About
Dave Nuckolls has been putting live shows on air for more than 35 years.
Live show production executive, television producer and broadcast director. Twelve years at Disney, thirteen at CNN, five Olympic projects, and now DNP.
He spent 12 years at Disney producing live entertainment and special events, including the opening of Disney's Animal Kingdom. After Disney bought ABC, he video-directed more than 150 broadcast and non-broadcast productions, among them the most-watched ABC primetime special. He also produced a Good Morning America that beat The Today Show for the first time in five years.
He joined CNN for 13 years as Senior Executive Producer and Creative Director, responsible for all special programming, on teams that won Emmy, DuPont-Columbia and Peabody Awards. He created the CNN Heroes award show, which has since been showered with Emmys.
He then partnered with a creative storytelling production firm on five Olympic projects. In Sochi he served as Head of Production and Head of Broadcasting — work seen by close to four billion people, which won a Telly and drew four Emmy nominations and a win. He lived in Moscow and Sochi for the better part of two years.
In more than 35 years of managing multi-million dollar budgets, he has never gone over budget and never missed a deadline.
Timeline
Thirty-five years, four rooms.
Disney
Live entertainment and special events, including the opening of Animal Kingdom. More than 150 productions video-directed after the ABC acquisition, including the most-watched ABC primetime special.
CNN
Senior Executive Producer and Creative Director over all special programming. Created CNN Heroes. Part of teams awarded Emmy, DuPont-Columbia and Peabody honors. Election nights, anniversary specials, and the Time Warner shows.
FiveCurrents
Head of Production and Head of Broadcasting for the Sochi Olympic Winter Games ceremonies. Head of Broadcasting for the first European Games in Baku. Executive Producer and Head of Broadcasting for the Pan American Games in Toronto. Video Director for Olympic medal ceremonies in Salt Lake City, Toronto and Pyeongchang.
DNP
Executive Producer of the 2018 Warrior Games and consultant on the 2023 Warrior Games at Walt Disney World. Video Director for the live three-hour TikTok Oscars red carpet in 2024, also carried on Disney, ABC and Academy sites. Producer of the Patriots' Super Bowl banner unveiling live on NBC. Head of Broadcasting and Video Director for the 150th anniversary of Cinco de Mayo in Puebla — 19 cameras, a television audience over 300 million.
And the hybrid conference work: Tableau, Salesforce, Slack, Databricks, Figma, ServiceNow.
Marks shown belong to their respective owners.
Off the clock
Away from the truck.
Dave is a general aviation pilot, a two-time El Camino hiker, an avid pickleball player, a Nebraska Cornhusker and a level 70 Pokémon trainer. He and his wife Leslie live in South Carolina. Their son DJ works in marketing in Atlanta and is an extreme triple-crown hiker; their daughter Natalie is a dentist and a decorated officer in the Navy at Walter Reed in Bethesda.
Listen: Dave was a guest on the podcast The Elements of an Amazing Video Direction for Live Events. Listen here (36:16).