"THE COLBERT REPORT" NAMES
MEREDITH BENNETT, RICHARD DAHM AND ALLISON SILVERMAN
CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
NEW YORK, February 20, 2007 -- Meredith Bennett, Richard Dahm and Allison Silverman have been promoted to co-executive producers of "The Colbert Report," it was announced today by Stephen Colbert, executive producer, writer and host of the program. Bennett had previously served as line producer with Dahm and Silverman as supervising producers.
"Allison, Rich and Meredith are incredibly gifted, hardworking producers who truly deserve these promotions. They also deserve to go home occasionally, but that's not going to happen," said Colbert.
Bennett, Dahm and Silverman have been with "The Colbert Report" since its launch on October 17, 2005. During their tenure and guidance, the show received four Primetime Emmy Awards nominations in the 2005-2006 competition, including nods for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program.
Finishing its first full year on-air, "The Colbert Report" averaged a 1.1 HH and 0.7 P18-49 rating with 1.2 million total viewers (P2+) and almost 800,000 P18-49 viewers tuning in nightly. The show increased timeslot ratings by +55% with households and +61% with P18-49 vs. 2005 programming. In addition, viewing increased +60% with total viewers and +62% with P18-49 viewers.
Meredith Bennett is seasoned in the production world, having worked on shows such as VH1's "Storytellers" series (Dave Matthews Band and Coldplay), "The Bachelorette," "The Jane Pauley Show," Food Network's "Lisa and Dweezil Show," "The Caroline Rhea Show," MTV's "Unplugged" series and "Inside Edition." She also served as production manager for "The Rosie O'Donnell Show," starting early in its launch in 1996 through the show's end in 2002. The show received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show five years in a row, from 1998-2002. She is a graduate of Yale University.
Richard Dahm was a writer for HBO's "Dennis Miller Live" and "Da Ali G Show," and was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program. He also spent nine years as a writer and managing editor of The Onion, the award-winning satirical weekly newspaper/Web site and is a co-author of the best-selling Onion Ad Nauseum book series. After leaving The Onion, he and a team of Onion alums wrote television pilots for Fox, the WB and ABC, as well as several episodes of the Cartoon Network's animated talk show "Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast."
Allison Silverman is an accomplished writer, having received the following accolades: an Emmy and Peabody Award for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart;" two Writers Guild Awards; and four Emmy nominations for "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." She was the only woman on the writing staff on the aforementioned shows. Silverman has also written for numerous publications including The New York Times, Slate and the Writer's Guild publication where she was featured alongside Larry Gelbart, David O'Russell and Calvin Trillin. Her experience as a performer includes roles on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," a year at the Boom Chicago Theater in Amsterdam and several years as a member of the Chicago improvisational comedy community. Silverman graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University in 1994. Oddly enough, she matriculated to Yale as a molecular biology major and was first published as co-author of a scientific paper called "Association of 70 Kilo-Dalton Heat-Shock Cognate Proteins with Acclimation to Cold" in the journal Plant Physiology.
"The Colbert Report" airs Monday-Thursday at 11:30 p.m. following "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Each episode repeats Monday-Thursday at 1:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. and Friday at 10:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. (all times ET/PT).
"The Colbert Report" is produced by Jon Stewart's Busboy Productions, Inc. in association with Spartina Productions, Inc. Stewart and Colbert are the executive producers with Meredith Bennett, Richard Dahm and Allison Silverman as co-executive producers. The series' head writers are Dahm and Silverman. Lou Wallach is executive in charge of production for COMEDY CENTRAL.
