Lin Bolen is an American television executive with a long-tenured career. Bolen is most noted for her role as the NBC Daytime Television

Daytime television

Daytime television is the general term for television shows produced that are intended to air during the daytime hours on weekdays. This article is about American daytime television, for information about international daytime television see Daytime television....

 Programming Vice President, a position she held from 1972 until 1978. In this role, Bolen was responsible for commissioning the long-running game show

Game show

A game show is a type of radio or television program in which members of the public, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles usually for money and/or prizes...

 Wheel of Fortune

Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)

Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, which premiered in 1975. Contestants compete to solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a large wheel. The title refers to the show's giant carnival wheel that...

 and is credited with bringing successful long form to network soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

s. Bolen is mentioned in Who's Who in America as a trailblazer for Women in Television.

NBC career

Bolen was appointed Vice President of Daytime Programming at NBC-TV in 1972. She was the first female Vice President of Programming at a TV network and took NBC to #1 in the national Nielsen ratings

Nielsen Ratings

Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...

. She developed an expanded format for Days of Our Lives

Days of our Lives

Days of our Lives is a long running daytime soap opera broadcast on the NBC television network. It is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday in the United States since November 8, 1965. It has since been syndicated to many countries around...

 and Another World

Another World (TV series)

Another World is an American television soap opera that ran on NBC from May 4, 1964 to June 25, 1999. It ran for a total of 35 years. It was created by Irna Phillips along with William J...

, changing both to an hour-long running time. The expanded shows attracted new viewers and became hits with young women.

Although NBC was airing the successful game shows Hollywood Squares

Hollywood Squares

Hollywood Squares is an American panel game show in which two contestants play tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The "board" for the game is a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants...

, Concentration

Concentration (game show)

Concentration was an American TV game show based on the children's memory game of the same name. Matching cards represented prizes that contestants could win...

, and Jeopardy!

Jeopardy!

Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...

 at the time, Bolen's mandate was to increase ratings of young women ages 18–34. Daytime and late-night were seen as NBC's profit center at that time, and advertisers wanted programs that attracted young women. In late 1972, Bolen ended Concentrations fifteen-year run and replaced it with the Heatter-Quigley Productions

Heatter-Quigley Productions

Heatter-Quigley Productions was an American television production company that was launched in 1960 by two former television writers, Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley....

 game show Baffle. Baffle failed to compete with CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

's new game show, The $10,000 Pyramid, and was canceled on March 29, 1974.

Bolen also decided to end the eleven-year run of Jeopardy, feeling that its demographics were old. The show's creator and producer Merv Griffin

Merv Griffin

Mervyn Edward "Merv" Griffin, Jr. was an American television host, musician, actor, and media mogul. He began his career as a radio and big band singer who went on to appear in movies and on Broadway. From 1965 to 1986 Griffin hosted his own talk show, The Merv Griffin Show on Group W Broadcasting...

 did not wish to change the show's format, so Bolen commissioned a new game show from Griffin called Wheel of Fortune. Two pilots were produced before the network was satisfied that young women would love the show. Wheel of Fortune debuted on January 6, 1975, and was an immediate ratings hit.

In the spring of 1977, while NBC was still the #1 network in daytime, Bolen left the network and formed her own Production Company, "Lin Bolen Productions, Inc." The new company created and developed game shows, movies of the week, and theatrical films for networks and studios.

Bolen created the game show Stumpers! hosted by Allen Ludden

Allen Ludden

Allen Ludden was an American television personality, emcee and game show host, perhaps most well known for hosting various incarnations of the game show Password between 1961 and 1980.-Early years:...

, which was produced exclusively by Bolen's production company. The show was a word game with game elements similar to game show Password

Password

A password is a secret word or string of characters that is used for authentication, to prove identity or gain access to a resource . The password should be kept secret from those not allowed access....

, which had also been hosted by Ludden. The show lasted 13 weeks before being canceled by new NBC President Fred Silverman

Fred Silverman

Fred Silverman is an American television executive and producer. He worked as an executive at the CBS, ABC and NBC networks, and was responsible for bringing to television such programs as the series Scooby-Doo , All in the Family , The Waltons , and Charlie's Angels , as well as the...

.

One series Bolen's company produced for NBC was loosely based on her own career, taking a serious look at the men who ran Network TV. W.E.B.

W.E.B.

W.E.B. was an American TV series that aired for less than a month on NBC in 1978.W.E.B. showed the sharkish inner workings of the TV industry, centering on brash female programming executive Ellen Cunningham at fictional network Trans-Atlantic Broadcasting...

 was scheduled against ABC's hit series "Charlie's Angels" and did not perform well. It was canceled after 13 weeks.

Bolen's company produced the movie of the week The Christmas Coal Mine Miracle, starring Kurt Russell and Melissa Gilbert, which became the highest rated movie of the year for NBC. Other films followed, including Good Against Evil starring Kim Catrall and Dan O'Herlihy for ABC; Golden Gate starring Perry King, Melanie Griffith, and John Saxon; A two-hour pilot for ABC called "Farrell For The People" starring Vallerie Harper and Ed O'Neill; a comedy pilot for NBC called The Ann Jillian Show, and an NBC summer variety pilot called Live From the South Seas starring John Rowles.

Personal life

After leaving NBC, Bolen married director Paul Wendkos

Paul Wendkos

Paul Wendkos was an American television and film director....

. They remained married until his death on November 12, 2009.