[1] She oversaw and developed such hit shows as All in the Family, Kojak, Hawaii Five-O, M*A*S*H, Knots Landing, Eight Is Enough, The Waltons, Dallas, Falcon Crest, and others.

In 1990, she went to work for Lee Rich Productions in association with Warner Brothers, as a development executive, producing TV films and specials for three years.

She grew up with her younger brother (James Franklin Walker, Jr.) at her parents’ Sagmount Hotel and Inn,[2] a large resort in the countryside outside of Joplin.

Upon graduating from Joplin High School at age sixteen, she traveled to Los Angeles to attend the University of California in 1945 as an English major.

As a young woman, she worked for Joplin radio station WMBH as a DJ spinning the 78-rpm hits of the 1940s and as host of four talk shows.

She also worked as a literary agent at Film Artists International and as a sub-writer on the daytime soap opera The Edge of Night under the writer Henry Slesar.

She was closely involved in the development of many top prime-time soaps besides Dallas, such as Knots Landing, Falcon Crest, and Flamingo Road.

From 1992 to 1993, Joanne Brough executive produced Killer Rules, a murder mystery movie about the Italian Mafia in Rome, Italy, for Lee Rich Productions, Warner Brothers, and NBC.

By 1994, one year after her arrival, she had trained the writers, directors, cast, and crew well enough to be on the air with a new prime-time series she'd created, produced, and modeled after Dallas for an Asian audience―Masters of the Sea,[5] the first English-language television drama in Asia.

"[8] She might have remained there longer but for the political unrest of 1997–1998 that forced her to flee with her husband as rioters protested Suharto’s government and "smoke billowed from gutted buildings"[9] near their Jakarta home.