Bleier, Edward

Ed Bleier (1929- ) is an American radio and television executive. His career has paralleled the history of electronic media, with important roles in "new media" creation for Warner Bros., Warner Communications, and Time Warner. As of 2007 he was a board member of Blockbuster Inc., CKX Inc, and of RealNetworks, whose focus is streaming media over the Internet.

Bleier began his professional career with WNEW's "High School Hour" and The Long Island Press. He wrote for the Syracuse (New York) Herald Journal and for several Syracuse-area radio stations, and managed promotion for the DuMont Television Network and New York's Channel 5. In the early 1950s, while working at New York's Channel 7 and later at ABC, he instituted television-time sales to movie companies.

While studying at Syracuse University he worked as a copyboy for ABC News, and by the 1960s he was a senior executive there, having worked as Vice President for Daytime and Children's Programming and Sales; General Sales Management; and Marketing, Public Relations and Strategic Planning. Among his "firsts" at ABC were the first integration of African-American characters in daytime dramas and establishing ABC's first Saturday morning children's block, built around Warner Bros. Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes cartoons. Over 40 years he oversaw some 100 variations of Looney Tunes programming on ten different cable and broadcast networks, propelling the characters into the top slots in both television and licensing/retail.

Bleier left ABC (succeeded there by Disney executive Michael Eisner) to become President of Warner Bros. Domestic Pay-TV, Cable and Network Features division, where he worked closely with Warner's cable systems to develop basic and pay-tv networks including MTV, Nickelodeon, TMC and others; co-created the corporate plan for home video; drove after-market sales of TV series and feature films to record-breaking levels; and pioneered new digital media markets such as content-on-demand and pay-per-view. From 2002 to 2005, Bleier served as Senior Adviser to the company.

In 2003 Bleier wrote the New York Times best-seller The Thanksgiving Ceremony, a work which grew out of his own first-generation American experiences (the book's foreword was written by well-known columnist and Syracuse University alumnus William Safire).

Bleier's pro bono work has included serving as steering committee chairman for 13 of the Aspen Institute's Communications Leaders Conferences, meetings which encourage dialogue between the communications industry's senior creative and business executives and their counterparts in government, economics and science. He was chairman of the Center for Communication, President of the International Radio and Television Society, Vice-Chairman of the International Television Council, Chairman of the Academy of the Arts of East Hampton's Guild Hall, and a former board member of the Keystone Center for Science and Environment and the Martha Graham Dance Company. He has participated in two United Nations World TV Forums and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a trustee of the Charles Dana Foundation.

From the guide to the Edward Bleier Papers, 1965-2007, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)