Strike could ground pilots

Upfront process also in jeopardy

By John Consoli, Media Week

Dec 4, 2007

If a settlement with the WGA is not reached within the next few weeks, the broadcast TV pilot season could be torpedoed. A long strike also could rattle the May upfront ad buying period for fall 2008.

So say a number of network execs and other industry sources, none of whom would speak on the record because of the sensitivity of labor negotiations.

Consider these scenarios: If the work stoppage is not ended soon and writers aren't back on the job by Jan. 1, 25% of the usual number of pilots produced for next season would have to be scrapped.

Even worse, if the strike lasts until Feb. 1, that number of scrapped pilots goes to 50%. And if the strike persists well into February -- a doomsday scenario -- the entire primetime development season would have to be jettisoned unless the industry decided to move the upfront back into late June or July.

One option the networks are quietly prepping for is to bring back their returning shows for the start of next season, develop new series through the summer and then introduce their new slates in midseason, beginning in January 2009.

Apparently, the WGA caught the networks by surprise when it decided to strike Nov. 4, only a few days after its contract expired. In its dealings with the networks' news operations, the guild traditionally has worked well past the expiration of its contracts.

"The networks did not think a strike would be called so soon," said one observer familiar with the network execs' position. "Even though they tried to shoot some pilots earlier, they did not make enough progress on that."

A WGA source pointed out that the timing of the strike was "specifically chosen at a point where we felt we would have the greatest impact and create the most leverage for us."

But one network exec retorted that the more damage the guild does to the development process, the more damage it does to its members' careers.

"Hampering the number of new shows the networks can put on the air next season is only going to adversely affect their jobs because there would be fewer projects to work on," the exec said.

Another network exec even wondered aloud how vital new shows actually are to the upfront ad buying process.

"Most advertisers want to get into the most popular returning shows, and in buying upfront programming, they include some of the new shows in their packages," the exec said. "But the new shows have no track record, so it is just a crap shoot anyway."

He implied that there is no reason the new shows for next season couldn't be sold separately at some later point, possibly in the scatter market with some type of guarantees.

"But we are not going to rush once the strike is settled to put just any new shows on the air that we can get ready if the quality is not good," the entertainment exec stressed.

ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox each has between four and 10 scripted sitcoms and dramas for next season in various stages of development, but only a few actually have shot pilots. And those pilots need additional work. The CW has greenlighted no new programming for next season.

"Even if a tentative agreement is reached by the negotiators within the next few weeks, it will take a few weeks after that to get the guild membership to vote to ratify it," one network exec said. "And then it will take another few weeks to gear back up, with the first priority being to finish writing this season's shows."

Adding to the logjam is the fact that only 15%-20% of the guild's writers are employed to write the broadcast network shows.

Many of the same writers who are working on this season's shows would also be those writing pilots to be developed for next season. It's going to be quite difficult for them to be writing for two shows at the same time.

"Usually there is some downtime for the writers when they finish up with scripts for existing shows and can move on to writing for developing shows," one network exec said, "but the downtime from the strike is not going to allow that this season."

The process for developing shows is a slow one. Once a script is accepted by a network, the entertainment execs then pore over it, making comments and suggestions. Meetings are then held to go over those suggestions until a final script is hammered out and approved. Casts must then be selected and table readings held before the pilot is shot.

Under normal circumstances, if a network decides to do 20-25 pilots, the process can last four or five months. And, traditionally, the networks barely get done in time for the May upfront. But taking a month so far, and possibly another month going forward, out of the process severely limits how many pilots each web can now realistically greenlight and get ready by the upfront.

As a result, the traditional May upfront presentation week may have to be altered, by either pushing it back a month or two or scrapping it in favor of individual meetings between the media buyers and the networks.

Either way, the longer the strike, the bigger the marketplace hassle.

Court is asked to declare Fossett legally dead

Adventurer's plane disappeared Sept. 3 in Nevada desert

By Michael Higgins, Tribune staff reporter; Tribune staff reporter Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report

November 27, 2007

The wife of Chicago adventurer Steve Fossett went to court Monday to have him found legally dead, saying she believes he died when his plane disappeared over the Nevada desert in September.

Peggy Fossett asked a Cook County probate judge to begin the process of distributing his assets according to his will.

"[Steve] Fossett's wealth is vast, surpassing eight figures in liquid assets, various entities and real estate," the court petition said.

Fossett was reported missing Sept. 3 after he failed to return for a lunch appointment from what was supposed to be a pleasure trip while a guest at the ranch of Barron Hilton, the hotel magnate. Fossett had only one bottle of water with him.

Officials and volunteers searched for weeks for Fossett and the white, blue and orange Bellanca Citabria Super Decathalon plane he was flying. Searchers used rescue aircraft, satellite and radar images and even scouring the craggy, remote terrain of western Nevada on foot. The search recovered wreckage from eight other air crashes, including one from the 1960s, but it turned up no sign of Fossett or the plane.

"As anyone can imagine, this is a difficult day for our family," Fossett's wife, who lived in the Gold Coast neighborhood with her husband, said Monday in a written statement. "We will continue to grieve and heal, but after nearly three months we feel now that we must accept that Steve did not survive."

Peggy Fossett said she and others contributed more than $1.2 million in private funds to the search effort, which was scaled back in mid-September and suspended in early October.

"Although an ongoing recovery mission continues, all involved have accepted the inevitable conclusion that Mr. Fossett did not survive," Mary Downie, one of Peggy Fossett's lawyers, said.

Under the law, the petition can be filed at any time after someone is suspected of dying.

It could take two to three years to distribute Fossett's assets. Peggy Fossett's lawyers are expected to appear before Probate Judge Jeffrey Malak in a few months.

Steve Fossett, a commodities trader who had made millions of dollars in Chicago, was known as a record-setting adventurer whose conquests included scaling the world's tallest mountains, swimming the English Channel and completing five nonstop flights around the earth as a solo balloonist, sailor and pilot.

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the plane flown by Fossett was destroyed in a fatal crash, according to Monday's court petition.

"Even if Fossett had survived a crash uninjured, which statistics show to be very unlikely, without water Fossett could not live more than a few days," Mark Marshall, a Fossett friend, said in a sworn statement.

In her affidavit, Peggy Fossett said her husband was in good spirits and had no debt or financial difficulties.

"None of Steve's wealth was transferred out or withdrawn in any manner that would suggest a planned disappearance," her statement said. "Steve has not accessed any of his assets since his disappearance. Steve had no debt and no life insurance."

According to the petition, Fossett was in the late stages of building a vehicle that he hoped could set a land speed record.

- - -

From the petition

'None of [Steve Fossett's] wealth was transferred out or withdrawn in any manner that would suggest a planned disappearance ... Steve has not accessed any of his assets since his disappearance. Steve had no debt and no life insurance.'

-- Peggy Fossett's court affidavit seeking to have her husband declared legally dead

MSNBC.com

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Don Imus returns to airwaves

Talk host ends eight-month radio silence, introduces new, diverse cast

The Associated Press

Mon., Dec. 3, 2007

NEW YORK - Don Imus returned to the airwaves Monday eight months after he was fired for a racially charged remark about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, and introduced a new cast that included two black comedians.

Imus’ lineup of guests featured two presidential hopefuls, Democrat Chris Dodd and Republican John McCain. As he did several times in the days after the episode, Imus condemned his controversial remark last spring and said he had learned his lesson.

“I didn’t see any point in going on some sort of ‘Larry King’ tour to offer a bunch of lame excuses for making an essentially reprehensible remark about innocent people who did not deserve to be made fun of,” he said Monday during his debut on WABC-AM.

Again, Imus apologized to the basketball players and called the ensuing furor a “life-changing experience.”

“I will never say anything in my lifetime that will make any of these young women at Rutgers regret or feel foolish that they accepted my apology and forgave me,” he said. “And no one else will say anything else on my program that will make anyone think that I didn’t deserve a second chance.”

His debut Monday completed a comeback that seemed improbable at the height of the uproar last spring over his calling the players “nappy-headed hos.” CBS Radio fired him on April 12, pulling the plug on his “Imus In the Morning” program that had aired on more than 70 stations and the MSNBC cable network.

McCain, who called into the show, answered questions about gays in the military (he said he would continue the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy unless military leaders said it wasn’t working), the recent surge in Iraq (he said it was doing the job), and the 2008 presidential election.

‘Welcome back, old friend’
“Thanks for having me on,” McCain said upon signing off. “Welcome back, old friend.”

An hour before the 6 a.m. show began, more than a dozen fans — all of them white — waited outside the Town Hall theater for the sold-out show. The $100 tickets benefited the Imus Ranch for Kids With Cancer.

Shortly after the program began, Imus introduced his new cast, including two black comedians, Karith Foster and Tony Powell. Returning was Bernard McGuirk, the producer who instigated the Rutgers comment and was fired as well.

On the air, Imus said that every time he would get upset about getting fired, “I would remind myself that if I hadn’t said what I said, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

He talked about when he and his wife, Deirdre, met with the team, their coach and some of the players’ parents and grandparents, for four hours the night he was fired from CBS Radio. The team members accepted Imus’ apology that evening.

“I was there to save my life. I had already lost my job,” he said. “They said they would never forget and I said I would never forget.”

He talked about his experience over the past 20 years as a recovering alcoholic and drug addict and said that participating in recovery programs had given him the opportunity to be “a better person ... to have a better life.”

While saying he had learned his lesson, he added — to applause from the live audience — “The program is not going to change.”

His guests also included historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and political analysts James Carville and Mary Matalin.

Politics remains the same
While Imus pledged to use his new show to talk about race relations, he added: Other than that, not much has changed. Dick Cheney is still a war criminal, Hillary Clinton is still Satan and I’m back on the radio.”

Imus’ resurrection is just the latest in his four-decade career. The veteran shock jock has emerged intact in the past after assorted firings, bad publicity and a disastrous appearance at a Washington dinner before President Clinton.

Just three months after he was fired, the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the strongest voices calling for his firing, said Imus had a right to make a living and could return to radio. He reiterated that view in a news conference Monday.

“Imus was fired. The move to hold people accountable was won,” Sharpton said. “Whether he can, in the course of time, redeem himself, time will tell.”

The prospect of Imus’ return had outraged critics including the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Organization for Women.

Just before his dismissal, Imus signed a five-year, $40 million contract with CBS. He threatened a $120 million lawsuit after he was fired, but he settled in August for an undisclosed amount of money.

In addition to being aired on the Citadel Broadcasting-owned station, WABC, the new program will air on four other Citadel stations and 17 other stations owned by other companies, said Phil Boyce, program director of WABC. Other stations are expected to sign up to carry Imus in the coming weeks, Boyce said.

The show also will be simulcast on cable’s RFD-TV, owned by the Rural Media Group Inc. RFD reaches nearly 30 million homes, but with Imus on board, the 24-hour cable network hopes to boost that number to 50 million over the next two years.

CNN: Corrupt News Network

A self-serving agenda was set for the Republican presidential debates.

Tim Rutten
Regarding Media

December 1, 2007

THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a "debate," what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.

Selecting a president is, more than ever, a life and death business, and a news organization that consciously injects itself into the process, as CNN did by hosting Wednesday's debate, incurs a special responsibility to conduct itself in a dispassionate and, most of all, disinterested fashion. When one considers CNN's performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent.

Corruption is a strong word. But consider these facts: The gimmick behind Wednesday's debate was that the questions would be selected from those that ordinary Americans submitted to the video sharing Internet website YouTube, which is owned by Google. According to CNN, its staff culled through 5,000 submissions to select the handful that were put to the candidates. That process essentially puts the lie to the vox populi aura the association with YouTube was meant to create. When producers exercise that level of selectivity, the questions -- whoever initially formulated and recorded them -- actually are theirs.

That's where things begin to get troubling, because CNN chose to devote the first 35 minutes of this critical debate to a single issue -- immigration. Now, if that leaves you scratching your head, it's probably because you're included in the 96% of Americans who do not think immigration is the most important issue confronting this country. We've got a pretty good fix concerning what's on the American mind right now, because the nonpartisan and highly reliable Pew Center has been regularly polling people since January on the issues that matter most to them. In fact, the center's most recent survey was conducted in the days leading up to Wednesday's debate.

HERE'S what Pew found: By an overwhelming margin, Americans think the war in Iraq is the most important issue facing the United States, followed by the economy, healthcare and energy prices. In fact, if you lump the war into a category with terrorism and other foreign policy issues, 40% of Americans say foreign affairs are their biggest concern in this election cycle. If you do something similar with all issues related to the economy, 31% list those questions as their most worrisome issue. As anybody who has looked at their 401(k) or visited a gas pump would expect, that aggregate figure has increased dramatically since Pew started polling in January. Back then, for example, concerns over the war outpaced economic anxieties by fully 8 to 1. By contrast, just 6% of the survey's national sample said that immigration was the most important electoral issue. Moreover, that number hasn't changed in a statistically meaningful way since the first of the year. In other words, more than nine out of 10 Americans think something matters more than immigration in this presidential election.

So, why did CNN make immigration the keystone of this debate? What standard dictated the decision to give that much time to an issue so remote from the majority of voters' concerns? The answer is that CNN's most popular news-oriented personality, Lou Dobbs, has made opposition to illegal immigration and free trade the centerpiece of his neonativist/neopopulist platform. In fact, Dobbs led into Wednesday's debate with a good solid dose of immigrant bashing. His network is in a desperate ratings battle with Fox News and, in a critical prime-time slot, with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. So, what's good for Dobbs is good for CNN.

In other words, CNN intentionally directed the Republicans' debate to advance its own interests. Make immigration a bigger issue and you've made a bigger audience for Dobbs.

That's corruption, and it's why the Republican candidates had to spend more than half an hour "debating" an issue on which their differences are essentially marginal -- and, more important, why GOP voters had to sit and wait, mostly in vain, for the issues that really concern them to be discussed. That's particularly true because that same Pew poll reported findings of particular relevance to Republican voters, the vast majority of whom continue to support the war in Iraq.

According to this most recent poll, a substantial number of Americans believe the surge is working. As Pew summarized their findings, "While Iraq remains a deeply polarizing issue across party lines, there has been improvement in how both Democrats and Republicans view the war. At the lowest point in February, barely half of Republicans (51%) said things were going well. Today, 74% of Republicans say the same. And while Democrats remain far more skeptical than Republicans, the proportion of Democrats expressing a positive view of the Iraq effort has doubled since February (from 16% to 33%).

"Independents' assessments of how the military effort is going remain far closer to the views of Democrats than of Republicans. Currently, 41% of independents offer a positive assessment, while half say things are not going well. In February, 26% of independents expressed a positive view of the situation in Iraq."

Those are significant swings of opinion, yet the poll also found that more than half of Americans still favor withdrawing American troops. That disconnect is a real issue for the GOP candidates, all but one of whom support the war. Unless we're going to believe that the self-selecting YouTube questioners were utterly different from the rest of American voters, it seems pretty clear that CNN ignored these complex -- and highly relevant concerns -- for an issue that served its ratings interests -- immigration -- or ones that made for moments of conventional television conflict, like gun control, which doesn't even show up in surveys of voters' concerns.

THIS is intellectual venality, but it pales beside the wickedness of using some crackpot's query about the candidates' stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that's anathema in our system -- to probe people's individual religious consciences. American journalists quite legitimately ask candidates about policy issues -- say, abortion -- that might be influenced by their religious or philosophical convictions. We do not and should not ask them about those convictions themselves. It's nobody's business whether a candidate believes in the virgin birth, whether God gave an oral Torah to Moses at Sinai, whether the Buddha escaped the round of birth and rebirth or whether an angel appeared to Joseph Smith.

The latter point is relevant because CNN's noxious laundering of this question through the goofy YouTube mechanism quite clearly was designed to embarrass Mitt Romney -- who happens to be a Mormon -- and, secondarily, to help Mike Huckabee -- who, as a Baptist minister, had a ready answer, and who happens to be television's campaign flavor of the month.

Beside considerations like these, CNN's incompetent failure to weed out Democratically connected questioners pales.

In any event, CNN has failed in its responsibilities to the political process and it's time for the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties to take the network out of our electoral affairs.

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December 1, 2007

Evel Knievel, 69, Daredevil on a Motorcycle, Dies

Evel Knievel’s famed jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1967; he was unconscious for a month afterward.

By RICHARD SEVERO

Evel Knievel, the hard-living, death-defying adventurer who went from stealing motorcycles to riding them in a series of spectacular airborne stunts in the 1960s and ’70s that brought him worldwide fame as the quintessential daredevil performer, died yesterday in Clearwater, Fla. He was 69.

His death was confirmed by a granddaughter, Krysten Knievel, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Knievel had been in failing health for years with diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung condition. In 1999, he underwent a liver transplant after nearly dying of hepatitis C, which he believed he had contracted from a blood transfusion after one of his many violent spills.

Only a few days before his death, he and the rap artist Kanye West announced they had settled a federal lawsuit over Mr. West’s use of Mr. Knievel’s trademarked image in a music video.

Mr. Knievel amazed and horrified onlookers on Dec. 31, 1967, by vaulting his motorcycle 151 feet over the fountains of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, only to land in a spectacularly bone-breaking crash.

He then continued to win fame and fortune by getting huge audiences to watch him — typically dressed in star-spangled red, white and blue — roar his motorcycle up a ramp, fly over 10, 15 or 20 cars parked side by side, and come down on another ramp. Perhaps his most spectacular stunt, another disaster, was an attempt to jump an Idaho canyon on a rocket-powered motorcyle in 1974.

Mr. Knievel’s showmanship, skill and disdain for death were so admired that he became a folk hero. John Herring’s song “Evel Knievel” was a hit, and both Sam Elliott and George Hamilton have played him in movies. In 1977, Hollywood tried to make him into a movie star in “Viva Knievel!,” a film with Gene Kelly and Red Buttons. In the 1970s and ’80s, Evel Knievel toys had sales in the hundreds of millions for Ideal and other companies.

For a 1994 exhibition titled “America’s Legendary Daredevil,” the Smithsonian Institution acquired Mr. Knievel’s customized Harley-Davidson XR-750 — the museum called it one of the few motorcycles to survive his career — and Mr. Knievel donated a star-spangled leather jumpsuit, cape and boots that he wore during jumps.

Performing stunts hundreds of times, Mr. Knievel repeatedly shattered bones as well as his bikes. When he was forced to retire in 1980, he told reporters that he was “nothing but scar tissue and surgical steel.”

By his own account, he underwent as many as 15 major operations to relieve severe trauma and repair broken bones — skull, pelvis, ribs, collarbone, shoulders and hips. “I created the character called Evel Knievel, and he sort of got away from me,” he said.

He had a titanium hip and aluminum plates in his arms and a great many pins holding other bones and joints together. He was in so many accidents that he occasionally broke some of his metal parts, too.

His health had also been compromised by years of heavy drinking; he told reporters that at one point he was consuming a half a fifth of whiskey a day, washed down with beer chasers.

Robert Craig Knievel was born in the copper-mining town of Butte, Mont., the son of parents who broke up when he was young. He was reared by grandparents.

As he told the story, he acquired the name Evel as a boy. Arrested for stealing hubcaps, he was taken to jail, where the police were holding a man named Knofel, whom they called “Awful Knofel.”

They decided to call Robert “Evil Knievel.” The name stuck, and some years later, Mr. Knievel legally took the name Evel, changing the “i” to “e” because, he said, he thought it looked better.

Evel Knievel in one of the typical star-spangled jumpsuits he wore for his stunts.

As a boy he was inspired by the exploits of Joie Chitwood, an acclaimed stunt-car driver. In an interview with The New York Times in 1974, Mr. Knievel said his first motorcycle was a Harley-Davidson, which he stole when he was 13. Three years later, his grandmother bought him a Triumph.

In Butte, he was a standout athlete in track and field, ski-jumping and ice hockey. Joining the Army in the 1950s, he volunteered to be a paratrooper and made 30 jumps. Afterward he played semiprofessional and professional hockey, for a time with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League. Then he took up motorcycle racing full-time until falling and breaking bones in a race in 1962.

When he was 27, he became co-owner of a motorcycle shop in Moses Lake, Wash. To attract customers, he announced he would jump his motorcycle 40 feet over parked cars and a box of rattlesnakes and continue on past a mountain lion tethered at the other end. Before 1,000 people, he did the stunt as promised but failed to fly far enough; his bike came down on the rattlesnakes. The audience was in awe.

“Right then,” he said, “I knew I could draw a big crowd by jumping over weird stuff.”

His stories about himself were no less extreme. He said he had twice kidnapped his hometown sweetheart, Linda Bork, and married her after the second time. He said he had robbed a service station of $900 when the owner failed to pay off a $25 bet. He said he had worked as a card shark, a swindler and a safecracker. How much of it might have been said to call attention to himself remained unclear.

In 1965 he formed a troupe called Evel Knievel’s Motorcycle Daredevils and began barnstorming Western states. He later began performing alone and hit the big time in 1968 with his much-publicized jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace. “It was terrible,” he said afterward. “I lost control of the bike. Everything seemed to come apart. I kept smashing over and over and ended up against a brick wall, 165 feet away.”

The accident left him with a fractured skull and broken pelvis, hips and ribs. He was unconscious for a month. Shortly after his recovery, he jumped 52 wrecked cars at the Los Angeles Coliseum. (In 1989, his son Robbie, who also became a motorcycle stuntman, tried the same jump at Caesars Palace and succeeded.)

In 1974, Mr. Knievel decided he would jump 1,600 feet across the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. Before thousands of spectators and thousands more on a closed-circuit television broadcast, he took a rocket-powered motorcycle up a 108-foot ramp at 350 miles an hour and soared some 2,000 feet over the canyon floor.

But his parachute opened prematurely, and he and the cycle drifted to the canyon floor, leaving him without serious injury. For his efforts, he made $6 million. He also made good money the next year when he went to London and jumped his motorcycle over 13 double-decker buses at Wembley Stadium. He crashed there, too, breaking his pelvis, vertebrae and hand. He soared over an aquarium tank containing 13 sharks in Chicago but skidded on the exit ramp and fractured his right forearm and his left collarbone.

It seemed he could not think of things big enough to jump over. At one point, he announced he would jump over the Grand Canyon with his jet-powered motorcycle. He even retained the lawyer Melvin Belli to help him get permits. But the Department of the Interior said no.

In 1977, Mr. Knievel was convicted in California of beating his former press agent with a baseball bat and sentenced to six months in a jail. The agent, Sheldon Saltman, had written a book that Mr. Knievel felt had treated him unfairly. The conviction had a devastating effect on sales of Evel Knievel toys.

Mr. Knievel was forced to spend the entire six months in prison after a judge learned that Mr. Knievel, under a work-release program, was commuting from prison to his job in a chauffeur-driven Stutz convertible and providing other inmates with limousine transportation to their work-release jobs.

A week before his release in 1978, he told an interviewer: “Last year at this time, I had 16 boats, three of them yachts, with the value of about $5 million. I’ve had to sell them all with the exception of three speedboats and one 80-foot yacht. I only have two houses left. I had to sell five mink coats.” He added, “Things are tough, but I think I’ll make it.”

But his troubles continued. In 1986, he was fined $200 in Kansas City, Mo., on charges of soliciting an undercover policewoman for immoral purposes. And in 1995, when he had left his wife after 38 years of marriage and was living with Krystal Kennedy, a younger woman, Mr. Knievel was charged with battering her. Ms. Kennedy declined to press charges, however, and later married him.

Mr. Knievel arriving at Caesars Palace hotel in Las Vegas for his wedding to Krystal Kennedy on Nov. 19, 1999.

In 1974, Mr. Knievel’s parachute opened prematurely in a canyon jump in Idaho.

In 2006, Mr. Knievel sued Mr. West, the rapper and producer, and his record company over a 2006 music video for the song “Touch the Sky,” in which Mr. West portrays “Evel Kanyevel,” who tries to ride a rocket-powered motorcycle over a canyon. “We settled the lawsuit amicably,” Mr. Knievel was quoted as saying this week.

After retirement, he continued to make public appearances and promote his son Robbie’s career. Mr. Knievel and his wife Linda Bork separated in the early ’90s. In addition to their son Robbie, they had three other children, Kelly, Tracey and Alicia. Mr. Knievel’s marriage to Krystal Kennedy, in 1999, ended in divorce, but they remained together, splitting time between homes in Clearwater and Butte, The A.P. said. He had 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Evel Knievel once described himself as “the last gladiator in the new Rome.” Another time he said he was “a conservative wildman.”

“I am a guy who is first of all a businessman,” he said. “I’m not a stunt man. I’m not a daredevil. I’m” — he paused — “I’m an explorer.”