R.I.P.: Edward Bleier, Brought Looney Tunes To U-S TV

Edward Bleier, the man responsible for bringing Looney Tunes to televisions across America, died last week at 94.

Bleier started his career in entertainment while attending high school in New York, serving as a correspondent on WNEW-AM radio’s “high school hour”. After dropping out of college, Edward pursued his dream of working in television with a job at DuMont Television Network and Channel 5 in New York.

Edward Bleier

Bleier spent 35 years at Warner Bros. His efforts helped bring cable television out of its niche and into the mainstream and popularize pay-per-view events and special interest cable networks. He oversaw the division that developed channels like Nickelodeon, MTV, and The Movie Channel (TMC), and worked with such premium channels as HBO to get them onto nationwide cable networks. Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture is named in his honor. 

Later on in his career, Bleier made a move to ABC, where he spent a decade, then joined Warner Bros. Entertainment in 1968, where he would end up staying for 35 years. It was at this job that Bleier discovered the short animated Looney Tunes films that were being shown in theaters. Edward Bleier saw massive potential in the home market for these cartoons and began his push to have them adapted for television.

He pushed to have “Looney Toons” edited for television, and soon Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and others were in households across the U.S. on Saturday mornings. He later worked with Stephen Spielberg to create all-new animated shows and films, including “Tiny Toons,” “Animaniacs,” and “Freakazoid!”