Sheri Herman, a cable and digital media pioneer who helped launch E! Entertainment TV, died of heart failure Aug. 6 in Florida. She was 71.
Born in Philadelphia, Herman graduated Temple University and started out at the Madison Avenue ad agency AC&R. After working as a commercials producer, she joined The Entertainment Channel and then became director of programming at United Cable, where she negotiated major carriage agreements between numerous cable channels.
When United Cable merged with TCI to become Liberty Media, John Malone became a mentor and she expanded her role to include evaluating new cable networks for funding. Herman helped save the Discovery Channel from imminent bankruptcy by negotiating new output deals and brought in cable TV operators into equity positions in QVC.
After being recruited to join the Los Angeles start-up channel Movietime, which ran film trailers, she worked with Lee Masters to help transform the channel into E! Entertainment Television, where she oversaw brand development, marketing and sponsorships. She left E! in 1992 but returned in the late 1990s to work as Senior V.P. of Content and Business Development.
“Sheri was a true creative force. She not only could spot great creative talent to engage with us at E! she was wildly creative herself. She also brought passion and conviction to everything she worked on. Indifference was not in her tool kit. That was underscored by her remarkable subsequent achievements as a pioneer in incorporating new technologies and branding in entertainment,” Jarl Mohn (previously known as Lee Masters) said in a statement.
At the startup American Cybercast, she raised financing to launch the first web soap opera, “The Spot,” incorporated sponsored hyperlinks and introduced other digital innovations, seeing that the future of entertainment was on the internet.
Herman’s next chapter was as Senior V.P. of Programming and Production at Access Entertainment, the infomercial network, where she incorporated music videos into the programming including interactive links to buy music. The strategy influenced Vevo to create a similar framework when the service launched.
In 1999, she became a consultant in marketing, programming and business development for numerous clients including TV Guide, House of Blues and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Herman was the victim of a serious hit-and-run car accident in 2007, and she reluctantly retired from business to focus on writing and political and social causes.
She is survived by her sister, opera singer Nadine Herman.