In the orange glow of post-World War Conan fallout, no figure looms larger or more menacing than Jeff Zucker, the man whose finger initiated the launch sequence that would turn the late-night landscape into a wintry, chin-joke-strewn wasteland. The "Dick Cheney of television," as he was dubbed by Jon Stewart, can now proudly boast the title of Most Loathed Front-Office Entertainment Figure Since Michael Ovitz. Why the animosity? Why the persistent cries of upward-failing, or that he'd climbed up the NBC Universal ranks in a custom-fitted, solid-gold jetpack? It's the f*ck-ups, stupid. We examine now the highs and lows of Zucker's three-decade career at NBC, a legacy littered in dubious achievements.
The Golden Years
A failure to get into Harvard Law School in 1986 redirected Zucker to a job as an NBC Olympics researcher, leading to a field producer job at The Today Show. It's not clear what happened in those three years that led to his ascension to E.P of that show at age 27. But the golden touch was there. (Rock concerts in the plaza? His idea.) Today shot to number one, and the '90s belonged to Jeff. Even the early part of the 2000s looked swell, as he succeeded in luring Friends back for a tenth season (at astronomical -- but profitable -- costs). He also bet on the appeal of a combforwarded real estate magnate, and turned goat-testicle-eating into fun and prizes on Fear Factor. That last show offered the first indications that Zucker didn't care what he put on NBC, so long as it got ratings.
In 2003, Zucker was named president of NBC's Entertainment, News & Cable Group. The merger with Vivendi Universal the following year upped his title and responsibilities more. He was now in charge of NBC, its cable properties, and Universal's cable networks as well -- USA Network, Sci-Fi, and Trio. The Friends finale aired in May of that year, and that's when things started to go south.
The Terrible Sitcoms and Upwards Failing
The fruitless search for a Friends replacement produced some classic TV flops -- from the all-CGI Siegfried & Roy sitcom Father of the Pride to Joey, aka Friends: Just the Retarded Characters, to Good Morning, Miami, a biographical sitcom about a young wunderkind brought in to save an ailing morning show. No one cared. Longtime first-place NBC fell to last, where it's stayed since.
NBC Universal's board responded by doing the only logical thing: promoting him again, in 2005, to Chief Executive Officer of NBC Universal Television Group. He was now responsible for all programming across all of the company's TV properties -- network, news, cable, and Sports and Olympics. Meanwhile, over at Fox, a show known as American Idol was drastically changing the primetime landscape. ABC had successfully introduced a series of blockbuster scripted hits, like Lost, Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives, while CBS and its procedural franchises were performing as strong as ever. NBC, thought, was still dead last, despite finding some success in a new Thursday night comedy lineup, and with Deal or No Deal, a game show in which contestants required no skills or knowledge other than the ability to yell at briefcases. The show began appearing several times a week. It was awful.
Hiring Ben Silverman
Desperate for something, anything, to turn around the network's misfortune, Zucker began taking higher-profile risks, and none was riskier than the hiring of Ben Silverman. A young, overconfident turk from the studio side, Silverman had originally been dispatched to WMA's London outpost, where he secured the rights to several successful UK franchises for U.S. TV, including Coupling (which Zucker remade, with disastrous results), The Office and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The Office's U.S. version, produced through Silverman's Reveille, was a rare light on the NBC schedule -- though it took a little while to find its legs, just like many hit NBC shows had in the past.
Zucker squeezed Kevin Reilly out of his position as President of NBC Entertainment to give Silverman the title of co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios. The self-described "rock star" produced zero hits for the network during his tenure, focusing mostly on rebooting campy '80s properties like American Gladiators and Knight Rider. Stories of drug use, hangovers, ski trips while NBC was laying off hundreds dogged him, and despite Zucker saying "Ben is here to stay for the forseeable future," Silverman left quietly in July of 2009, to work on a new internet company with Barry Diller. He had been Zucker's biggest and most embarrassing gaffe to date.
Writer's Strike
The long, acrimonious writers' strike of 2008 offered Zucker -- and, it turned out, Jay Leno -- plenty of opportunities to flaunt their true colors. Leno famously crossed picket lines, and violated Writers Guild law, by penning his own monologues. Zucker, meanwhile, was among those on the studio side rumored to be least sympathetic to the writers' demands. After a group of SNL writers were schedules to appear on Late Show with David Letterman to deliver a Top Ten list ("Top Ten Demands of the Striking Writers"), an irate Zucker purportedly threatened their jobs, causing them to pull out at the last minute. Interestingly enough, the one writer not to cave was Chris Albers, a Conan O'Brien writer who delivered the bit as written on air.
Another classic bit of Zuckerana came with a filmed video starring him, scheduled to air before My Name is Earl's return after its strike hiatus. Betraying what could only be a secret ambition to perform (Reilly had put in an enjoyable Office cameo, and Zucker probably figured he was at least as funny as the well-liked exec he had recently sent packing), Zucker's performance -- Borat impressions and all -- can only be described as a trainwreck. A snide trainwreck, it so happens, as in it he describes NBC.com as the place "where you can watch all of your favorite shows, preferably within the first 17 days." Why 17 days? That was what producers had negotiated as the window before writers were paid for material streamed online. Classy. If it wasn't official yet, now it was: every writer in Hollywood hated, and still hates, Jeff Zucker. (The video has since gone missing from NBC.com, but you can watch it here.)
Late Night Fiasco
None of these individual blots would quite compare to the PR nightmare in which Zucker currently finds himself embroiled -- an instance of mismanagement so forehead-smackingly incompetent, it has broken free from the realm of studio-lot scuttlebutt and escalated into a national, even international, firestorm. Hundreds of thousands of Conan fans, outraged over NBC's treatment of their amiable home-grown star, are on the warpath, and it's Zucker's name they are shouting. The brand is irreversibly damaged, and, like any nation steered by a greedy and corrupt government, any redemption will have to come with a fresh regime. Zucker -- pictured below, surveying the damage after the devastating Universal lot fire -- has his work cut out for him.