Bob Broder, a TV executive and talent agent, lost his battle with cancer on Tuesday his family and friends said, who praised the star for “inspiring a lot of people” throughout his career
A TV executive who pioneered the smash hit sitcom Cheers has died at the age of 85.
Bob Broder was behind the programme, which starred Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson and Kirstie Alley, and attracted millions of viewers during its original run from 1982 to 1993. Some 275 episodes of the sitcom were broadcast, and it won several awards, including four Golden Globes.
Broder was also behind other popular shows, such as Frasier and The X-Files, as he represented and packaged the programmes for broadcast on various networks, including NBC. Broder himself worked at the companies BWCS and then ICM Partners, which acted as agents to secure these programmes big TV deals.
And he was still working with producer Chuck Lorre right up until his passing this week. The TV veteran worked on Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, a sitcom on CBS.
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But Broder died on Tuesday aged 85 following a battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his family and friends, who praised Broder as a pioneer in the TV industry for operating with great “sophistication and complexity and authority”.
Ted Chervin, founding partner and Board Member at ICM Partners, said today: “He elevated the idea of what it means to be an agent. He operated at a level of such sophistication and complexity and authority that he really changed the game.
“He had a real statesman-like quality to him in the way he led the agency, and the way he managed his clients, and the way he interacted with the rest of the community. And, through all of that, he inspired a lot of people, including Chris [Silbermann] and me.”
Broder helped secure Cheers TV rights in 1982 and it would run for 11 years, making audiences in both the UK and US laugh and smile. Cheers, still repeated on British TV today, takes place in a bar that is owned by Sam Malone, a former relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.
His work representing Cheers’ three creators, brothers Glen and Les Charles and director-producer James Burrows, led to opportunities to package other shows, including Dharma & Greg, The King Of Queens, Touched By An Angel, Two And A Half Men and The Big Banf Theory.
Broder co-founded the Broder Kurland Agency in 1978, which was acquired by ICM in 2006. Mr Chervin, a colleague for decades since the Broder Kurland Agency era, added: “Even now, when people refer to the agency, they just call it Broder, and that might be because his name came first on the letterhead, but I think it’s also because he really was the figure most centrally identified with that agency, he was the soul of that agency.”