Sheri Herman, a cable and digital media pioneer who helped build E! Entertainment Television and other major networks, has died of heart failure in Florida at the age of 71. Her career spanned four decades and traced the evolution of American entertainment media, from early cable carriage negotiations to pioneering internet content, making her an influential if lesser-known figure behind several household-name brands.

After starting in advertising and television production, Herman rose through United Cable and later Liberty Media under mentor John Malone, where she helped rescue the Discovery Channel from near-bankruptcy and brought cable operators into equity stakes in QVC. She later helped transform the Movietime channel into E! Entertainment Television, left in 1992 and returned in the late 1990s as a senior executive, then went on to launch "The Spot", regarded as the first web soap opera, and to introduce interactive music video programming at Access Entertainment that reportedly influenced Vevo's later model. A serious hit-and-run accident in 2007 prompted her retirement from business; she is survived by her sister, opera singer Nadine Herman.