Fred Silverman

Fred Silverman is an American television executive and producer, who worked at the Big Three television networks.

As vice president of CBS programming and in turn head of children's programming, Silverman commissioned the Hanna-Barbera animated series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! for Saturday mornings in 1969. Silverman also influenced the show's tone and structure.

New episodes had stopped by the mid-seventies, when Silverman moved to ABC and named president of ABC Entertainment. He again ordered new episodes of Scooby-Doo, bringing back the original series head writers, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears to develop the new series. In addition, these new episodes were joined by an entirely new show, centered on the superhero robot dog, Dynomutt, and they aired under the name The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour. When both shows were separated for reruns, they were rebranded as The Scooby-Doo Show and Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, respectively. Silverman left ABC for NBC in 1978, which was when The Scooby-Doo Show also ended. Although, unlike CBS, ABC continued to air new episodes of Scooby-Doo in several different incarnations, almost yearly, until 1991.

Appearances

 * The Erie History of Scooby-Doo DVD featurette on the bonus disc of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete Series.

Notes/trivia

 * The leader of Mystery Inc., Fred Jones, had gone through several different names before landing on "Fred," due to the insistence of Fred Silverman.