Dan Pasternack
Adjunct Professor
For more than twenty-five years, Dan Pasternack has been in the business of making television and digital entertainment in various roles including producer, programmer, studio/production company executive and writer. Via his newly formed Little Bear Bear Productions, he has produced programming for Adult Swim, audio documentaries for SiriusXM (which he also writes and hosts) and is currently in pre-production and production on numerous projects including a feature-length documentary.
Pasternack was the founding head of Big Beach TV where he developed and produced television and digital projects for Comedy Central, ABC, Starz, AMC, Seeso and Fusion. Prior to BBTV, Pasternack was VP of development and production for the IFC cable network where he oversaw the development of Portlandia, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Whisker Wars, Out There and The Spoils of Babylon, among other series. He previously held positions at Carsey-Werner, Studios USA (now NBC/Universal), Granada Entertainment USA and the Fred Silverman Company. Pasternack was also the VP of content for the launch of Turner Broadcasting’s digital comedy platform Super Deluxe, working with established and emerging talent alike including Bob Odenkirk, Brad Neely, Maria Bamford, Tim and Eric, Aaron McGruder, Nick Kroll and Norm Macdonald. In addition, Pasternack served as co-producer on the Showtime series Beggars and Choosers, executive producer on the FX series Starved and as a writer and executive producer on the Starz series Gravity.
Since 1996, Pasternack has donated his time to the TV Academy for The Interviews, a massively ambitious archival project, which he helped to initiate and for which he has conducted on-camera interviews with numerous legends including: Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart, Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal. He has written articles and essays for Vulture, Emmy Magazine, Paste, Splitsider and The Huffington Post and McSweeney’s. Pasternack joined the faculty of NYU in 2016 as an adjunct professor, teaching courses in television and digital development to third year graduate students at the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts.