About Mr. TV Historian
With a professional writing career spanning nearly two decades from weekly newspapers to reference books, Wesley Hyatt is a veteran of the publishing world.
Hyatt’s accomplishments have included being a senior editorial assistant for Divers Alert Network, an international scuba diving health, safety and research organization affiliated with Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. During his six years there, he wrote press releases weekly, assisted in reviewing and editing all copy coming from the communications department, and contributed several articles to the organization’s bimonthly magazine Alert Diver. Among the latter was a well-received three-part series on plastic surgery and scuba diving that later was reprinted in another diving publication.
Another prestigious position was as personal assistant to KC and the Sunshine Band in the 1990s, where he assisted in publicity efforts for the multimillion-selling musical act throughout the world. He coordinated press interviews and helped with promotional activities including press kits and fact sheets about the group, both from the band’s base in Miami, Florida and on tour with the musicians.
Other positions held by Hyatt have been as editor of two weekly newspapers in North Carolina, The Jamestown News and The News of Orange County in Hillsborough. His reporting for the latter regarding the town of Hillsborough’s legal action against a local church for its placement of an air conditioning unit earned him an award from the North Carolina Press Association in the early 1990s.
Hyatt is the author of six books. His first, The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television in 1997, became a leading entertainment reference work cited in several bibliographies of later books, from The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows to Buyer’s Guide to Fifty Years of TV on Video (whose author Sam Frank claimed there that Hyatt’s research was superior to that of two other books he used for reference). His next books were The Billboard Book of #1 Adult Contemporary Hits, Short-Lived Television Series 1948-1978, and A Critical History of Television’s The Red Skelton Show 1951-1971. His Emmy Award Winning Nighttime Television Shows, 1948-2004, came out in 2006 and received favorable reviews from the Television Chronicles and Steve Beverly’s TV Game Shows websites. His most recent book is Kicking Off the Week: A History of Monday Night Football on ABC Television, 1970-2005, which came out in 2007.
He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a double major in English and communications. He graduated cum laude in 1987.
In his spare time, Hyatt enjoys walking, swimming, reading, and collecting rare television series. He resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.