Television executive James Stark Bennett II, known for developing talk show “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee,” has died at 78.
Bennett, who went by Jamie, died July 6 after a fight with cancer, according to his family.
He spent more than a decade at CBS, where he was an executive at television and radio stations in San Francisco and Chicago before coming to Los Angeles, where he served as vice president and general manager at KCBS-TV.
Bennett then moved over to the Walt Disney Co., where he served as senior vice president of Buena Vista Television Productions. In that role, he developed such shows as “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee,” “Siskel & Ebert” and the game show “Win, Lose or Draw.”
He later became president and chief executive at ACI, a Los Angeles-based TV and film distributor. When ACI was bought by Britain-based Pearson Television in 1995, Bennett and his family moved to London, where he ran the company’s worldwide production.
He eventually moved back to L.A., where he got involved in volunteer work and expanded his career beyond the entertainment industry by becoming chief operating officer at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. There, he was instrumental in helping the school establish its permanent base in L.A.’s Arts District, his family said. He also served on the board of the Ojai Music Festival, later becoming its president and CEO for five years until 2020.
Bennett was born in New York City on June 1, 1947. He later graduated from UC Berkeley, where he chaired a student-run summer program in Washington, D.C., and started his media career as the program director for the university’s radio station. After getting his MBA from Harvard Business School, he moved back to New York to take a job at CBS, which launched his media career.
He and his wife, Carolyn, eventually purchased an 11-acre farm in Ojai, which became their permanent residence. Bennett is survived by his wife, Carolyn, their three children and other family members.
