French Horwitz

French Horwitz has 25-plus years of broadcast television experience and is based in New York City. His first major break in the documentary field came as a line producer on the 1994 Emmy Award nominated, Time-Life/NBC series Lost Civilizations, a show that took him all over the Middle East while commanding a team of one hundred actors and crew. It was this experience that inspired French to explore every corner of the world and seek out adventure in his television work. His line producing services were in great demand in the years following, working on projects for HBO, PBS, BBC, National Geographic, and Discovery. In 1999, he received his first producing credit on the Learning Channel special NYPD Scuba, a show that followed a specially trained division of the New York Police Department as they patrolled the dark waters of New York City. In 2000 he joined National Geographic Television, where he stayed for eight years eventually rising to the senior series producer. During that time, he supervised, developed, produced, directed and wrote over 100 hours of television, including one of National Geographic Channel's earliest series hits, Is It Real?, and well as two of the network's most watched specials Dino Autopsy and Dino Death Trap. He left NGT in 2008, at a time when the television landscape was changing from traditional documentary to reality, a format to which he felt an instant connection. First up was Lock n' Load with R. Lee Ermey for the History Channel, a series that focused on the development of military weaponry and blowing things up. After that, he was tasked to create the pilot for the Animal Planet series Hillbilly Handfishin' - a show that indulged his obsession with all things redneck. That was followed by the History Channel special 101 Gadgets That Changed the World, based on the Popular Mechanic's list of the same name. In 2011 he joined Discovery Channel as a network Executive Producer, reinforcing his reputation as the go-to adventure and survival guy on series such as Flying Wild Alaska, Stormchasers, Yukon Men and Dual Survival and in the comedy space with Backyard Oil. Additionally, he was tasked with co-developing several series and specials such as Chrome Underground and Lone Operator. After nearly three years on the network side, the draw of production proved too strong and he relocated to New York to take a position with Zodiak New York. As Vice President of Development and Current, he was tasked with spearheading development for the New York office, creating new concepts in all genres as well as with executive producing current series. Though he continued to develop and produce male-skewing programming for Discovery and Nat Geo, this new role finally allowed him to branch out and develop female-skewing formats and occusoaps for networks such as E!, TLC, Lifetime and VH1 as well as general entertainment and lifestyle shows for HGTV, A&E, Pop, Travel, and Tru. With the closing of Zodiak's NY office, due to the merger with Banijay, he moved to IMG to become the VP of Original Content, running non-scripted development for the company. After IMG's purchase of UFC, their interest in original content diminished so he transitioned to digital, becoming a Creative Consultant for several digital agencies in the Entertainment, EdTech, Healthcare, Retail and Industrial Products spaces. In 2019, he returned to Discovery as an EP and Showrunner for Discovery Creative as well as a network EP for Travel.