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Brandon Tartikoff (December 2, 1949 — December 23, 1998) was a popular NBC executive who was credited with turning around NBC's low prime time reputation with such hit series as Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Miami Vice, The Golden Girls, Knight Rider, The A-Team, St. Elsewhere, Night Court, Hunter, Highway to Heaven, Matlock, and Empty Nest.

Tartikoff also helped develop Punky Brewster, for which he named the title character after a girl he had a crush on in school. Brandon, the pet dog on Punky Brewster, was named after Tartikoff. He was also involved in the creation of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Born in Freeport, New York, Tartikoff was a graduate of the Lawrenceville School and Yale University, and started his career at WLS-TV in Chicago, Illinois. While attending Yale, Tartikoff worked as an account executive and sales manager of WNHC-TV in New Haven, Connecticut and Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale, he took a series of jobs in advertising and local television. Tartikoff spent vacations in Los Angeles looking for a job in network television.

His big break came when he was hired as a program executive at ABC in 1976. One year later, he moved to NBC (after being hired by Dick Ebersol to direct comedy programming). Tartikoff took over programming duties at NBC from Fred Silverman in 1980. At the age of 30, Tartikoff became the youngest-ever president of NBC's entertainment division.

He left NBC in 1991, moving to Paramount Pictures to become its chairman. A year later, Brandon left that post to spend more time with his daughter, Calla, who was seriously injured in a car crash near the family's Lake Tahoe home.

During his time at NBC, he made several appearances in several of the network's shows. He hosted Saturday Night Live in 1983 and appeared as himself in an episode of Saved by the Bell, where, very tongue-in-cheek, he shortly entertains the notion of a "show about a high school principal and his kids," before scoffing at the idea.

In 1994, he made his comeback to national TV with Last Call, a short-lived late-night discussion show he produced. That same year he also produced The Steven Banks Show for PBS. Later that year, he began a brief run as chairman of New World Entertainment. Just prior to his death, Tartikoff served as the chairman of the AOL project "Entertainment Asylum", for which he teamed with internet pioneer Scott Zakarin to build the world's first interactive broadcast studio.

Tartikoff died in 1997 at the age of 48 from Hodgkin's Disease, with which he had three separate bouts over 25 years.

He was interred in Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

• During his 1983 appearance on Saturday Night Live, one skit featured Tartikoff in a black leather ensemble, with the words "Be There" spelled out in rhinestones on the back of his jacket. "Be There" was NBC's slogan during the 1983 - 1984 season, a fitting example of clever hidden advertising.

• The Deep Space Nine episode "A Time to Stand" began with a title card reading "In memory of Brandon Tartikoff". A similar card appeared at the end of the ninth-season premiere of Seinfeld.

• Famously wrote in his memoirs that his biggest professional regret was cancelling the show Buffalo Bill, which he later went on to include in a fantasy "dream schedule" created for a TV Guide article which detailed his idea of "The Greatest Network Ever" – right alongside more conventional classics like I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Cheers.

• His parents were both survivors of the collision of two 747s on Tenerife, Canary Islands in 1977. Newsweek 3/1977.

• During the casting process of Family Ties, Tartikoff was unexcited about getting Michael J. Fox for the role of Alex P. Keaton. However, the show's producer, Gary David Goldberg, insisted until Tartikoff relented. Tartikoff said, "Go ahead if you insist. But I'm telling you, this is not the kind of face you'll ever see on a lunch box". Some years later, after Back to the Future, Michael J. Fox sent Tartikoff a lunch box that had Fox's picture on it with a note inside reading "To Brandon: This is for you to put your crow in. Love and Kisses, Michael J. Fox." Tartikoff kept the lunch box in his office for the rest of his career.

• Appeared as himself in episodes of Night Court and ALF, and in the background of one of the final episodes of Cheers. David Leisure also played Tartikoff in an episode of ALF.

• Parodied in the 1989-1990 CBS series The Famous Teddy Z as network president "Landon Tarmac."

• BRANDON AT THE BAT
• News for Brandon Tartikoff
• The Two-Edged Legacy of Brandon Tartikoff
• Brandon Tartikoff article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki.