Somebody finally has the guts to say it fire Ben Silverman from NBC. Now!
That somebody is Jeff Bercovici, ace media blogger for Conde Nast Portfolio, whose blog posting appeared under the headline above.
Bervovici began by outlining some of the reasons why NBC's just-announced plan to move Jay Leno to 10 pm was unlikely to succeed. But even if it does work, Jeff continues, the Leno move still undercuts the rationale for keeping Silverman in charge of NBC "entertainment":
It's still a sign that the time has come to fire Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment.
Of Silverman, The Wall Street Journal's story on the Leno move says only that it could give him "a smaller canvas to work on, and could signal a diminished role for him at the network." The New York Times doesn't even mention Silverman in its story.
That's striking, but fitting. The Leno maneuver wasn't about creating new programming; it was about playing defense -- "safety first," as NBC Universal chairman Jeff Zucker said over and over at the UBS media conference yesterday. It's meant to accomplish two things: keeping Leno from jumping to a rival network and diminishing NBC's programming costs in primetime.
NBC didn't hire Silverman to play defense. It hired him because he was a hit-maker -- the mover behind the American versions of The Office, Ugly Betty and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? But a year and a half after his arrival, Silverman has failed utterly to produce any fresh triumphs for NBC -- failed so utterly that now the network can only see the downside of the time slot where mega-hits like ER and CSI are born.
At the UBS conference, Zucker was asked, as he has been in the past, if he's lost confidence in Silverman. Zucker said he hadn't, noting that NBC is far from the only network to show ratings declines this season. If performing only a little worse than its peer group is truly NBC Universal's new metric for success, that says a lot. But at a time when the conglomerate is laying off hundreds, even from its divisions that are thriving, there's no justification for keeping someone like Silverman -- an expensive reminder of the network's shriveled ambitions -- on the books.
And so a rendezvous with TV destiny is coming for the aforementioned Jeff Zucker. LA does not seem to be big enough for Zucker AND his unnaturally strong affection for Silverman to coexist. TCG readers will recall my post of October 28, in which I called attention to a quote from Richard Siklos' Fortune profile of Silverman, which included this telling quote from Zucker:
"He's young, single, wealthy, and beautiful. There are a lot of reasons to be jealous of Ben before you even put him in this job."
"Beautiful"? What's going on here? No wonder Silverman thought he had job insurance, despite calamitous ratings. But now that the wolves are circling NBC, and now that the Other Jeff, Jeff Immelt, is looking to make some changes to save his own hide at parent GE, The Cable Gamer is betting that Zucker will come to understand that his own career matters more to him than his infatuation with Benny Boy. In the media biz, love of self usually trumps all other loves.
And lest anyone think that I am suggesting that Zucker is gay in any way, let me refute that absurd allegation by pointing out that Zucker is married with children. I am sure that there is some other explanation for Zucker's loyalty to Silverman.
