Thomas W. Sarnoff Dies: Longtime TV Academy & NBC Executive Was 96
deadline.comThomas Sarnoff, the son of NBC’s founder who went from key NBC executive to leading roles at the Television Academy and TV Academy Foundation and founded the Archive of American Television, has died.
He was 96. TV Academy spokesman Jim Yeager said Sarnoff died June 4 at the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s nursing home in Woodland Hills.
Born on February 23, 1927, he was the youngest son of RCA/NBC media mogul David Sarnoff. Family lore has it that the younger Sarnoff was TV’s “first live star,” serving as a test subject for the RCA/NBC World’s Fair demonstration of television in the late 1930s.
But in 1949 — after serving in World War II and graduating from Stanford University — rather than join NBC, Sarnoff became a floor manager at ABC in Los Angeles.
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