City Lights Television Forms New Global Unit

NEW YORK, May 5: Reality
format producer City Lights Television has created a new international
development division, to be led by Laura Johnson as senior VP.

Previously, Johnson served
as City Lights Television’s senior VP of production operations and was
responsible for all television and digital production. Her new responsibilities
include managing the international television sales of the company’s growing
slate of more than 300 formats in its development library. Since late 2004,
Johnson has supervised hundreds of TV episodes for City Lights, including
Lifetime’s reality dance competition series Your Mama Don’t Dance, AMC’s Movies 101 series, all six seasons of HGTV’s Don’t Sweat
It and 50 Funniest Women Alive for Oxygen. She also oversaw production on nearly
1,000 webisodes for City Lights Digital, including the current Book Obsessed for Barnes and Noble.

The company’s
international division seeks to develop new relationships with networks in
overseas territories, in addition to forming strategic alliances with
international production companies. Launched in 2003, City Lights has produced
500-plus episodes of television for such networks as HGTV, TLC, MTV, Lifetime,
TV Guide, Science Channel, Fine Living, Speed, WE, Oxygen and Discovery Home.

“Laura’s ten years in the
business are perfectly suited for this new post,” said City Lights Television’s
president, Dave Noll. “She has a proven ability to develop formats into
high-quality productions.”

—By Irene Lew