By Chris Koseluk David Jacobs, the writer and producer who changed the face of television in the 1980s by creating the primetime soap operas Dallas and Knots Landing, has died. He was 84.

David Jacobs, a writer who gave television audiences the prime-time soap operas “Dallas” and “Knots Landing,” juggernauts of the airwaves that debuted in the late 1970s and held millions ...