Richard “Dick” Parsons, a former Time Warner CEO who was also instrumental in saving New York’s Apollo Theater, died Thursday in Manhattan. He was 76.
His cause of death was bone cancer, his friend Ronald S. Lauder told the New York Times.
“All of us at Warner Bros. Discovery suffered a terrible loss today,” current WBD CEO David Zaslav told TheWrap in a statement, recalling that he first met Parsons 30 years ago at NBC and remembering him as “a great person, a great friend and a great leader.”
“All who got a chance to work with him and know him saw that unusual combination of great leadership with integrity and kindness,” Zaslav continued. “Dick played both an enormous role in building Time Warner but was also one of the great problem solvers this industry has ever seen. It’s why so of us many looked up to him and sought his wise advice.”
Parsons was born April 4, 1948, in Brooklyn, and graduated from Albany Law School at the top of his class. He went on to work for New York governor, and eventual vice president, Nelson Rockefeller. That important connection led to him being named to the board of Time Warner, becoming president of the company in 1995.
At Time Warner, he worked to reduce the massive debt built up by the merger with AOL by selling off properties, including the Atlanta Hawks and Warner Music Group. He also decided to remove “AOL” from the company’s name post-merger. He stepped down as CEO in 2007, resigning as chairman the following year.
Parsons went on to advise New York governor Eliot Spitzer, former New York mayors Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, as well as President Barack Obama. From 2009 to 2012, he served as chairman of Citigroup and became interim CEO of the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014.
Parsons briefly served as the interim chairman of CBS Corp. in 2018, following Leslie Moonves’ departure due to sexual misconduct allegations. Parsons’ battle with multiple myeloma forced him to step down at the time due to “unanticipated complications” of the disease.
The executive also spearheaded the preservation of Harlem’s Apollo Theater in the 1990s, organizing a fundraising campaign to save the historic venue. “Without Dick, there would be no Apollo as we know it today,” Jonelle Procope, president and CEO of the theatre, told the Times in 2020.
Parsons is survived by three children: Gregory, Leslie and Rebecca.
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