Nellie Andreeva

Bill Lawrence’s Doozer production banner is taking a step towards becoming a major comedy pod with the hire of Jeff Ingold as president, the first time the company has had a dedicated development executive. The deal with former NBC head of comedy Ingold comes just as Lawrence is starting his long-term, eight-figure deal with Warner Bros. TV, which has allowed him to staff up and grow his company. Ingold had been rumored to possibly join Lawrence as the two have a great relationship going back to the days when Ingold served as the executive on Lawrence’s NBC comedy Scrubs from the the medical comedy series’ very beginning. With Ingold on board, Doozer can jump into development right away as he will be able to oversee new projects, while Lawrence works on Cougar Town. Under Lawrence’s agreement with WBTV, he will continue as showrunner on his ABC/ABC Studios series for one more season before focusing on development for WBTV one hundred percent. Ingold, who exited NBC at the end of May, served as EVP comedy at the network since 2008. In his final development season, he shepherded six comedy projects to series orders, the most for any broadcast network in years. In all, Ingold spent more than a decade at NBC and served as a comedy executive at both the network and UMS.

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