Sarnoff retired as RCA chairman in 1970 and died a year later. RCA became a conglomerate, diversifying broadly — and unsuccessfully — before being taken over in 1986 by GE, the outfit that started RCA and was forced to divest it in 1932. From our earliest days as network executives and, before that, as students of the medium and charter members of the first generation of TV viewers, we have lived and worked in his giant shadow. Having established our own production company, we are humbled by the success of a man who started with nothing and by force of will ignited a revolution that has had an unparalleled effect on our society.

When we first teamed up at ABC in the mid-'70s, broadcast television was still a heady and vibrant place. We were thrilled when we heard someone mention a show we had helped get on — "Soap," maybe, or "Barney Miller" or "Taxi." We learned from our favorite bosses, Fred Silverman and Michael Eisner, that a good programmer respects the audience, takes risks, has showman-like instincts and lives to bring the best and brightest talent to the people.

The broadcast industry has changed since then, and is undergoing the same kind of technological revolution that occurred when Sarnoff introduced television. Still there are programmers and producers with great passion for the medium, and we count ourselves among them. But now these broadcasters have had to embrace other media as well — cable and the Internet — to avoid being crushed by the furious pace of technology.

For that same reason we've just teamed up with our longtime partner, Caryn Mandabach, as well as Geraldine Laybourne and Oprah Winfrey, in a venture called Oxygen, in which we will fuse a new cable channel with an Internet base to program for women.

The heady feeling is back with another technology revolution. But the basic truth Sarnoff articulated — television is a beneficial, creative force — still holds despite the tumult of vertical integration, ratings wars, new-media breakthroughs and Internet companies with zooming stock prices. Certainly, the General would have caught the new wave, if not led it, and embraced television's transformation by the digital age. His channel was always dialed to the future.

Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner have produced the hit TV series The Cosby Show, Roseanne and 3rd Rock from the Sun

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