Scherick was born in New York City, the son of Jennie (née Friedman) and Jacob J. Scherick. He was raised in
Long Beach, NY and graduated
Long Beach High School in 1941. Upon graduating from high school, he took a job with New York City advertising agency L. H. Hartman as an office boy, attending night classes at the
City College of New York. Scherick was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1943 and trained as a meteorologist in Grand Rapids, Michigan, then transferred to Windsor Locks, Connecticut before ultimately being posted to Keflavik, Iceland, where he spent the majority of his three years of service. In 1950, Scherick began working at the
Dancer Fitzgerald Sample advertising agency, where he would remain until 1956. Widely credited as a pioneer in network sports broadcasting, Scherick created the television program ''
ABC's Wide World of Sports at his company Sports Programs, Inc. which he started in 1956 with $600.00. In February 1960, Scherick sold Sports Programs to the American Broadcasting Company for $500,000 in ABC stock, where it became ABC Sports, the sports division of the network. With the acquisition, Scherick was appointed head of the ABC Sports division, then Vice President in charge of Network Sales. In June 1963, Scherick became Vice President of Programming for the ABC Television Network, where he created many popular shows including Bewitched, Batman, That Girl, The Hollywood Palace, and Peyton Place''. After his television career, Edgar Scherick became a film and television producer and executive producer of 75 theatrical films, television movies and mini-series through his company
Palomar Pictures International and other entities. In 1983, Scherick had a cameo role as Wilson Crockett, a network television executive, in the
Martin Scorsese film,
The King of Comedy. By January 2, 1990, Scherick had gone to work with
Saban Entertainment through its Saban/Scherick Productions division, which was for mostly television movies and mini-series Scherick hired and served as a mentor to many famous television and theatrical producers and industry executives including
Roone Arledge,
Brian Grazer,
Scott Rudin,
Michael Barnathan, Robert Lawrence and David Nicksay. He died of complications from leukaemia on December 2, 2002.
Palomar Pictures Scherick ran Palomar Pictures a subsidiary of ABC that made features. It was named after a town in a Don Murray Western. Scherick said Palomar "is not making exploitation pictures or features intended primarily for television showing. Our avowed aim is the production of important motion pictures which will earn extended engagements in first run theatres." This reportedly happened during the filming of ''They Shoot Horses Don't They?''. == Awards and nominations ==