Owen and Luke Wilson’s father dies at 76

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 their first American audience, has died in Dallas at age 76.

Wilson died on Friday after years of fighting Alzheimer’s disease, Luke Wilson told The Dallas Morning News.

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, he decided that KERA would be the first American station to air Monty Python’s Flying Circus.