ANIMAL PLANET PROMOTES ANDY WEISSBERG AND ERIN WANNER

-- Weissberg Elevated to Senior Vice President of Programming; Wanner Upped to Vice President of Production --

(Silver Spring, Md.) - Animal Planet announces the promotions of Andy Weissberg to Senior Vice President, Programming, and Erin Wanner to Vice President, Production. Both have played crucial roles in establishing Animal Planet as a top-20 ad-supported network for men and the entertainment destination for viewers seeking a deeper connection to the wild world. Weissberg and Wanner continue to report to Rick Holzman, General Manager and Executive Vice President of Animal Planet.

In his expanded role, Weissberg leads Animal Planet's programming group, overseeing the network's long-range program planning and the daily content schedule while collaborating across multiple departments to maximize Animal Planet's impact on multiple distribution platforms. Weissberg joined the network in 2009 as Vice President, Programming and Scheduling. His creative and operational strategy helped make the past three years the most-watched ever for Animal Planet in both prime and total day across several key demos.

Wanner now heads Animal Planet's production team in New York and Silver Spring. As Vice President, Production, Wanner works with internal partners and external production companies to ensure the excellence of Animal Planet's storytelling and execute the content vision for the network. In addition to overseeing the department, Wanner continues to serve as a key creative voice and executive producer for the network. Wanner joined Animal Planet in February 2007 and has served as senior director of production since 2009, assisting with the management of network production staff while also executive producing more than 400 episodes of programming. Among her impressive roster of series and specials, Wanner produced hits including FATAL ATTRACTIONS, MONSTERS INSIDE ME, I SHOULDN'T BE ALIVE, and the Emmy(R)-nominated SAVING AFRICA'S GIANTS WITH YAO MING.

"Animal Planet is hugely fortunate to have two of the industry's brightest creative and strategic talents leading its programming and production departments, and I couldn't be more pleased to have them on my senior management team," says Holzman. "Andy and Erin are great partners and have been essential to our network's huge leap forward throughout the past few years. In these expanded leadership roles, they continue to help chart the course for Animal Planet and ensure our reputation as innovators as the brand continues its evolution."

ABOUT ANIMAL PLANET

Animal Planet, a multi-media business unit of Discovery Communications, is the world's only entertainment brand that immerses viewers in the full range of life in the animal kingdom with rich, deep content via multiple platforms and offers animal lovers and pet owners access to a centralized online, television and mobile community for immersive, engaging, high-quality entertainment, information and enrichment. Animal Planet consists of the Animal Planet television network, available in more than 94 million homes in the US; online assets www.animalplanet.com, the ultimate online destination for all things animal; Animal Planet L!VE, the go-to digital destination for round-the-clock, unfiltered access to the animal kingdom; and other media platforms including a robust Video-on-Demand (VOD) service, and merchandising extensions.