Hart Steps Down As President Of Paramount Network Television

Garry Hart is moving into independent producing for Paramount Network Television in the face of the restructuring plans of Les Moonves, CBS president and Viacom's co-president and co-chief operating officer, who is combining CBS and Paramount's television production studios.

According to The Futon Critic, David Stapfhas been promoted to Hart's former position as president of Paramount Network Television from the position of heading up CBS's current programing. Stapf has worked maintaining longtime CBS shows such as Everybody Loves Raymond, Judging Amy and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Moonves praised Hart's decade-long contribution to Paramount. "Paramount has been a great and proud name in television for a long time, and Garry has been an important part of its success for the last decade,” he said. “He’s a true professional, and everyone at Viacom, Paramount and CBS owe him a sincere vote of thanks for his significant contributions to the reputation and performance of one of the media industry’s great programming companies. We look forward to a long, mutually-beneficial relationship with Garry, as he uses his significant creativity and knowledge of the television audience to develop successful projects for the studio for many years to come.”

It is uncertain how Hart's departure will affect UPN, the home of Star Trek: Enterprise. Hart recently reiterated the network's commitment to Enterprise, noting that he hoped and expected the show to run for several more seasons (story).

According to Zap2It, Moonves is hoping to boost profits with the combination of CBS Studios and Paramount Network Television. "We've got the greatest group of assets ever assembled to serve television viewers across all platforms, and this reorganization helps us make the most of that extraordinary portfolio of properties," he said.

Moonves also promoted a trio of exectives. Nancy Tellem, formerly the president of CBS Entertainment was bumped up to the position of president of the CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group.

"[She] has an intuitive understanding of how the creative and business process work together to create success and has been one of the main factors that has made our turnaround at CBS a reality," Moonves said of Tellum.

Nina Tassler will move into Tellum's former post; she previously was the head of drama development at CBS. Tassler was instrumental in developing both CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and CSI: Miami.

Yahoo!News reported that Moonves had high praise for Tassler as well. "Nina has been the creative vision behind all our dramatic success at CBS," he commented. "We felt that that creative vision should be overseeing the rest of the CBS programing."

Tassler sees the combination of CBS Productions and Paramount Network Television as beneficial to CBS's dramas. "I think the most exciting thing is that we're going to get a lot of projects in the pipeline between Paramount and CBS, we're going to have access to a lot of writers who are on the Paramount roster," she noted.

To read the original reports, please visit Zap2It, Yahoo!News and The Futon Critic!

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!