Exec Producer Named for Discovery’s Curiosity

SILVER SPRING: Beth Hoppe, the former head of New York-based Optemen Productions, has been named as an executive producer of Discovery Channel’s ambitious upcoming project Curiosity: The Questions of Life.

The 60-episode series is slated to premiere in February 2011 and will run over the course of five years. Hoppe will oversee production of the multiyear television project for Discovery Studios, the internal production unit within Discovery Communications, reporting to Carole Tomko, the president of Discovery Studios. She will work closely with John Hendricks, the founder and chairman of Discovery Communications, as well as the Discovery Channel production team.

Hoppe was most recently the president and CEO of Optomen Productions, which has produced a range of content for cable networks such as Discovery Channel, History, Animal Planet, Lifetime and Food Network. She previously served as the director of science programs at Thirteen/WNET New York and executive producer of PBS’s Frontier House and Colonial House. She was also a series producer at WGBH for the award-winning PBS science strand NOVA.