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Steve Sohmer (born Savannah, GA 1941) is a Shakespearean scholar, author of scholarly books and fiction, television screenwriter, and former network television and motion picture studio senior executive.

In 1964, Steve began his career as a copywriter at The Bureau of Advertising of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. In 1966, his first novel, "The Way It Was" was published by Robert Gottlieb of Simon&Schuster. The book received rave notices, and was chosen by The New York Times as one of the twenty best novels of the year. In 1967 Steve was named Creative Director of the Bureau circa 1998.

In 1972, Steve left the Bureau to establish his own media promotion firm in partnership with The Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company. For the next five years the New York based company created elaborate slide and film sales presentations for media clients including CBS Television, Newsweek, Vogue, Penthouse, Conde Nast Magazines, The Washington Post, The Dallas Times Herald, The Detroit Free Press, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, The Houston Post, ABC Radio, the Radio Bureau of Advertising and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1977, Steve was named Vice President, Marketing and Promotion, of the CBS Television Network. He followed the great Lou Dorfsman in this capacity. Steve supervised the marketing of CBS Entertainment, CBS News and CBS Sports. By imposing professional advertising practices on his department, Steve led a renaissance in television marketing among the major networks. Steve's promotion launched Dallas, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Incredible Hulk, Alice, and other long-running hits. His movie marketing skills drove viewers to Skokie, Playing for Time, and Fallen Angel. In his five years at CBS Steve helped lead that network from second place to a dominant number one in the ratings.

Sohmer was President and Chief Operating Officer of Columbia Pictures and an Executive Vice President at NBC. He wrote the screenplay for the television movie Tom Clancy's OP Center (1995) and created the series highly honored drama series Twice in a Lifetime for PAX TV (1999).

Sohmer was married to soap opera star Deidre Hall for 15 years, though they later divorced.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Steve Sohmer", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0