Brian Balthazar

Brian Balthazar is a TV personality and the executive producer and developer of several programs on broadcast and cable television. He has frequently appeared on television as the editor of the website POPgoesTheWeek.com on The Wendy Williams Show, The Today Show on NBC, VH1, CNN, TV Guide Network and Showbiz Tonight on HLN. He has also hosted specials for HGTV. In summer of 2014 he became co-executive producer of ABC's The View. As a television executive and producer, he was HGTV's network executive overseeing the popular series House Hunters and launched the fourth hour of the TODAY Show on NBC with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb

Balthazar was born Brian Balthaser in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, the son of Theresa (née Dean) and Harrison F. Balthaser, a state trooper. At age eleven, he became interested in theater after being cast in the title role of Oliver in a regional production of the show.

Balthazar graduated from Honesdale High School and went on to attend Syracuse University where he studied Speech Communication (now referred to by the College as Communication & Rhetorical Studies.) During part of his college career, he was one of the students who masqueraded as the school's mascot, Otto The Orange.

Balthazar struggled with his career path in the early 1990s, taking several short lived jobs, which included that of a publicity assistant for a trance medium, a toll-free customer service agent, and singing and dancing waiter.

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