Scott Merrill Siegler

Scott Merrill Siegler (born February 15, 1947) is an American television executive and media investor who participated in the startup of TriStar Television studio, Netscape Communications, Pandora Media, and Granada America, and was one of the first Hollywood broadcast executives to anticipate the entertainment potential in digital media. In 1993 he formed a partnership with James H. Clark, a.k.a. Jim Clark, departing CEO of Silicon Graphics and founder of Mosaic Communications, the forerunner of Netscape Communications.

Early life and education Siegler was born in Columbus, Ohio. The family moved to a number of cities, including Boston, Washington, DC, and Memphis due to his father's medical training. In 1952 the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and Siegler was a graduate of Shaker Heights High School and Union College, 1969. He majored in English Literature and Philosophy, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated summa cum laude.

He entered graduate school in 1969 at the University of Toronto, including the Emmy Award-winning "They Shall Take up Serpents." He moved to Los Angeles in 1978 to attend the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies.

Siegler moved to CBS in 1980, first as vice president of drama development at CBS television network (1980) and then as vice president of comedy, where he developed programs such as Simon & Simon, Falcon Crest, and Magnum, P.I. Following his tenure at CBS he became senior vice president of Warner Bros television, and there developed series such as Head of the Class, Growing Pains, V, and Night Court. He left Warner Bros in 1986 to found the television studio of the new TriStar Pictures, a venture partially owned by Coca-Cola and HBO. Within a year TriStar merged with the larger and older Columbia Pictures Television (now called Sony Pictures Television) and Siegler became president of the merged entity, displacing Barbara Corday, who has been with the studio since 1984. That studio was responsible for television series, movies, soap operas and mini-series, including Married... With Children and The Young and the Restless.

During this time Clark, who had begun pondering the World Wide Web and the commercial possibilities of the internet, invited University of Illinois graduate student Marc Andreessen to his home in Atherton, California, in late 1993 to explain the internet and Andreessen's innovative navigator ("a yellow pages for the internet") that he called a browser. The University of Illinois internet navigation project had been called Mosaic, and that was the name adopted by Clark for its commercial application, Mosaic Communications. Siegler was a seed investor in that company, shortly renamed Netscape Communications. Netscape was sold to AOL in 2002 for $4.2B.

Other investments followed, including Savage Beast Technologies, later renamed Pandora Music, where Siegler served as board Chairman from 1998 to 2001. Siegler ended his association with ZelnickMedia in 2009 and formed Mediasiegler, LLC as a vehicle for his continued media investing.

Personal life

In 1990 Siegler competed on the United States team in the Ninth Annual World Championships of Elephant Polo, held at an airstrip near Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal. The event was chronicled in Mad Dogs and Pachyderms in the December 16, 1991 issue of Sports Illustrated.

Siegler has been married three times and has had a son and a daughter. His daughter died in 2010 at the age of 13.