Melanie Chilek and Gerette Allegra Named Senior Vice Presidents, Development and Programming for Hoff Productions

SAN FRANCISCO, October 12, 2010 --- Former Sony development and production execs Melanie Chilek and Gerette Allegra have joined Hoff Productions as Senior Vice Presidents, Development and Programming and Executive Producers for domestic and international television, it was announced today by Michael Hoff, President, Hoff Productions.
Chilek and Allegra will oversee all program development for Hoff, whose wide-ranging production roster includes several celebrated series such as National Geographic Channel’s “Hooked,” Investigation Discovery’s “Extreme Forensics,” Animal Planet’s “Weird, True & Freaky,” while at the same time, broadening the company’s slate in the area of female-oriented  programming.
 
This structure reunites Chilek and Allegra, who for more than ten years ran the first-run syndication, alternative programming and non-fiction division of Sony Pictures Television overseeing daytime classics and new series representing thousands of hours of programming. 
“Melanie Chilek and Gerette Allegra have a strong track record of developing and producing successful franchise properties that resonate with audiences all over the world in virtually every genre of reality and alternative programming, and we are excited to reunite them as a team,” says Michael Hoff.  “Melanie’s uncanny instinct for strong, relatable storytelling and Gerette’s keen eye for identifying and developing talent make them the perfect combination for developing successful content for traditional media as well as multiplatform programming for our company.”

“Michael is giving us an opportunity to do what we both do best; to develop personalities and good stories into successful TV shows,” Allegra said.  “We are delighted to join Michael and his established team, and have the opportunity to take the company into new directions,” Chilek said. 

Most recently, Chilek was Senior Vice President, Development for Sony Pictures Television (SPT), and served as the senior creative executive for SPT’s extensive reality and alternative programming slate for syndication, cable and prime time television for 14 years.  During her tenure there, Chilek developed and oversaw numerous programs that became successful

franchise properties and profit centers for the studio both domestically and internationally.  She mined and re-developed several of Sony’s classic game show titles, including “$25,000 Pyramid,” “The Dating Game,” “The Newlywed Game,” “The Gong Show.”  Another franchise success, “Ripley’s Believe it or Not,” ran in cable and syndication as well as in multiple foreign territories and in many different foreign languages.  Also in Chilek’s purview of first-run series was “The Ricki Lake Show,” which had a successful 11-year run in domestic syndication as well as in English speaking foreign countries and changed the face of daytime and in particular, television geared towards young women.  She was also responsible for the talk show “Donny and Marie,” and the Emmy Award-winning series “Judge Hatchett,” plus numerous others series. Prior to Sony, Chilek developed original programming for Lifetime Television and served as a producer of non-fiction and informational television programming.

With over 20 years in television production and development, Gerette Allegra’s career has amassed a wide range of experience in network, cable and syndicated reality television programming.  Allegra just recently completed a project as executive producer for the television series, “Pregnant in Heels,” a show scheduled to broadcast early next year on Bravo that features mommy concierge/fashion designer Rosie Pope and targets sophisticated urban mothers. Prior to that Allegra served as Vice President of Programming for SPT, where she was responsible for all of Sony’s New-York based development and production for 11 years, including the staffing, creative direction, budgeting and production of all New York shows.  Allegra was directly responsible for supervising all of the production and creative episode content of “The Ricki Lake Show,” and also hand-picked each judge in SPT’s much heralded court show block and turned it into a successful and profitable franchise.  Prior to SPT, Allegra spent two years as Director of Development for New World Entertainment under the leadership of Brandon Tartikoff, and was part of the team which developed the highly successful entertainment news program,“Access Hollywood.” 

Chilek will be based in Los Angeles, and Allegra will be based in New York.