Daniel Nicholas Cohen (born 15 January 1974) is a British television executive. He serves as President of Access Entertainment. He was previously the Director of BBC Television from 2013 to 2015. Before that, he was the of BBC One for three years.
Cohen was born in Westminster, London. He attended Rosh Pinah, a Modern Orthodox Jewish primary school in Edgware, north London, followed by the City of London School. Cohen read English literature at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where he took a "double first".
Between 2000 and 2007, Cohen worked at Channel 4 and its youth channel E4, including as Head of Documentaries for Channel 4 and Head of E4. Cohen's commissions included Skins, The Inbetweeners, Fonejacker, Supernanny and the documentary strand Cutting Edge.
Between May 2007 and October 2010, Cohen was the Controller of BBC Three. During his tenure, the channel increased its share of its target 16âÂÂ34-year-old viewers by 58% and won Digital Channel of the Year at the Edinburgh International TV Festival in 2008 and 2010. His commissions included Our War, the BAFTA-nominated Blood, Sweat and T-shirts, Britain's Missing Top Model, Stacey Dooley Investigates, and Being Human. He also acquired Summer Heights High from Australia, built a strong following for US animation Family Guy and revamped the hourly news bulletin 60 Seconds, adding a world news update.
As Controller of BBC One between 2010 and 2013, Cohen's commissions included Call The Midwife, Happy Valley, Peter Kay's Car Share, Poldark, The Casual Vacancy, The Voice, Last Tango in Halifax, Eat Well For Less, and The Missing. He led the channel's coverage of the 2012 London Olympics.
In May 2013, Cohen became Director of BBC Television, overseeing the BBC's television channels, BBC Productions, BBC Films and BBC iPlayer. BBC One's Q1 2015 prime-time audience share of 25.2% was its highest first quarter for a decade. In October 2015, Cohen announced that he was leaving the BBC.
In May 2016, Cohen launched Access Entertainment with the businessman Len Blavatnik. The company, a division of Blavatnik's Access Industries, invests in content for theatre, film, television, gaming, the creator economy and the visual arts. It invested in the production company A24 and, alongside Blavatnik, Cohen has been executive producer on several of its films, including Beau is Afraid, The Iron Claw and the Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest. The company has also invested in creator economy firm Spotter, the mobile game developer Tripledot Studios, and the arts centre, Lightroom.
Since the October 7 attacks, Cohen has been a regular contributor to The Telegraph. In particular, he has accused the BBC's coverage of the ensuing Gaza war of anti-Israel bias. Cohen was one of 45 signatories on a letter demanding that the BBC take down its ' documentary due to its narrator being the child of a prominent Hamas member, the deputy Agriculture Minister. In June 2025, he wrote in a column for The Daily Telegraph, "I declare proudly I'm a Zionist."
Cohen married economist and author Noreena Hertz in 2012 at the Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London, officiated by Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi. The couple live in Primrose Hill, London.