As President and General Manager of CBS Television Stations Digital Media Group, Jonathan Leess is responsible for CBS's 29 owned television stations' Internet, wireless, broadband and digital content distribution businesses. The group's initial focus is to transform each of CBS's traditional local broadcast television station's into 24/7, "always-on," local news, content and community portals across all available digital distribution 'fixed and mobile' platforms.Recognized as an early pioneer of convergent media programming, Leess created and managed ABC's Enhanced Television division at Disney/ABC as Senior Vice President and General Manager from 1999-2001. There he oversaw all business development, production, technology and integrated sales for the division, a joint initiative of The Walt Disney Internet Group and the ABC Television Network focused on the emerging interactive television business. Under his direction, the division created real-time, perfectly synchronized, interactive television programming products for the network including ABC's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire," The Super Bowl, The Academy Awards, Monday Night Football, College Football's BCS Championship, ABC News' Presidential Election coverage, "The View" and the Primetime Emmy Awards.
Prior to Disney's acquisition of ABC in 1996, Leess was Vice President of Multimedia & Interactive Programming for ABC Sports, spearheading the expansion of the Sports division into the new era of online and interactive programming and gaming. Some of Leess' projects included online sites for ABC's Monday Night Football, ABC's Wide World of Sports, NFL, NHL, NASCAR and ABC Sports programming on America Online.
Leess was recruited by GoldPocket Interactive a privately held company providing synchronized interactive TV content technologies in 2001. He served as Executive Vice President Programming & Production until 2003, and helped direct, design and build broadcast and cable network interactive programming products. While there, a few of Leess' projects included Comedy Central's "Win Ben Stein's Money," Game Show Network's "Greed," "Whammies," "Lingo," "WinTuition," "Friend or Foe," "Cram," "Match Game," "Russian Roulette," TBS's "Friends" and "Dinner & A Movie," The WB's "Pop Stars" and "Elimidate," TNN's "Star Trek," CNN's "CNN Presents," PBS's "The Endgame," A&E's "Biography," AMC's "MonsterFest Movie Week" and Direct TV's "NFL Sunday Ticket Interactive". GoldPocket was recently acquired by the Tandberg Television for $80 million.
As early as 1995, with already 17 years of television production experience behind him, Leess headed up the development of online and interactive convergent programming by pioneering programming concepts for the two-screen (television & Internet) multi-tasking platform, well before mass market broadband penetration. By introducing live, real-time, online data and content displays that were fed directly from ABC Sports' live remote telecasts to the Internet, he had ABC's television announcers encourage viewers to go online while they watched the live telecasts. Two of the early applications Leess created were the first-ever round by round viewer scoring during a live ABC Sports Boxing telecast, and real-time, online play-by-play stats
displayed during Monday Night Football telecasts, both leading the way toward future interactive television and online programming.
Leess also spearheaded the production, design and development of ABC Sports' interactive CD ROM games for Monday Night Football, Indy Car Racing and College Football.
Before his roles in interactive programming, Leess was Vice President of Production Planning, coordinating ABC Sports' worldwide television coverage and operations, including Winter & Summer Olympics, Monday Night Football, Wide World of Sports, World Cup Soccer, Super Bowls, Kentucky Derby and Indianapolis 500.
During his television production tenure of 17 years, Leess was recognized by his peers when he was awarded the 1991 Special Class: Individual Achievement Emmy Award for his outstanding efforts in the coordination and production of the Pan American Summer Games in Cuba.
Leess began his career as a television commercial producer for a New York based television production company after graduating from the Tisch School (formally the School of Film and Television) at New York University.
CBS Television Stations (http://www.cbslocal.com) is part of CBS Corporation, a mass media company with constituent parts that reach back to the beginnings of the broadcast industry, as well as newer businesses that operate on the leading edge of the media industry. The Company, through its many and varied operations, combines broad reach with well-positioned local businesses, all of which provide it with an extensive distribution network by which it serves audiences and advertisers in all 50 states and key international markets. It has operations in virtually every field of media and entertainment, including broadcast television (CBS and The CW - a joint venture between CBS Corporation and Warner Bros. Entertainment), cable television (Showtime and CSTV Networks), local television (CBS Television Stations), television production and syndication (CBS Paramount Network Television and CBS Television Distribution), radio (CBS Radio), advertising on out-of-home media (CBS Outdoor), publishing (Simon & Schuster), interactive media (CBS Interactive), music (CBS Records), licensing and merchandising (CBS Consumer Products), video/ DVD (CBS Home Entertainment) and motion pictures (CBS Feature Films). For more information, log on to http://www.cbscorporation.com).