January 2017

Eric Pankowski is a show creator, executive producer and television executive whose career has centered on non-scripted programming with a focus on comedic content.

Pankowski joined CBS over three years ago as Senior Vice President of Programming and Development. Shortly after joining, his relationship with CBS transitioned to an overall producing deal. Pankowski served as executive producer and showrunner of “The Arsenio Hall Show” and as creator, executive producer and showrunner of “It’s Not You, It’s Men,” hosted by international film and music star Tyrese Gibson and hip-hop icon Rev Run for Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network. “It’s Not You, It’s Men” quickly established itself as OWN’s highest-rated Saturday night program ever, and ranked as the network’s #1 non-scripted show.

Following “It’s Not You, It’s Men,” Pankowski worked with CBS Television Studios, Ben Winston and James Corden to develop and sell the viral video sensations “Carpool Karaoke” to Apple Music, and “Drop The Mic” to TBS.

His career began with a 12 year tenure at Warner Bros., most notably as an executive with Telepictures Productions. In this role he oversaw the Emmy Award-winning “The Ellen Degeneres Show,” the comedic game show “Streets Smarts” and the reality competition show “elimiDATE.” He helped develop and then oversaw the prime time WB comedic variety show “Steve Harvey’s Big Time Challenge,” Spike TV’s action-sport series “Slamball,” and helped develop and launch the celebrity news website TMZ.com.

Pankowski furthered his relationship with Warner Bros. when he joined Jim Paratore in launching the full-service production company paraMedia, inc. With this entity, they created, developed, launched and produced “TMZ TV” in syndication and “Lopez Tonight” hosted by George Lopez, the first foray into late night comedy for TBS.

Next, he joined WWE as Senior Vice President to run all creative, programming and development, including WWE’s flagship live event program and top-10 cable show, “WWE Raw.”

Also, Pankowski oversaw “Smackdown,” the highest-rated program on SyFy, and all of the pay-per-view events, including the biggest-selling “WrestleMania” in history, while he also helped in creating and selling the docu-reality show “Total Divas” to E!.