Dan Cutforth - Biography

Dan Cutforth

 I will not insult your intelligence by pretending that our PR company researched and wrote my biography. It seems more honest to write in the first person, even if it sounds less humble and more pompous.

I was born, in the shadow of Stonehenge, to a farming family in rural England. My TV career began in 1990 when I joined the BBC as a researcher. In 1992 I helped start up Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast, and a year later I left to take my first producer position when I created Barry’s Joypad, a video game magazine show for Sky TV.

In 1994 I decided to exploit my dual national status and moved to New York to head up the US office of British Production Company Planet 24. Two years of traveling the US interviewing movie stars and hanging out on the set of rock videos eventually became tiresome and I accepted an offer to come to LA to get my feet back under a desk in a development role for Planet 24 and Buena Vista Television. The first development project I worked on was Survive! The networks all passed on the show, but the format was bought by a Swedish broadcaster, and that was the last I heard of the show

Until it was bought by CBS and snappily re-titled Survivor.

After developing some other formats of equal brilliance that never sold here, but are household names in Scandinavia, I was asked to take a job as consulting producer on The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show. I worked on the start-up and launch of the show. Initially it looked like being a big hit: “ …Bursts onto the screen like a bullet train headed to Funkytown!” raved Variety. I left the show in the summer of 1997 and returned to the UK to revamp and re-launch The Big Breakfast. Ratings soared and my work was done, so I returned to Los Angeles and went freelance.

Following two seasons as a Producer on Whose Line is it Anyway? I was lured to VH1 to develop a late night strip. While working on that pilot I pitched the concept that would become Bands on the Run, and began work on the show in the spring of 1999. In the summer of 2001 BOTR was nominated for an Emmy. To the surprise of many, the show was ignored by the academy in favor of Survivor. Oh, the irony. Jane and I formalized our partnership and started Magical Elves Inc. when we went to develop The Runner. The rest is TV history, and is recounted on the front page of this bio, although I should bring attention to the fact that we have been nominated four times for Emmys in the 5 years we have been producing shows together. We definitely don’t like to make a big deal about it. The fact that we have been nominated four times.

In 2005 I stopped speaking in the first person, and adopted a third person approach. He continues to use it to this day.

Filmography

---

Air Guitar Nation (2007)