John William Diederich (30 August 1929–27 March 2006), media executive, was born in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, and was the son of Joseph Charles Diederich, an automobile salesman, and Alice Florence Yost Diederich. While growing up in Chippewa County, he delivered newspapers and worked as a circulation agent. On 25 November 1950 Diederich married Mary Theresa Klein in Port Washington, Wisconsin. They had four sons and ten daughters, one of whom died in infancy. Diederich received a Ph.B. in journalism from Marquette University in 1951. That year, having attended college on a Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, stationed at Quantico, Virginia, and later at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. After being discharged from active duty in September 1953, he continued as a reservist until 1971, when he retired as a lieutenant colonel.

J. William, or Bill, Diederich enrolled in the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration in 1953. Interested in pursuing a career in the newspaper business, he wrote Frank Batten to inquire about his job as publisher of Norfolk's Ledger-Star and Virginian-Pilot newspapers. Batten allowed Diederich to study production problems at the newspaper facility for a class and was so impressed with his assessment that Batten implemented most of his suggested solutions. After Diederich received an MBA in 1955, he joined Batten's publishing company, Norfolk Newspapers, Incorporated. He established the company's first research department, which focused on marketing and operations analysis. Diederich earned a succession of quick promotions to assistant controller, controller, and then secretary-treasurer. He helped investigate opportunities for expansion into the emerging cable television industry. In 1964 the company launched TeleCable Corporation and during the next three decades built cable television systems in fifteen states.

Diederich won promotion to vice president and treasurer of Norfolk Newspapers in 1965 and joined the board of directors two years later. In 1967 the company changed its name to Landmark Communications amid a growth spurt in which it bought three daily newspapers, a host of nondaily papers, and several television stations. Diederich became executive vice president of finance in 1973, and from 1977 to 1988 he served as chairman of the board of Landmark Community Newspapers, a division formed after the purchase of a Kentucky-based media company in 1973.

Late in the 1970s Landmark executives began searching for new ventures in the growing cable television business as it evolved from a vehicle to help small communities pick up distant broadcast signals to a venue for miniature national networks. For creative ideas Batten relied on Diederich, whom he later described as a "wellspring of inventiveness" with an "uncanny ability to sniff out business opportunities long before others saw them." Diederich urged Batten to start a twenty-four-hour cable news channel, which could draw a large audience eager for more news programming than that available in evening network newscasts. The proposed news channel was sidetracked late in 1977 when Batten was diagnosed with throat cancer. Despite his illness, Landmark continued to expand and in 1978 bought television stations in San Jose, California, and in Las Vegas, Nevada. That year Diederich became executive vice president of Landmark Community Newspapers, Inc.

After a competitor launched the Cable News Network in 1980, a recovered Batten looked for a new cable-channel concept. Diederich led one of two new venture teams in search of other opportunities. In 1981 his group learned about a business plan for a twenty-four-hour cable weather channel that needed further development and a financial partner. Diederich, who earlier had predicted a similar concept, helped convince Batten of its potential. On 2 May 1982 Landmark launched the Weather Channel. Struggling in its early months, the new venture received an unexpected boost in 1983 when cable television viewers ranked the Weather Channel as the most satisfying in a survey of eighteen cable networks. By the end of the year fifteen of the largest cable companies had signed fee-based contracts with the Weather Channel, helping to ensure its survival.

In 1982 Diederich was promoted to executive vice president as well as chief financial officer of Landmark Communications (Landmark Media Enterprises LLC beginning in 2008). On 1 September 1990 he retired from the company, but he continued to sit on its board of directors. Diederich and his wife moved to Incline Village, Nevada, where he served as an officer of several of Landmark's Nevada-based companies. Diederich and his family founded an Internet service provider, based in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1994 and an online advertising venture in 1995. He did not abandon print media, however, and in 2002 he and three family members, operating as the Northern Neck Newspaper Group LLC, acquired four weekly community newspapers and a monthly periodical published in eastern Virginia.

In 2005 Diederich and his wife donated $28 million to Marquette University, which named the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication in their honor. On 27 March 2006 John William Diederich died of cancer in a Charlottesville hospital, where he had traveled for medical care. After a funeral mass and memorial service in Virginia Beach, he was buried in Saint Mary's Catholic Cemetery, in Port Washington, Wisconsin. As part of the settlement of his estate, his family sold the assets of the Northern Neck Newspaper Group in 2007. Landmark Communications sold the Weather Channel and its offshoots to NBC Universal and two private equity firms in 2008.

Sources Consulted:
Biography (1996; updated 2007) with birth and marriage dates, photographs, and family information compiled by Diederich and Mary Theresa Klein Diederich, copies in Dictionary of Virginia Biography Files, Library of Virginia; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 Oct. 2004; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 23 Sept. 2005; Frank Batten with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, The Weather Channel: The Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon (2002), esp. 17–19, 36–37 (quotations on 36); obituaries in Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 29 Mar. 2006, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 31 Mar. 2006; obituary, prepared in part by Diederich, in Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 30 Mar. 2006.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Brittany N. Heyward.

How to cite this page:
Brittany N. Heyward,"John William Diederich (1929–2006)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Diederich_John_William, accessed [today's date]).

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