Herbert Schlosser, a longtime NBC executive who put an indelible stamp on the network by negotiating Johnny Carson's first deal to host "The Tonight Show," putting "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" on the air and overseeing the development of "Saturday Night Live," died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.

Schlosser was president of NBC in 1974 when he faced a late-night predicament: Carson no longer wanted the network to carry repeats of "Tonight" on weekends. But pleasing Carson, the network's most important star, led to an inevitable question: What would NBC televise at 11:30 on Saturday nights?

He wrote a memo in early 1975 that laid out the fundamentals of an original program that would be televised from NBC's headquarters at Rockefeller Center; would be carried live, or at least taped on the same day, to maintain its topicality; would be "young and bright," with a "distinctive look, a distinctive set and a distinctive sound"; would "seek to develop new television personalities," and would have a different host each week.

"Saturday Night is an ideal time to launch a show like this," Schlosser wrote. "Those who now take the Saturday/Sunday 'Tonight Show' repeats should welcome this, and I would imagine we would get much greater clearance with a new show."

"Saturday Night Live," originally called just "Saturday Night" — which followed much of Schlosser's formula, and which was produced, then as now, by Lorne Michaels — made its debut on Oct. 11, 1975, after Game 1 of the World Series between Boston and Cincinnati. Schlosser had attended the game in Boston with Bowie Kuhn, the strait-laced baseball commissioner, and invited him to his hotel room to watch.

"He didn't laugh. And I thought, 'Well, that's Bowie,' " Schlosser recalled in "Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests" (2002), by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. "And then after a while, he started to chuckle. And then he'd actually laugh. And I figured, 'Well, if he likes it, it's going to have a wider audience than most people think.' "

Michaels, in a phone interview, said that Schlosser had been a staunch backer of the show. "We wouldn't have been on the air without him," he said. " 'Live' was his idea, not mine. He just believed in the show. He protected it."

Schlosser, a lawyer, had been an executive in NBC's business affairs department, where he negotiated programming contracts to carry, among other events, the 1964 Summer Olympics from Tokyo and talent deals like ones with Bob Hope, whose specials were a mainstay of NBC's prime-time schedule.

Schlosser particularly championed "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," a fast-paced satirical series that made its debut in early 1968. It was considered outrageous then for the political and risqué humor of its skits, performed by a cast of future stars including Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin.

George Schlatter, executive producer of "Laugh-In," recalled that Schlosser had protected him from those within NBC who found the show's content offensive.

Herbert Samuel Schlosser was born on April 21, 1926, in Atlantic City, N.J. His father, Abraham, owned a furniture store; his mother, Anna (Olesker) Schlosser, was a homemaker.

He joined NBC in 1960 and rose steadily at the network. He was named executive vice president in 1972, promoted to president a year later, and named president of the National Broadcasting Co., the network's corporate parent, in 1974 and CEO in 1977.