Bill Geddie, a Creator of ‘The View,’ Is Dead at 68

Bill Geddie, whose lengthy working relationship with the barrier-breaking tv newswoman Barbara Walters started when he produced her prime-time specials on ABC, then expanded when he collaborated together with her on “The View,” one among TV’s most profitable daytime speak reveals, died on July 20 at his dwelling in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 68.

His spouse, Barbara (Pratt) Geddie, mentioned the loss of life was heart-related.

“The View” was Ms. Walters’s concept — she wished a program on which girls from completely different generations would focus on the problems of the day — but it surely was Mr. Geddie who oversaw it for 17 years, ushering the altering, typically unruly solid of panelists by means of a day by day hour of scorching subjects, disagreements and private revelations.

“I think he loved doing a show with all women,” Meredith Vieira, who was the moderator of “The View” for 9 years from its begin in 1997, mentioned in a cellphone interview. “He was a strong producer who deferred to the female point of view, which was essential for a man running a women’s show.”

Joy Behar, the one authentic solid member nonetheless on the present, mentioned by cellphone that Ms. Walters was “the queen” and Mr. Geddie “took care of everything else.”

“He was pretty easy on the set,” she added. “But he didn’t like it when we’d complain to Barbara about something. He wanted us to go to him.”

Mr. Geddie and Ms. Walters had been each government producers of the present.

In addition to Ms. Vieira, Ms. Walters and Ms. Behar, the unique panel on “The View” included Star Jones and Debbie Matenopoulos, whom Mr. Geddie fired in the course of the present’s second season. One of the present’s most outstanding former solid members, Rosie O’Donnell, didn’t get together with Mr. Geddie, who Ms. Behar mentioned took a brief go away of absence as a result of he had a lot bother coping with her.

Today the solid is Whoopi Goldberg, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines and Ms. Behar.

Mr. Geddie additionally typically appeared on the present, as a “fifth or sixth banana,” Ms. Vieira mentioned. He bantered with the panel from a seat within the viewers and occasionally participated extra immediately — accompanying the nation singer Loretta Lynn on guitar, showing in skits, dressing up for Halloween. (One 12 months he was Daddy Warbucks to Ms. Behar’s Little Orphan Annie.)

“I’d turn on the show and ask myself, ‘Why are they shaving Bill’s chest?’” Barbara Geddie mentioned by cellphone.

Mr. Geddie recalled considering that “The View” ought to take a livelier method over the genteel one which Ms. Walters favored early on. He wished the solid to “step out on the high wire,” he mentioned, and, if potential, infuriate ABC’s censors.

“I wanted it to be a bitchy show,” he was quoted as saying in “Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of ‘The View’” (2019), by Ramin Setoodeh. “Barbara did not want it to be bitchy. I got my wish, by the way.”

William Fredrick Geddie was born on July 17, 1955, in San Antonio and grew up in Oklahoma City. His father, Ivan, was a geologist and a lawyer; his mom, Virginia (Cooper) Geddie, was a dietitian earlier than changing into a homemaker. Her love of flicks and tv influenced Bill’s profession course.

After incomes a bachelor’s diploma in radio, tv and movie from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977, Mr. Geddie bought a job cleansing the flooring at KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City, which led to work working cameras, each within the studio and within the subject.

Over the following decade he was a cameraman at WSB-TV in Atlanta; a cameraman and editor at WKYC-TV in Cleveland, the place he gained six native Emmy Awards; a producer of “PM Magazine” in San Francisco; and a producer of ABC’s “Good Morning America.” In 1988, after engaged on initiatives for the manufacturing firm owned by the previous “Good Morning America” host David Hartman, he was employed to provide Ms. Walters’s specials.

“I had the best job in television,” Mr. Geddie mentioned final 12 months on his podcast, “Take Fountain,” which he hosted with the filmmaker Thom Mount. Over practically a decade, he produced 4 Walters specials yearly. However, it turned “a little tedious and a little repetitive,” he mentioned.

Around that point, Ms. Walters informed him about her concept for what turned “The View.” They first pitched it to ABC underneath the title “Everybody’s a Critic.” Roone Arledge, the president of ABC News, warned that it might be a catastrophe for her.

“She said, ‘We won’t do anything controversial,’ and I’m thinking, ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to do,’” Mr. Geddie recalled on the podcast.

He welcomed the early lampooning of “The View” by “Saturday Night Live” as a result of it affirmed how shortly the present had entered the favored consciousness.

Tina Fey, then one of many “S.N.L.” employees writers, informed The New York Times in 1998 that when Ms. Vieira give Wesley Snipes a spontaneous lap dance on the air, she knew “The View” was ripe for parody.

Mr. Geddie remained with “The View” till 2014 amid modifications, just like the addition of a brand new government producer, made to the present. In the years after that, he was the manager producer of “Megyn Kelly Presents,” a particular on Fox in 2016; “The Preachers,” a present much like “The View” however with 4 Black clergymen, that had a quick run on Fox in 2016; and the syndicated speak present “Tamron Hall,” from 2019 to 2020.

In addition to his spouse, he’s survived by two daughters, Allison and Lauren Geddie, and a brother, Morgan.

Mr. Geddie obtained a Daytime Emmy Award in 2003 for “The View” and a lifetime achievement award on the 2012 Daytime Emmys for creating the present with Ms. Walters, who died final 12 months.

In his acceptance speech, he jokingly recalled seeing Ms. Walters’s picture on studio displays whereas he was buffing the flooring at his first job in Oklahoma City.

“And I thought at that time, Someday I’m going to be a thorn in that woman’s side,” he mentioned. “I’m going to make her absolutely sick of me. And it’s happened. Only in America.”