July 6, 1922—June 20, 2009

LOS ANGELES—Anne Roberts Nelson, a pioneering television executive with CBS who negotiated contracts for such long-running hits as “I Love Lucy” and “Gunsmoke,” has died. She was 86.

Mrs. Nelson, who was hired in 1945 and was the longest-serving CBS employee with 64 years, died Saturday of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, the network announced.

She was promoted to vice president of business affairs for CBS Entertainment in 1999 and remained on the job until January of this year, a month after she was laid off in a round of network cuts, her family said.

Fresh out of the University of California, Berkeley, Mrs. Nelson got a two-week temp job as an assistant to Ernest H. Martin, the future Broadway producer who was then general manager of CBS Radio in Los Angeles. Soon she was an assistant director in sales services and on her way to becoming one of the first female executives who wasn’t hired out of the secretarial pool.

Mrs. Nelson made her way up the network ladder, getting promoted to director of business affairs for the radio division in 1955, then the TV division in 1959 and eventually to the vice president’s office 40 years later.

She had a variety of duties along the way, including booking talent for “The Ed Wynn Show” and “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” and then negotiating contracts for CBS mainstays “I Love Lucy,” “Gunsmoke,” “All in the Family,” “The Red Skelton Show” and “Perry Mason.”

While she was building her career, she was also raising three children with her husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson Jr. They had married in 1946, eight years after he and actress Bette Davis divorced. He died in 1975.