In my opinion, Comcast really needs to sit down and think about whether or not that's the right move for what would hopefully be a new NBCU under their command. Zucker, himself, is a fantastic success story, beating cancer at age 31 to become CEO of NBCU at age 42. However, there is no denying that NBC was faltered under his reign. Personally, I think his biggest mistake was hiring Ben Silverman to run NBC Entertainment. Silverman has become such a joke that CBS's Craig Ferguson actually made fun of him on his late night television show:
A few months ago Silverman and NBC parted ways, but that happy move still doesn't erase years of poor programming choices that has made NBC a joke in the television industry.
Over the past few years NBC itself has had very few successful shows and continues to produce less than stellar ratings and low quality writing. While it is important to acknowledge that one of Zucker's biggest successes has been NBCU's cable channels, those channels cannot continue to carry the broadcast network's failures. If Comcast does end up buying a majority share in NBCU maybe it's time to change things up and hope that NBC will no longer fall at the bottom of the television heap.
2 comments:
Wow, Zucker seems to have overcome a lot to lead NBC. Do you happen to know which bad decisions that Ben Silverman made that were detrimental to the NBC's success? By the way, the clip of Leno and Silverman is pretty funny!
Ben Silverman was originally hired because he was responsible for producing The Office and Ugly Betty, which are both obviously pretty big hits. While at NBC, Silverman was responsible for Kath & Kim, Knight Rider, Bionic Woman, Lipstick Jungle, My Own Worst Enemy, and a bunch of other shows that were pretty big failures for NBC. I would say that the only good shows that he was responsible for were Chuck and the Friday Night Lights deal between NBC and DirectTV. However, the problem with those shows is that they are critically-acclaimed but aren't really watched by a large number of people.
Post a Comment