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Martin Starger, Influential Shaper of TV and Movies, Dies at 92
In his decade at ABC, long the doormat network in prime time, he helped guide it toward the No. 1 spot. He later produced “Nashville” and won an Emmy for “Friendly Fire.”
Martin Starger, who as a senior executive at ABC in the 1970s helped bring “Happy Days,” “Roots,” “Rich Man, Poor Man” and other shows to the small screen — and the network nearly to the brink of No. 1 in prime time — before turning to producing movies, most notably Robert Altman’s “Nashville,” died on May 31 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.
His death was confirmed by his niece, Ilene Starger, a casting director.
Mr. Starger joined ABC in the mid-1960s and rose to positions of increasing importance, culminating in his promotion to president of ABC Entertainment in 1972.
The entertainment mogul Barry Diller, who was one of his protégés at ABC, described Mr. Starger in an email as “the quintessential television executive of the 1970s.” He was, Mr. Diller said, the “essence of N.Y. smarts: suave, sophisticated and funny. He was culturally ahead of his audience but was pragmatic in his programming choices, but ever striving for better.”
Mr. Starger’s time at ABC was characterized by the network’s long struggle to break out of last place in prime time, behind CBS and NBC, in what was then a three-network universe.
Mr. Starger and other executives balanced middlebrow programs, including “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “The Six Million Dollar Man,” with TV movies like “The Missiles of October” (1974), which dramatized the Cuban missile crisis, and prestigious mini-series like “Roots,” based on Alex Haley’s book about his family history.
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