Father of acting Wilson brothers dead at 76

DALLAS (AP) - Robert A. Wilson, father of actors Luke, Owen and Andrew Wilson, and a landmark public television station executive who introduced "Monty Python's Flying Circus" to its first American audience, has died in Dallas. He was 76.

Luke Wilson told The Dallas Morning News (http://bit.ly/2pj197k ) that his father died Friday after years of fighting Alzheimer's disease.

Bob Wilson was placed in charge of Dallas public television station KERA in 1967. He hired Dallas Times Herald city editor Jim Lehrer, put him in charge of the station's public affairs programming and created a nightly news program called "Newsroom" with Lehrer as anchor. Lehrer went on to anchor "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" for PBS.

In 1974, Bob Wilson decided KERA would be the first American station to air "Monty Python's Flying Circus."

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Information from: The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com