vailsymposium

Don Roy King is director of “Saturday Night Live,” one of the most iconic and influential programs in the history of American television; he took on the role in 2006. With a résumé that includes productions for 9 networks and ranges from documentaries to musicals, he is one of the most versatile and accomplished directors in the industry. He has directed more hours of live television than anyone in the history of the medium and his assignments have taken him to 20 countries and 38 states.

Awards and Accolades:

Recipient of 9 Emmy awards and 17 nominations
Nominated for five Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Individual Direction For A Variety Show. He won an Emmy in 1977 for The Mike Douglas Show.
In 1991, he won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Graphic Design for his work on CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.
Has been nominated for eleven DGA (Director’s Guild of America) awards: He won in 2014, 2016 and 2017.
Other directing work includes Survivor (including the live Survivor finales on CBS), The Early Show and The Mike Douglas Show. He has directed morning shows at CBS and ABC.
Other recognition includes two Ohio State Awards, an American Bar Association Award, a San Francisco State Award, a New York Public Relations Award and three Golden Quills.

As a producer, director, writer and composer, Mr. King has developed a variety of series, specials, documentaries and musicals. Mr. King is also the creative director of Broadway Worldwide which brings theatrical events to theaters. The company has produced Smokey Joe’s Café; Putting It Together with Carol Burnett; Jekyll & Hyde and Memphis, all directed by Mr. King. He also directed a big screen taping of Broadway’s Romeo and Juliet with Orlando Bloom in 2013.

In 2001, he ended a fourteen-year run as the creative director of CBS News and director/senior producer for The Early Show and CBS This Morning. Other CBS credits include the live finale shows of the first four Survivor series, Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, Bob Simon: Back to Baghdad, The Smithsonian Anniversary Specials, Camera Three and daytime Winter Olympics coverage in France, Norway and Japan.

After leaving CBS, he directed the network pool coverage of the first September 11 Memorial Service at Ground Zero in Manhattan. In addition, he directed numerous talk show pilots including, The Robin Quivers Show, Fergie, and Day to Day with Rachael Ray. He periodically sits in as the director of The View on ABC.

For more than six years, Mr. King directed Good Morning America for ABC. He also directed numerous Barbara Walters Specials and two seasons of the variety series, Kids Are People Too. Other network credits include: Judgment Night: DNA for Fox; America Alive, a daytime series for NBC; and A War Called Peace for PBS.

Mr. King has won three other Emmys for his work – one for directing The Mike Douglas Show; another for producing and directing Toys on the Town, a musical special with Shields and Yarnell; and the third for heading the design team that revamped the graphic look of CBS News.

Mr. King also has a broad theatrical background; and his television credits include the original cast versions of the Broadway musicals, Tintypes and The Me Nobody Knows. Other theatrical productions for television include Monteith and Rand on Broadway, The Passion of Dracula, and Richiardi’s Chamber of Horrors, a magic special. He played Daybreak director Merv in the Harrison Ford big-screen comedy, Morning Glory. He also served as the 2nd unit director and television consultant on that movie.

His other credits range from telethons to sports: concerts for MTV, including its first two New Year’s Eve parties; The Easter Seal Telethon; two seasons of the syndicated series, Comedy Tonight; The Charles Perez Show, the pilot for Paramount’s Entertainment Tonight; The David Susskind Show; An All-Star Tribute to Jazz with George Benson, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Kenton; WFL Football and Pittsburgh Pirate Baseball.