25 Industry Insiders Who Changed Television

The surge in Internet coverage of television has brought notoriety to writers and showrunners. Not only do we love to know about the people who write our favorite shows, we also love to hear how the shows get made. Despite the recent shift in focus to writers and creators, not much is written about the true power behind the throne: producers and executives.

Yes, a showrunner is a producer, but that usually means that they're a creative manager, in charge of the day-to-day operations of their show. The showrunner may be all powerful on set, but there are other, more powerful people who put all the pieces into place and create a space for the showrunner to practice his craft. Sometimes, the showrunner is able to parlay success into high level control and affect greater change in the industry. In other cases, executives champion a show or a way of doing business and have a meaningful impact on creative output.

Some of them started as writers' assistants and worked their way to to the top. Others spent their entire career in the boardroom. Regardless of how they got their start, they have one thing in common.

Here are 25 Industry Insiders Who Changed Television.

RELATED: 25 Signs That Your Favorite Show Is Going To Get Cancelled
RELATED: The 50 Best TV Dramas of All Time
RELATED: The 25 Best Black Sitcoms of All Time

Written by Brenden Gallagher (@muddycreekU)

James L. Brooks

Creator: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi
Producer: The Simpsons

By the 1980s, James L. Brooks was already a legend. As a co-creator and writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi, Brooks had earned his spot in TV history. He was lured back to the box from feature films when Tracey Ullman couldn't find a producer for her show. On the recommendation of a friend, he brought a young cartoonist named Matt Groening to do shorts as part of Ullman's program. This led to Fox offering Groening a chance to make The Simpsons as half-hour stand alone show.

Brooks stayed on as producer and negotiated what may ultimately be remembered as the most important contractual stipulation in television history: The Simpsons would be produced with no network interference whatsoever.

Mike Goodson and Bill Todman

Creators: The Price is Right, Family Feud

It's hard to wrap your head around just how much game show content dominated TV in the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1950 and 1984, Goodson and Todman launched dozens of game shows and enjoyed immense success. After Todman's death in 1979, Goodson continued to produce shows, but the landscape had changed: five of the seven pilots that their company ever failed to sell were created after 1980.

Goodson and Todman's legacy lives on today in several ways. Not only are two of their shows, The Price is Right and Family Feud, still on the air, but their concepts are still periodically rebooted. Most recently, their 1960s hit Password saw a 2008 revamp. Even if not all of today's game shows acknowledge their debt to Goodson and Todman, their influence is readily apparent, from presentation to gameplay.

Tom Freston

"I want my MTV."

These words still resonate today, and it's no surprise that the man who oversaw their creation was a major player in the network's success from day one. Freston was with MTV when the network launched in 1979, a time when cable programming was a fledgling enterprise. After his contribution to the success of MTV, Freston was tapped to chair MTV Networks, a position he held for seventeen years.

While he oversaw MTV Networks, he helmed the creation of several cable channels that are essential to pop culture today. The most notable launches: Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.

From there, Freston would go on to co-chair Viacom with Leslie Moonves. He stayed with Viacom until 2006, when he was beaten to the purchase of Myspace by Rupert Murdoch, and was subsequently fired for failing to acquire the social network. Looking back on it, that was a pretty good move too.

Dick Wolf

Creator and Producer: Law & Order

The twenty year run of Law & Order tied with Gunsmoke for longest running drama in TV history. This would have been enough to cement Wolf's place as a TV hall-of-famer, but with five other shows in the Law & Order franchise and credits on 20 other series, his contribution to the procedural genre is unparalleled.

Police drama isn't exactly a sexy topic of conversation among critics, as the paint-by-numbers formula offers little novelty and only occasional excellence (see Sundance's Top of the Lake). The fact remains, procedurals remain the most watched shows on television, and though a Wolf show no longer owns the top spot, the creative teams behind are indebted to the man.

Chuck Lorre

Creator and Producer: Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory

Sometimes people change an industry by sticking to the status quo. Much of the television industry has moved away from the multi-camera, studio-centered productions that used to be typical of sitcoms; Chuck Lorre continues to embrace it. FOX, ABC, and the rest of the broadcast networks struggle to figure out what sitcoms look like in a post-HBO world while Lorre continues to churn out television shows in the classic mold.

After cutting his teeth as a writer on Roseanne, Lorre created Grace Under Fire and hasn't let up since. From Cybil to Mike & Molly, Lorre has demonstrated that there is still a large market for old-fashioned sitcoms despite the furious pace at which television is changing.

Bill Rasmussen

Founder: ESPN

A failed hockey team communications director seems an unlikely candidate to revolutionize sports entertainment. Bill Rasmussen took a strange path to founding the "Worldwide Leader in Sports," ESPN. He began his career in media as a sports director at two local Massachusetts radio affiliates, then had a seven-year tenure working for the New England Whalers before he launched the network.

In 1978, he and his son Scott founded what would become a media behemoth. Rasmussen wasn't hands-off either—he had a hand in developing the concepts that would put ESPN on the map, including Sports Center and non-stop March Madness coverage. Though two of Rasmussen's partners, Stewart Evey and Chet Simmons, would push the Rasmussens out of the company by 1979, their vision led to the creation of the 24-hour sports cycle we know today.

Gene Roddenberry

Creator: Star Trek

Science-fiction television existed before Gene Roddenberry—he was the first to admit that he conceived Star Trek as a cross between Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. It was the cultural impact of Star Trek, however, that ushered sci-fi into the mainstream and created a space for generations of science fiction writers to create quality television.

When Roddenberry first sold his Star Trek concept as "Wagontrain to the Stars" in 1964, he had no idea what potential the franchise would have. Though the initial series only ran for three years, Star Trek has existed off and on in different iterations for almost fifty years. Even when the franchise went missing from TV for over a decade, Star Trek never left the popular consciousness.

The show looms large over the sci-fi landscape to this day. When a science-fiction show is created, whether it's with the serious dramatic tone of Battlestar Galactica or the genre-bending humor of Firefly, the show is always measured against Star Trek.

Charlie Collier

Executive: AMC

HBO may have ushered in the golden age of television, but Charlie Collier helped open the floodgates for basic cable to enter the prestige game. Following up John Landgraf's success at FX with The Shield, Collier and company decided to make a similar move to cement AMC's identity as a narrative player.

After the dual success of Mad Men and Breaking Bad, it seems that every media company, even some not in the TV business, wants to make narrative programming. Despite recent missteps by network—excessive penny-pinching, a recent development slate that produced The Killing and Hell on Wheels, and the revolving-door showrunning of The Walking Dead—AMC continues to find critical and commercial success. Regardless of how AMC deals with these challenges, Collier will be remembered for precipitating a tipping point that resulted in a lot of great television.

Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner

Producers: Every '90s Sitcom

All the best and worst aspects of the '90s sitcom were pioneered by Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner. The duo began as a writing and producing team and grew to such heights of power with their continued hits that they came to control their distribution by 1997. Carsey-Werner Productions will be best remembered for their immortal pair of hits, Roseanne and The Cosby Show.

These two shows represent the pinnacle of what the production company achieved, but the breadth of their work shouldn't be ignored. Most of the sitcom re-runs you watched while home stick from school were Carsey-Werner joints, including Grace Under Fire, 3rd Rock From the Sun, and That '70s Show.

If a '90s sitcom you can think of wasn't among the thirty shows to come from the Carsey-Werner stable, odds are you, you'll see some distinct similarities between that show and the company's roster.

Joss Whedon

Creator: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly

The niche communities of the Internet combined with the newly exploited potential of crowdfunding have led creators to rethink their relationship with fans. From the Veronica Mars Kickstarter to the stratification of FX, the relationship between the work and the community that supports it has become more important and more profitable than ever. Joss Whedon has understood the power of fandom for years, and this understanding has brought him great success. Working with a steady stable of actors, being both pop culture savvy and self-referential in his work, and creating additional fan materials has helped him cultivate a voracious base that has followed him through his career.

We all know that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a cult following, but the power of Whedon's fans is better understood through Firefly. While fans couldn't save the doomed show, they are largely responsible for getting Whedon's follow-up film Serenity produced. In the year's since Serenity, fan protests have become de riguer the moment cancellation rumors surface about a show. Whedon briefly cut out the middle men entirely when he produced Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog during the 2008 writer's strike. Whedon's project was one of the first high-profile web-based narrative projects, and illustrated that big TV names can work on the web without network support.

In 2013, the rest of the industry is just now beginning to populate a world that Whedon has lived in for almost a decade.

Dick Ebersol

Executive: NBC Sports

Sports have been viewed as spectacle for centuries. Dick Ebersol's contribution to sports on television has been to harness the human desire for story in sport in new and interesting ways.

Ebersol will be remembered for his dedication to quality Olympic and Super Bowl broadcasts. Even today, broadcasts of both events bear Ebersol's mark. Numerous lesser-known innovations mark Ebersol's storied career in sports, including the creation of an all-baseball channel and broadcasting sporting events across multiple channels for more exhaustive coverage. The sophistication and pageantry associated with modern sports broadcasts is largely thanks to Ebersol's vision, which will continue to influence major league athletics of all sorts for years to come.

Steven Bochco

Creator: NYPD Blue

Along with Dick Wolf, Steven Bochco is the godfather of modern police procedural shows. But if Dick Wolf's legacy rests in cementing the television procedural formula, Bochco is remembered for challenging it. Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue are all Bochco creations.

With NYPD Blue, Bochco sought to create a show that could compete with the emerging cable sensibility. Audiences wanted shows that felt "real." for NYPD Blue, this meant diligently consulting technical advisor Bill Clarke and never shying away from the ugly realities of police life.

The result was an edgy, dramatic show that taught a number of future creators and critics what television could be. Prominent TV critic Alan Sepinwall began his career reviewing NYPD Blue, while David Milch, who would go on to create Deadwood and Luck, co-created Blue with Bochco. That both men would go on to help define television today is a testament to the power of Bochco's work.

Jason Kilar

CEO: Hulu

Hulu has been one of the most intriguing developments in the television world since it was launched in 2007, and Jason Kilar was with the company every step of the way until spring of this year.

In its first half-decade of existence, Hulu has become the online destination for viewing recent TV content. Depending on how things shake out, Hulu may be equally well remembered for kicking off the trend of companies that deliver media by creating content in-house; they launched their first in-house web series in 2011, beating both Amazon and Netflix. Whatever ultimately becomes of Hulu after Kilar's departure, the first Hulu CEO will be remembered for overseeing the transition of broadcast television into the Internet age.

Chris Albrecht

Executive: HBO

Though HBO had existed for decades prior to Albrecht's tenure there, his work made HBO what it is today: a destination for premium original programming. In a two year span, HBO produced Oz, Sex in the City, and The Sopranos. During that time, Albrecht also got into business with David Simon, producing his precusor to The Wire, The Corner.

By taking HBO's prestige reputation in the film and documentary space and transferring it to high-end narrative series, Albrecht set the stage for television as we know it today. Fifteen years after the premiere of Oz, networks are taking cues from the premium cable shows and every channel (and tech company) wants their own prestige drama. Albrecht and his team were there first.

John Landgraf

Executive: FX

FX has been the proving ground for bringing premium cable principles to basic cable. The debut of The Shield in 2002, proved that basic cable could be home to more than cut-rate detective shows and Big Bang Theory re-runs. Since then, FX has continued to stand at the forefront of both drama and comedy content, and Landgraf has been an integral part of that success. With dramas like Sons of Anarchy and Justified, and comic content like Louie and The League, FX has proven to be incredibly progressive in the last decade.

The trend looks like it will only continue, as Landgraf recently announced a bold new venture. FX will split into three channels, with one focusing on comedy, the other on mature drama, and a third carrying on their original mission of feature film broadcasts. The experiment is ambitious, but you can't doubt Landgraf's track record.

Lorne Michaels

Creator: Saturday Night Live

It's no secret that Lorne Michaels is at the center of American television comedy. He's long been a household name due to his association with Saturday Night Live. The star-making late-night show is not the only notable comedy endeavor that Michaels has launched—far from it. Kids in the Hall, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel, 30 Rock and Portlandia all bear his name.

Despite his years in the industry, Michaels continues to find gold on the comedic fringes. His company, Broadway Video, has launched the Above Average Network, a web comedy channel, and judging by the quality of the content there, Michaels has no shortage of voices the comedy world needs to hear.

Simon Fuller

Creator: Pop Idol, American Idol

Singing competitions have dominated broadcast television for the last decade, and you have Simon Fuller to thank for it. Simon Fuller is the creator of the Idol franchise, which began in England as Pop Idol and is represented by American Idol in the states.

Fuller first came to public prominence when he managed another American sensation: He was the Spice Girls' handler when they invaded American shores. Just as his Spice Girls precipitated a crop of copy cats, his singing shows have produced endless clones. No matter what your stance on these shows, there's no denying that they're keeping the lights on at the broadcast networks as the audience for narrative content continues to splinter.

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera

Founders: Hanna-Barbera Productions

We often associate Hanna-Barbera with such hits as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo and Yogi Bear, and these are certainly the most successful cartoons to emerge from the company. And yet these mega-hits only comprise a small sample of the body of work the company produced.

To date, fifty-five properties carry the Hanna-Barbera name, spanning a period from the creation of Tom & Jerry in 1940 to the launch of the Cartoon Network with shows like Powerpuff Girls and Johnny Bravo. Though Hanna and Barbera served only in an advisory role on most of the productions after the mid-'60s, they continued their involvement in the company's output until their deaths.

The influence of Hanna-Barbera is felt throughout TV animation today, from children's shows to Adult Swim; many of these shows still use Hanna-Barbara's vast library of sound effects.

Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray

Creators: The Real World

If you don't like the state of modern television, blame Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray. The two soap-opera veterans were paired together to create a soap for MTV. When their script proved too expensive to produce, they came back with an unscripted show called The Real World. Thus, the reality television industry was born.

Bunim and Murray continue to produce benchmark reality programs, including Project Runway and Keeping Up With the Kardashians. So, if you are wondering how they sleep at night, the answer is on a bed of money.

Leslie Moonves

Executive: CBS

Even if Leslie Moonves had never gone to work for CBS, his contributions to television would still be remembered. While working for Warner Bros. Television, he green-lit legendary shows like Friends and ER.

In an industry where executive longevity is rare, Moonves has enjoyed a long career at CBS that has made him the most powerful man at television's most powerful network. A high-level executive at CBS since 1995, Moonves has overseen some major developments, including the merger of UPN and the WB, and shepherding Survivor and CSI into mega-hit status.

Moonves has earned so much trust from the business community that when the Charlie Sheen debacle surfaced a few years back, unfazed investors were quoted as saying, "Les will figure it out." With the instability of the other big four networks, you have to wonder what state television would be in if Moonves and CBS weren't propping up what many view as a dying television model.

Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph

Founders: Netflix

It was quickly apparent what kind of impact Netflix would have on the video rental industry. We've all seen enough abandoned Blockbuster storefronts to bear that out, and co-founders Hastings and Randolph made a lot of money driving big box rental stores out of business. Fifteen years after the first red envelopes were shipped, it's clear that Netflix not only revolutionized how we access TV shows, but also how we watch them.

In the days before Netflix streaming, binge-watching was only available to those willing to fork out forty bucks for a collectors edition season boxed set. If you chose to marathon a show on a whim, it was a pricey whim. A show like Game of Thrones would have been unthinkable in the old TV landscape. The fantasy epic, as well as many other shows flooding the marketplace, are episodic in name alone: watching a random episode is like beginning a novel in the middle. Netflix introduced us to the world of binge-watching, and in this brave new time-wasting world, the idea of an episode has been reconsidered. Though much of television is still conceived to be enjoyed on a half-hour by half-hour basis, shows that pay careful attention to their arcing stories and find ways to reward long-term viewers receive a whole new level of adoration. Netflix has created a world where "episode" defines only duration, not content.

David L. Wolper

Producer: Roots, The Thornbirds

Prestige television did not begin with The Sopranos. The mini-series was the original home for quality programming, and David L. Wolper was the man who first perfected the form. His most famous mini-series, Roots, still holds as the third most-viewed television show of all time. His other famed mini-series, including The Thornbirds and North and South, were not as widely viewed, but reached for a level of professionalism and quality not often seen on television. Though HBO's formula of high-caliber series, with name actors in limited seasons and big budgets, feels new, the playbook for this sort of work was developed by David L. Wolper.

Brandon Tartikoff

Executive: NBC

In the fractured world of modern television, it's hard to imagine network comedy hits like Cheers, The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls, and Seinfeld coming down the pike. Only Modern Family offers anything near the mix of critical acclaim and popular appeal those shows once enjoyed. The history of the aforementioned classics becomes all the more incredible when you consider that they were on the same network, were all on the air in 1990, and were overseen by one man.

At the age of 32, Brandon Tartikoff became the executive in charge of NBC's programming, making him the youngest executive in network history. His mission: restore an ailing NBC brand that was in danger of losing tent pole pieces of their line-up, like Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live.

Tartikoff, along with his protegé and eventual successor Warren Littlefield, not only rescued NBC, but did so with a slate of programming that relied on a smart audience. It's hard to to find a quality comedy on the air today that doesn't owe something to the programs Tartikoff greenlit during his tenure. The period of success that he kicked-off will likely be remembered as the last great era of network television.

Rupert Murdoch

Owner: FOX

Though Murdoch's influence on U.S. television is undeniably vast, as he is the owner of 27 American TV channels, one of his channels in particular will likely be remembered as having the greatest impact, for better or worse.

Fox News has dominated cable news since shortly after its 1996 inception. The channel was broadcasting eight of the top-10 cable news programs as of the mid-2000s, and it was the first channel to threaten broadcast networks in terms of political event ratings.

Fox News's success has come about largely due to their polarizing coverage. We've all heard the charges before: turning down microphones, distorting facts, and even doctoring images of dissenting figures. Though the methods are undeniably unscrupulous, they're also undeniably successful.

Fox News remains a rating behemoth, and they have done so by pushing a brand of news that prefers sensationalism to facts. Its style of programming has changed news forever: Since the invention of Fox News, cable news has become a destination to hear like-minded viewpoints, and we have Murdoch and compatriot Roger Ailes to thank for that.

Ted Turner

Founder: TBS, CNN, TNT, Cartoon Network

There's no television resumé as vast and varied as Ted Turner's. Turner's television career began in the '70s when he leveraged capital gained in the radio and billboard business to get into cable.

Turner was actually in cable television before it was cable television, as he first owned a VHF channel, which he then parlayed into a cable presence. By 1978 Turner's channel had become TBS, which still broadcasts (bad) sitcoms and movies to this day.

After the success of TBS, Turner added to his television stable, creating CNN, TNT, TMC, and Cartoon Network. Turner's media empire continued to grow until Turner Broadcasting's 1996 merger with Time Warner effectively ended its expansion.

Numerous strange achievements came out of Turner's life in media, from popularizing the Atlanta Braves, to forming the WCW and creating Captain Planet. Turner's impact on television is indisputable: His name will be remembered as synonymous with the origin and growth of cable television.