Benjamin Noah Silverman (born August 15, 1970) is an American media executive. He is the co-CEO and chairman of the entertainment production company Propagate.
From 2007–2009, Silverman served as co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios. He is also an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning executive producer of such shows as The Office, Jane The Virgin, الآنسة فرح (Miss Farah), Betty en NY, Ugly Betty, Marco Polo, The Tudors and The Biggest Loser. Silverman also produced CW's praised No Tomorrow and Apple's first reality television show Planet of the Apps. On July 10, 2014, The Banff World Media Festival presented Silverman with the Award of Excellence in Digital Innovation. As of the fourth quarter 2016, Silverman's most recently released feature film Hands of Stone starring Edgar Ramirez, Robert De Niro and Usher, and was released theatrically in North America on August 26, 2016, through The Weinstein Company.
Life and career
Silverman was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was raised in a Reform Jewish family in Manhattan. Silverman is a 1992 magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University, where he majored in history and belonged to the Epsilon Theta chapter of the Theta Chi fraternity. His mother, Mary (Delson) Silverman, was an actress and programming executive whose career included employment at the Disney Channel, BBC, USA Network, Lifetime Television, and Court TV. His father, Stanley Silverman, is a music composer/arranger.
He had summer internships at Warner Bros., and after college in 1993, worked at CBS and then worked for Brandon Tartikoff at New World Entertainment. He worked for the William Morris Agency starting in 1995; Silverman was in charge of the international packaging division, where he was the company's youngest division head, packaging more than 25 television series, including Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Weakest Link, Big Brother, and Queer as Folk. He worked for William Morris Agency until 2002, when he left to found Reveille.
In 2007, Silverman received the P.T. Barnum Award from Tufts University for his exceptional work in the field of media and entertainment. Silverman is involved with multiple philanthropic endeavors, including Seeds of Peace, a group helping to foster peace among young people from adversarial cultures. In addition, Silverman sits on the Cedars-Sinai Hospital board of governors. Silverman also serves on the board of directors of Best Buddies, a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of people with intellectual disabilities by providing guidance and integrated employment.
In 2008, Silverman received an Honorary Rose for lifetime achievement the Rose d'Or ceremony.
Silverman married Jennifer Cuoco, a real estate agent, in December 2010.
Reveille
Silverman is the founder of Reveille, a television, film, and theater production and distribution company now owned by Shine Limited under News Corporation. He founded Reveille in 2002 in order to exploit international formats by selling them in the United States. Through his work at Reveille, he is the executive producer of such shows as NBC's The Office, The Restaurant, The Biggest Loser, and ABC's Ugly Betty, as well as several cable shows, including Nashville Star, on USA Network, 30 Days on FX, MTV's Parental Control and Date My Mom, Blow Out on Bravo, and House of Boateng on the Sundance TV.
Journalist Michael Wolff wrote a 2001 profile of Silverman in New York Magazine a year before he founded Reveille. "In some sense, he's like those boy geniuses of the eighties and nineties who invented new financial instruments -- junk bonds and derivatives and whatnot. The discovery and marketing of a new format is really like that. It's creating something that is negotiable and transferable and that people believe in deeply -- it solves all their problems. Now, obviously, there is a certain obsolescence to these formats (with junk bonds you had inevitable bankruptcies). And Ben, of course, is already searching the world for new formats. Variety shows might be a possibility," Wolff wrote.