Rich, who was also the former chairman and chief executive of MGM/UA Communications, said he considered his greatest accomplishment to be co-founding Lorimar, which produced the shows. It went on to produce "Family Matters," "Full House" and "Perfect Strangers," among other series.
Rich started in television at the advertising agency Benton & Bowles, where he helped package and sell both "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Danny Thomas Show." In 1965 he left to start his own production company, Mirisch-Rich Productions, which produced such shows as "The Rat Patrol" and one of the first Garry Marshall/Jerry Belson shows, "Hey, Landlord."
He co-founded Lorimar in 1969, which also produced television movies including "Sybil" and "Helter Skelter." He talked about the company's early days in a 1999 interview for the Archive of American Television.
Gesturing toward his wife, he said, "She and I took it from the beginning and built it to ... the largest supplier of network television that there was, just for a little independent company."
