Rick Kaplan

Executive Producer, CBS Evening News With Katie Couric

(CBS)  Rick Kaplan, a multiple award-winning news producer and executive whose career in broadcast journalism spans more than 35 years, is the executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

Most recently, Kaplan was president of MSNBC (2004-06), during which time the ratings for virtually every hour of the program day experienced double-digit growth. He developed new programs and worked to improve existing ones, including "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," which recorded its highest-ever ratings during that time. Kaplan also produced major news events, including Election Night 2004.

He was a senior vice president for ABC News (2003-04), responsible for the division’s hard news programs - including "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings," "Nightline" and "This Week," among others - as well as the division's political unit. Kaplan also oversaw the design and construction of ABC's new newsroom and primary studio. Before moving into that position, he coordinated ABC News' control room production and news coverage of the Iraq War.

For two years prior to that, Kaplan was a teaching fellow at the Shorenstein Center of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lectured there and at a number of prestigious universities across the country.

Kaplan was president of CNN-US (1997-2000), where he was responsible for all news and programming, including a highly rated series of instant news specials and increased live coverage and analysis of both breaking news and ongoing news events. He also revamped the network's programming schedule and increased the number of hours of hard news programming during the weekends. Kaplan produced all of CNN's primetime coverage of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 2000.

Before that, Kaplan held several high-level positions at ABC News during an 18-year career there. He was executive producer of "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings" (1994-96), during which time the broadcast was the most-watched evening news program in the country. Kaplan was the creator and executive producer of "Primetime Live" (1989-94). The news magazine became a top 10 program and distinguished itself with award-winning investigative journalism and on-the-scene live coverage of major breaking news events, including the Persian Gulf War, the opening of the Berlin Wall, the 1989 San Francisco earthquake and the Los Angeles riots. At the same time, he was one of the producers and coordinators of ABC News' coverage of the Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and was executive producer of the 1991 live special in which Soviet leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin appeared together from the Kremlin and took Americans' questions. Kaplan was the executive producer of ABC News "Nightline" (1985-89), where he produced historic week-long series originating from Johannesburg and a critically acclaimed examination of Arab-Israeli conflicts, as well as an unprecedented four-hour town meeting on AIDS. He also was executive producer of "World News This Morning" and "Good Morning America" news. He joined ABC News in 1979 as a senior producer of "World News Tonight" (1979-84).

Kaplan's broadcast journalism career began at CBS News, where he served as an associate producer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite (1974-79) and an associate producer of the CBS Morning News (1971-74). He was a writer, assignment desk editor and producer at WBBM-TV, the CBS-owned station in Chicago (1969-71).

Kaplan is the recipient of scores of major journalism awards, including 34 Emmy Awards, four Overseas Press Club Awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, four Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Awards and two Gold Batons, among many others. He is an adjunct fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University (since 2003), an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Illinois (since 1998) and continues to lecture regularly at major universities across the country.

Kaplan was born in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Illinois and received the institution's honorary Doctor of Letters in 1999.