David Corvo, considered the driving force behind Dateline, NBC’s top-rated and longest-running primetime series, is stepping down as Senior Executive Producer at the end of the year. He will remain with NBC News as an adviser on various projects, reporting to Rebecca Blumenstein, President of Editorial at NBC News.
Corvo will be passing the torch to Liz Cole, President of NBC News Studios and executive producer of Dateline. Corvo and Cole “have worked together to make Dateline the gold standard in true crime reporting, and successfully expanded it from the network to broadcast and cable syndication, to its streaming channel Dateline 24/7, and to audio where it consistently tops Apple’s podcast charts,” Blumenstein said in a note to NBC staffers announcing Corvo’s pending departure.
Cole began her career at NBC as a page, rising to Executive Producer of Dateline. Cole will remain President of NBC News Studios, which under her leadership has produced acclaimed documentaries and series such as The Disappearance of Shere Hite, Every Body and Leguizamo Does America, as well as the first NBC News scripted series, The Thing About Pam.
Corvo, credited with transforming Dateline from a top newsmagazine to a powerhouse in true-crime journalism, joined NBC News as VP in 1995. His management duties included executive oversight of primetime news programming at NBC and primetime program development for MSNBC and CNBC.
Before joining NBC, Corvo was VP Public Affairs Programming at CBS News, where he supervised the network’s primetime newsmagazine programs including 60 Minutes, 48 Hours and Street Stories. Additionally, he was executive in charge of numerous documentary specials, including Remember Pearl Harbor, The Year of the Generals and Watergate: The Secret Story, anchored by Mike Wallace.
Before that, he served as Vice President of Administration at CBS News. He was the creator of CBS This Morning and served as its executive producer from 1987-89. Prior to his stint at CBS News, he served as vice president and executive producer at Fox Television Network where he created and produced the newsmagazine Front Page and other programming. He began his broadcast journalism career in 1975 as a news writer and producer at KNXT (now KCBS) in Los Angeles. He later helped launch the station’s first investigative unit and was named head of the unit in 1979.
Dateline is the longest-running series in NBC primetime history and is currently in its 32nd season. The program is anchored by Lester Holt and features correspondents Andrea Canning, Josh Mankiewicz, Keith Morrison and Dennis Murphy. In Q3 2023, the series ranks as the No.1 most-watched newsmagazine and true-crime franchise across all of TV, with over 66 million total viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. Dateline NBC also continues to rank as the No. 1 True Crime podcast, according to Podtrac.