Monday 23 March 2009

Hollywood Babble On & On #253: Giving Up Is Easy

BY
SPECIAL
GUEST

BLOGGER
JEFF ZUCKER

CEO OF
NBC-UNIVERSAL

Okay, this whole blogging thing seems easy enough... I'd like to thank Furious D for letting me post here. I tried to set up my own blog, but blogger want me to put in a name, and fill out some information for something called a "user profile," and that question at the bottom of the form about crows listening to radios just made my head hurt.

So I did what any good CEO would do, I pawned the responsibility onto someone else, namely Furious D who runs this blog.

Now some folks are jumping all over about recent comments I made about NBC never being #1 in prime-time programming again. I know that it's not good for the head of a major media company to suddenly surrender, and to admit that surrender in public would give folks good reason to compare my brain-power to a turnip or lima bean.

Well, you may call me stupid, but I like to think I'm stupid like a fox!

And not the Fox network, because they beat us in the ratings... hell even Univision beats us in the ratings, and they're in Esperanto or something like that.

Anyway, back to NBC. You see, this is all part of my brilliant plan. All the other networks are all clawing and hacking at each trying to be king of the hill, but I have a completely different plan.

It's called self-preservation.

I'll be blunt, I don't know what I'm doing.

Ooh, it felt good to get that out. I guess honesty really is the best policy. I might as well keep it coming.

My only skill is at getting promoted far beyond the range of my competence. Programming, development, hiring, firing, and all that management stuff is a mystery to me and I don't have a clue what to do. What I do have a clue for is to get a job, and then get promoted to a new job around 24 hours before everything associated with my old job turns into a big pile of corporate turds.

I've now gone as far as that scam can take me. I have nowhere to go but out, the catch is that I've developed a taste for being a media mogul. I like the fat salary, the bonuses, the limousines, and getting respect without having to earn it. So now I need a new strategy, and I think I've hit on the perfect one...

LOW EXPECTATIONS!

That's right. While every other media mogul fights like fiends to be #1 and get fired for failing, I can just coast along on doing nothing substantial, because no one expects anything substantial from me.

Sure, the network's falling apart, the only show we have worth watching is Life, and we're so bankrupt for ideas we're going to put Jay Leno on not only every weeknight, but reruns on the weekend, and he's going to host the
Today Show. But look at it from my perspective.

The guy running NBC is Ben Silverman, and you can bet your sweet bippy that there is no way in hell that he will ever replace me, and with him driving smart people out of the company, no one else will be in a position to replace me.

Plus, I've come to realize that striving for #1 requires a lot of hard work, and hard work is hard. I don't like that, I like to coast, so I won't be changing my strategy any time soon.

Wow, this blogging thing is easy, I might do this again.

-Jeff Zucker

2 comments:

  1. I would like your (either Furious or Jeff) opinion on an explanation of the Leno move I read back when it was first announced. NBC wants a show that people will watch live rather than DVR, or online, even if it means fewer people watch overall.
    This sounds like a prime example of self fulfilling idiocy to me.

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  2. My vision for NBC is a new form of synergy. We're going to think outside the box, and initiate a paradigm shift where we become the first network to have no viewers at all.

    Because getting viewers means keeping viewers, and that's too much work.

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