White Cherry Entertainment Renewed as Tony Awards Production Team Through 2016

Tony AwaRD Productions, a joint venture of The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, announced today that White Cherry Entertainment will serve as the production team for the annual theater awards for three more years. White Cherry Entertainment's founders Glenn Weiss (Executive Producer/Director) and Ricky Kirshner (Executive Producer) have served as the Tony Awards' production team since 2003.

"We are thrilled to renew Tony Awards Productions' contract with White Cherry Entertainment. They have been an essential member of the Tony Awards team for more than a decade, and we look forward to continuing collaboration on making the Tony Awards bigger and better each year," said Heather Hitchens, Executive Director of the American Theater Wing and Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director of The Broadway League.

"We are excited to be given the opportunity to continue to work with the some of the most talented people on the planet, and to continue to be able to create a wonderful showcase for Broadway that we can share with the world!" said Weiss and Kirshner.

During White Cherry's tenure, the Tony Awards have been recognized with an unprecedented 27 Emmy nominations and 17 Emmy wins, including the best show in its class for the last 4 consecutive years, and 7 of the last 8 outings. That recognition is far more than any time in Tony Awards history, and unparalleled by any other awards show today.

Most recently, Glenn Weiss and the directing team of the 67th Annual Tony Awards were nominated for a Directors Guild Award in the category of Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Variety/Talk/News/Sports - Specials. This is Weiss' 10th DGA Award nomination. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Musical Variety in 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012 for the 61st, 64th, 65th and 66th-Annual Tony Awards. He was previously nominated in this category in 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2008, all for the 55th, 56th, 59th, 60th, 62nd-Annual Tony Awards.

In addition to the 7 Emmy Awards they have won together, Kirshner and Weiss have also received an additional 3 Emmy Awards individually, 4 Directors Guild Awards, 1 Peabody Award, a cable ACE award and more than 25 Emmy nominations between them.

The Tony Awards most recently won four Primetime Emmy Awards at the 65th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards for the June 2012 broadcast of the 66th Annual Tony Awards. The four awards were: Outstanding Special Class Programs; Outstanding Music Direction; Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics; and Outstanding Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video Control for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special. To date, the Tony Awards has received 27 Primetime Emmy Awards and 70 nominations.

The 68th-Annual Tony Awards, presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, will air live on CBS on Sunday, June 8, 2014. For more information on the Tony Awards, visit TonyAwards.com and Facebook.com/TheTonyAwards and follow @TheTonyAwards on Twitter.