EXCLUSIVE: Jeff Gaspin, who oversees unscripted programming at Netflix, is exiting the streamer, two years after he made the surprising move.

Deadline understands Gaspin, who is VP, Unscripted Series, just told colleagues of his move moments ago.

It is major news in the unscripted business given the size and scale of Netflix’s unscripted operation and the fact that it has become one of the key buyers of programming across many major genres including competition series, dating formats and reality shows.

The hiring of Gaspin in February 2024 surprised many given that he was previously Chairman  of NBCUniversal Television Entertainment before running his own shop, but Gaspin was heavily in business with the streamer on some of its biggest unscripted shows including The Tinder Swindler and Rhythm + Flow.

Sources told Deadline that it was a joint decision between Gaspin and his boss Brandon Reigg, who is VP, Nonfiction Series and Sports. It’s believed the pair decided it was the right time for him to move from his executive role into working with the team in a producer capacity.

There have been rumors of Gaspin’s exit over the last few weeks but the timing is somewhat surprising given that a number of his bigger bets including The Golden Ticket, the Willy Wonka-themed reality series, are not set to premiere until later this year, and other major buys including Monopoly and Clue have not even started production.

We hear that he will produce some of these titles including Monopoly and Physical 100: USA, the competition series based on the Korean hit, as well as shepherd series such as Age of Attraction and The Actor Awards.

Deadline understands that he won’t be directly replaced and he will officially wrap his exec role on July 1.

Gaspin has been behind a number of unscripted hits for Netflix including Age of Attraction, the dating series from Velvet Hammer Media that was quickly renewed for a second season, Skyscraper Live, which saw Alex Honnold climb one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers in Taipei, Taiwan, and BTS: The Comeback Live, featuring the hugely successful Kpop band.

He has also had a few poor performers including the reboot of Star Search, which failed to break through.

Gaspin has overseen a big push for Netflix in terms of competition series and big IP titles such as the aforementioned The Golden Ticket, Monopoly and Clue. A few months after taking the job, Gaspin, who developed series such as The Apprentice, The Biggest Loser and Deal or No Deal during his time as NBC’s head of alternative entertainment, told Deadline that it wanted to rival the broadcast networks with unscripted formats.

“The difference from the past is we want to focus on bigger formats, more of what you would call broadcast-style shows versus the cable style shows. I’ve done both in my career from running NBC to running Bravo, so I’m familiar with both and I really do understand the difference,” he said in May 2024.

In May, Gaspin told the Deadline Reality TV Summit that the unscripted business at Netflix was “still very healthy”. “It really hasn’t changed much for us. We started about ten years ago, and we really haven’t stopped. Understanding what’s gone on in the marketplace, really, that that cable buying spree has really slowed down and Bravo is one of the few channels that has really kept a robust marketplace but in terms of Netflix, we’re certainly buying and as healthy as we’ve ever been,” he said.

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