“It’s like Jeff Zucker was going out and marrying all these other people and Jeff Gaspin was just waiting,” a former network executive says. “And finally, when things could not be worse—he gets the job.”
“Shocking news!” a former high-level NBC Universal insider told me when I called yesterday afternoon. “Who saw this coming?”
He was referring to the departure of Ben Silverman as co-chairman of NBC Entertainment. And yes, he was kidding. Silverman’s penchant for partying provided plenty of fodder for the press, but his short tenure at NBC was noted for a string of expensive failures ( My Own Worst Enemy, Kath & Kim, and more). For some time now, he has been perceived as a short-timer.
“It’s like Jeff Zucker was going out and marrying all these other people and Jeff Gaspin was just waiting,” a former network executive says. “And finally, when things could not be worse—he gets the job.”
So now Silverman is out the door and starting a new company with financing from Barry Diller. He was a backer of Silverman’s production company, Reveille, which did very nicely creating shows such as The Office and Ugly Betty. (And it did even better after Silverman got the job at NBC but was still permitted to keep a stake in his company and, for a time, to put his own programs on NBC’s air.)
Silverman’s new company will “capitalize on the ever-evolving world of multimedia production and distribution,” according to a press release from Diller’s IAC (which owns The Daily Beast.) It’s not clear exactly what Silverman’s new company will do, but it is supposed to bridge “the gap between traditional television and the Internet.”
Even those who were Silverman’s natural enemies at NBC believe that starting up a new company could work far better for him than trying to make things work in the highly structured corporate world of GE-owned NBC.
Far more at home in that world is Jeff Gaspin, who has just been promoted to chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment. Gaspin previously oversaw NBC Universal’s cable networks, which are by far the brightest spot in the NBC Universal portfolio at this point. They include the USA Network and Bravo.
Former colleagues describe Gaspin as a pleasant, buttoned-down executive who has been campaigning for a promotion like this for the better part of 10 years. “Now he’s got the job he’s always wanted,” says one. “It’ll be interesting to see if he digs in. He’s always stayed far above the fray to never get tinged with anything.”
Gaspin has some big successes on his résumé: He oversaw Bravo at a time when the cable channel dramatically increased its subscriber base. (The channel’s hits included Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Project Runway.) And apparently he continues to command great loyalty from Lauren Zalaznick, who runs Bravo and Oxygen (and who a few months ago was described as a “queen of cable” in a lengthy New York Times magazine story). With Zalaznick in her job and Bonnie Hammer running the USA Network and SciFi, it’s clear that Gaspin has allowed two powerful women to run their domains and succeed.
When Jeff Zucker was promoted to chief executive of NBC Universal in 2005, Kevin Reilly—then president of the network—moved in to his old office. Gaspin moved into an office alongside Reilly’s and had his space extensively redone; a former insider even claims that he even had the ceiling raised to match the height of Reilly’s. “That stuff’s really important to him,” this person says. Another says it was odd for Gaspin to use an office in that building because none of the cable personnel were located there. “It spoke to this presence that he felt a need to have,” he says. An NBC source close to Gaspin says the office underwent a "normal" redesign and the ceiling was not altered.
Gaspin’s promotion has not distracted network watchers from their focus on the performance of Jay Leno’s prime-time show in September. “The Leno thing is where the buck has to stop with Zucker,” says a former executive at the network. “I refuse to believe that if the Leno thing fails, anyone else is going to be brought to account for it.”
That makes it a tricky time to be in Gaspin’s new position. “It’s like Jeff Zucker was going out and marrying all these other people and Jeff Gaspin was just waiting,” this executive continues. “And finally, when things could not be worse—he gets the job.”
As for Silverman, naturally many will be watching to see how he fares in his new company. Even those who think he should have left NBC months ago admit that they’ll miss the Silverman soap opera. As one network veteran said with a sigh, “It’s going to be a lot less entertaining without Ben.”
Kim Masters covers the entertainment business for The Daily Beast. She is also the host of The Business, public radio's weekly program about the business of show business. She is also the author of The Keys to the Kingdom: The Rise of Michael Eisner and the Fall of Everybody Else.