-unknown
Dustin Hoffman Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor. As one of the key actors in the formation of New Hollywood, Hoffman is known for Dustin Hoffman filmography, his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable charac ...
made his first major television appearance in a play— Ronald Ribman's ''The Journey of the Fifth Horse''—on NET in 1966. ''NET Playhouse'' was perhaps the first television anthology to present commercial-free, full-length productions (rather than one-hour or ninety-minute adaptations) of theatrical classics such as
Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...
's adaptation of
Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, poet and actor. Ibsen is considered the world's pre-eminent dramatist of the 19th century and is often referred to as "the father of modern drama." He pioneered ...
's '' An Enemy of the People''. When NET became PBS, Venza quickly launched ''Great Performances'', which is still running today. Upon his retirement from PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting awarded Venza the Ralph Lowell medal. He held the record for the most
Emmy The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award catego ...
nominations for an individual—fifty-seven—until 2010. Venza died in Lyme, Connecticut on May 28, 2024, at the age of 97. He was married to Daniel Routhier.


References


Further reading

*Article in ''TV Quarterly'
"It Will Play in Peoria"
*


External links

* * * 1926 births 2024 deaths PBS people American television producers LGBTQ television producers Peabody Award winners International Emmy Founders Award winners Television personalities from Chicago {{US-tv-producer-stub