LOS ANGELES — Jamie Kellner, a pioneering media executive who helped expand the world of broadcast television by creating Fox and the WB networks, died Friday. He was 77.

Kellner also oversaw CNN, TNT and TBS as chairman and chief executive of Turner Broadcasting System.

He died at his home in Montecito after a long battle with cancer, according to a spokesperson for the family.

Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Kellner first made a name for himself at Orion Entertainment Group, where he spearheaded an effort with Lorne Michaels to buy the rights to original episodes of "Saturday Night Live," which were cut into 30-minute episodes and sold in syndication.

The lucrative partnership caught the attention of Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller, who in the mid-'80s were plotting to launch an upstart broadcast network to rival the long-established "Big Three": ABC, NBC and CBS. Kellner became the first president and chief operating officer of the Fox Broadcasting Co.

Launched in 1986, Fox was the first new network on American broadcast television since ABC in 1948.

Kellner poached a young NBC executive named Garth Ancier to run programming.

In a phone call Sunday, Ancier remembered Kellner as a formidable executive who "understood not just TV audiences, he also understood the entire way the TV system in the United States worked," from affiliates to advertisers. Ancier, who also worked with Kellner at the WB, recalled flying to affiliates across the country, attempting to woo them to Fox.

At the time, few industry insiders thought Fox would have much staying power.

"My bosses — (NBC chief executive) Grant Tinker in particular — believed there would never be a fourth network," Ancier said. "And they said, 'On top of that, most of those stations they're putting together are UHF,' as if it was like the plague. It just meant we had to be different from the other networks."

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