Right about now, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts is likely in his office curled up in the fetal position wondering if Jeff Zucker is going to destroy his $20 billion investment in NBC Universal before the deal even closes.
The very private Roberts is no doubt cringing as he watches the late-night fiasco Zucker personally orchestrated play out like a corporate version of “The Biggest Loser” without the weight loss.
The media glare generated by Zucker’s Machiavellian treatment of Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, two of NBC’s biggest stars, goes against everything that Comcast, a family-run company that rarely lets internal battles spill into public view, represents.
Roberts, for instance, brought his 89-year-old father and company patriarch, Ralph, onstage during a town-hall meeting with NBC Universal staffers after the Comcast deal was announced.
What’s worse is that Roberts can’t do anything about the situation. Comcast’s deal to acquire 51 percent of NBC Universal — just announced in December — won’t be approved until September at the earliest, if it is approved at all. Until then, all Roberts can do is watch from the sidelines.
But make no mistake about it, Roberts is watching — intently. The buttoned-down, bottom-line-oriented executive, who rides the Acela train from Philadelphia to New York, peppered Zucker with questions about his decision to move Leno into prime time and hand O’Brien the keys to “The Tonight Show” during acquisition talks.
There had better be good reason to displace the No. 1 host in late night and tinker with a franchise that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, Roberts felt.
The reasons Zucker touted for the move — keeping O’Brien from defecting to a rival network and saving money on programming costs — no longer appear valid.
O’Brien, who went from Zucker’s golden boy to literally red-headed stepchild over a few measly ratings points, will likely be taking his considerable talent to another network to compete with Leno.
And NBC will now have to spend tens of millions of dollars to fill five hours of prime-time programming per week, not to mention the other holes in its schedule created by the slipshod development slate of another failed Zucker experiment: the hiring of Ben Silverman as programming head.
Historically, Zucker has managed to not only survive screw-ups such as this one, but also get promoted in spite of them. Indeed, industry observers were shocked that he remained in charge of NBC Universal after the Comcast deal. They were downright appalled when he got a contract extension to 2013.
That contract, however, appears to be window dressing. Conventional wisdom is that Comcast will buy out Zucker’s contract and cut him loose within a few months of the deal’s closing.
After all, Zucker isn’t exactly making a great first impression on his new bosses. But he is leaving a lasting one — that of a doofus who has managed to turn a storied broadcast network into a programming junkyard of last resort.