July 16, 2013—Veteran industry executive Jeffrey Schneider has been named to the newly created position of Executive Vice President, Business and Legal Affairs & General Counsel, Shine America, it was announced today by Rich Ross, CEO, Shine America, to whom he will report.

Schneider, who was formerly Executive Vice President, Business Affairs, Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media at NBCUniversal, will lead Shine America’s in-house business and legal affairs department and serve as the company’s general counsel. Schneider will work out of Shine America’s Los Angeles office.

“Jeff’s tremendous professional experience within our industry makes him the ideal executive to lead our business affairs team as we continue to aggressively expand our footprint in both scripted and unscripted television programming,” said Ross.

“I am very excited to be going to a company as entrepreneurial as Shine America,” said Schneider. “With so much change occurring across the television and digital landscapes, I had really been hoping to find a place where I could expand upon and go beyond my network and studio experience. This is the perfect time to be joining Rich and his team.”

Prior to joining Shine America, Schneider had served in his role as Executive Vice President, Business Affairs, Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media at NBCUniversal since July 2011, where he’d overseen all aspects of business affairs for the group’s Bravo, Oxygen, Style, Sprout, Telemundo, Fandango and Daily Candy assets. In February of 2013, he became part of NBCU’s newly expanded Cable Entertainment division.

From 2007 to 2011, Schneider served as the Senior Vice President of Business Affairs and Deputy General Counsel for Lifetime Television Networks, a wholly owned subsidiary of A&E Networks. There he oversaw all business affairs and entertainment-related legal policy for Lifetime’s programming, marketing initiatives and digital product. He also was responsible for all business affairs for AETN’s scripted programming across its network holdings including for Lifetime, A&E and The History Channel.

Prior to joining Lifetime, Schneider spent 15 years in executive and/or legal capacities at Fox Television Studios (a division of 20th Century Fox Television), MTV Networks (a division of Viacom), Paramount Pictures Corp. (a subsidiary of Viacom) and was an associate at the entertainment law firms Katz, Golden & Sullivan and Slaff, Mosk & Rudman, where he represented talent, producers, writers, directors and production companies in all manner of televisions and film transactions.

Schneider is currently an adjunct law professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, Pepperdine Law School and the Carnegie-Mellon University Heinz School of Management.

Schneider holds a J.D. from the University of Southern California (1991, with honors, Law Review), as well as a B.A. in Communication Studies from UCLA (1987, cum laude). He began his legal career in 1991 as a Law Clerk to the Chief U. S. District Court Judge for the District of Nevada, the Hon. Edward C. Reed, Jr. He resides in Southern California with his wife and three children.