CEO, The Opportunity Management Company; Second Vice Chair, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences; Board Member, Producers Guild of America (Los Angeles)

Brian Seth Hurst is CEO of The Opportunity Management Company, Inc., a strategic consultancy and cross media production company that is driving the next generation of entertainment. 

Referred to as “the father of cross platform”, Hurst coined the term in 1998 as MD of Convergent Media at Pittard Sullivan, where he launched TV Guide as the first ever cross platform brand.

In 2006, seeing the need for a solid production process for cross media programming, Hurst developed and launched the Rapid Cross Media Initiative to assist broadcast clients in extending their programming to audiences and communities on new platforms. The methodology established a clear workflow for the strategy, planning, budgeting and production of integrated story telling across platforms including broadband, interactive television, games, mobile, social networks and personalized media. It allows for the maximization of assets and the best in class technology vendors to “talk to each other” and be efficiently integrated into the production process. Hurst's credo, “go to where your audience lives” is transforming the relationship of audiences to programming. Clients have included: Showtime, Lifetime and AOL amongst others. Hurst was on the team that developed the original user experience for TiVo and currently sits on MobiTV’s advisory board.

Hurst was instrumental in the establishment of the Prime Time Emmy® for Interactive Television and spearheaded the initiative that extended Primetime Emmy® eligibility to original programming distributed via broadband.

Hurst served two terms as Chairman of the Producers Guild of America New Media Council (’03-’05) while simultaneously serving on the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors. Currently, he is Second Vice Chair of the Television Academy and sits on the National Board of the PGA. Recipient of a 2006 Interactive TV Today [itvt] Award for Leadership in Interactive Television, he was profiled in the April 2007 issue of Emmy® Magazine one of the 10 media executives in the business leading the industry’s digital drive, and in November of 2007 was named to the Hollywood Reporter’s PGA “Digital 50” for the second year in a row.