My guest is Tim Brooks and our subject is a short history of television and the future of the networks. (Highest rated TV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-watched_television_broadcasts)

Tim Brooks retired at the end of 2007 as Executive Vice President of Research for Lifetime Television. Brooks reported to Andrea Wong, President/CEO of Lifetime, and was responsible for all research concerning Lifetime's programming, online and advertising sales efforts, as well as research for Lifetime Movie Network and Lifetime Real Women. Previously he was Senior Vice President of Research at Lifetime, a position he held since January 2000.

Prior to joining Lifetime Brooks was Senior Vice President, Research for USA Networks, where he supervised their programming and advertising research in domestic and international markets, and developed and launched new businesses. While there he helped structure the programming plan for the launch of the Sci-Fi Channel in 1992 and USA's Latin American and European networks in the late 1990s. He joined USA Networks in 1991. He was widely quoted in the press on audience matters both while at USA and at Lifetime.
 
Before USA Networks, Brooks was Senior Vice President/Media Research Director for N.W. Ayer from 1989 until 1990, and with NBC in the 1970s and 1980s holding various positions, including Director, Program and Advertising Research and Director, Television Network Research. He began his career in New York with WCBS-TV in 1969-1970. Brooks has been very active in industry affairs, serving as Chairman of the Board of both the Media Rating Council and the Advertising Research Foundation; longtime Chairman of the ARF's Video Electronic Media Council; a board member of the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM); three-term chair of CTAM's Research Committee; and a board member of the recently formed (2005) Council for Research Excellence, among others. He is currently a member of the George Foster Peabody Awards committee. He is a recipient of  a number of industry awards.

Regarded as one of television's leading historians, Brooks has had a parallel career as a writer on television and record industry history. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present (1979), co-authored with Earle Marsh, is a standard industry reference that won an American Book Award in 1980 and is now in its ninth edition. His groundbreaking Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry (2004) won three major academic awards, and a related double-CD by the same name won a Grammy Award in 2007. He has also authored or co-authored several other books and numerous articles.  Brooks was an adjunct professor of communications at Long Island University (1979-1988), and also served as a captain in the United States Army. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Dartmouth College and a master's degree in television-radio from Syracuse University.

Complete Directory of Prime Time Network.

The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable Tv Shows, Seventh Edition

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