Jac Venza, Who Delivered Culture to Public Television, Dies at 97

Jac Venza, a shoemaker’s son who almost single-handedly delivered to the proverbial “vast wasteland” that was American television in the 1960s and ’70s an oasis of cultural programming, including “Great Performances,” “Masterpiece Theater” and “Live From Lincoln Center,” died on Tuesday at his home in Lyme, Conn. He was 97.

His death was confirmed by his spouse, Daniel D. Routhier.

Mr. Venza never attended college. As an actor, he pronounced himself “dreadful.” As an aspiring artist, he began his career in Chicago by designing scenery for the Goodman Theater and window displays for the Mandel Brothers department store. But while still in his 30s, he began playing a vital role in bringing art to public television.

He was working as a television producer when he was asked to collaborate with other TV innovators assembled by the Ford Foundation in the early 1960s to transform a limited service that generated no original programming into National Educational Television, the forerunner of the Public Broadcasting Service.

While his fellow producers and other media experts were mulling how best to educate the viewing public through a nonprofit network, Mr. Venza recalled, he volunteered, “Why don’t we entertain them, too?”

In the 1960s and ’70s, he introduced “NET Playhouse,” “Theater in America,” “Live From Lincoln Center,” “Great Performances,” “American Masters” and, at the suggestion of the National Endowment for the Arts, “Dance in America.” He also imported popular BBC productions like “Brideshead Revisited.”

He collaborated with choreographers like George Balanchine and Martha Graham, composers like Leonard Bernstein and playwrights like Tennessee Williams. Dustin Hoffman had his first starring role on television in a 1966 NET production of Ronald Ribman’s play “The Journey of the Fifth Horse.” A decade later, Meryl Streep appeared onscreen for the first time in the William Gillette play “Secret Service” on “Great Performances.”