Sir Jeremy Israel Isaacs (born 28 September 1932) is a Scottish television producer and executive, and an opera manager.
[7] Isaacs was the founding chief executive of Channel 4 between 1981 and 1987, overseeing its launch period and setting the channel's original cultural approach with opera and foreign language film, although programmes with popular appeal such as the game show Countdown, the pop music series The Tube, and soap opera Brookside had a place in the schedule from the beginning.
The channel commissioned Michael Elliott's production of King Lear (1983) with Laurence Olivier in the title role and Isaacs recommissioned a number of programmes from his time at Granada including What the Papers Say.
In 1989, Isaacs named 26 personal favourites from his tenure as Channel 4's chief executive, running from A (the discussion series After Dark) to Z (a four-hour dramatisation of a Gothic horror novel, Zastrozzi).
[9] After leaving Channel 4 at the end of 1987,[10] and having failed to be appointed director-general of the BBC, Isaacs became General Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, a role he fulfilled until 1996.