Portal:Television/Selected biography/1
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James T. Aubrey, Jr. (December 14, 1918–September 3, 1994) was an American television and film executive. As president of the CBS television network during the early 1960s, he put on the air some of television's most enduring series, including Gilligan's Island and The Beverly Hillbillies. Under Aubrey, CBS dominated American television the way General Motors and General Electric dominated their industries. The New York Times Magazine in 1964 called Aubrey "a master of programming whose divinations led to successes that are breathtaking." Despite his successes in television, Aubrey's abrasive personality and oversized ego—"Picture Machiavelli and Karl Rove at a University of Colorado football recruiting party" wrote Variety in 2004—led to his firing from CBS amid charges of improprieties. After four years as an independent producer, Aubrey was hired by financier Kirk Kerkorian to preside over Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's near-total shutdown in the 1970s, during which he slashed the budget and alienated producers and directors but brought profits to a company that had suffered huge losses. Aubrey resigned from MGM after four years, declaring his job was done, and then vanished into almost total obscurity for the last two decades of his life.
