It was 'now or never' for Silverman at NBC

By Gary Levin, USA TODAY

NBC completed a major executive shake-up Tuesday that will see its programming chief exit after three years. The network and its studio arm will now be run by two chiefs.

NBC dumped entertainment president Kevin Reilly and named West Coast president Marc Graboff and Ben Silverman, a producer of Ugly Betty and The Office, as co-chairmen of both the network and its sibling TV studio. Graboff will handle business matters; Silverman also will assume Reilly's duties, overseeing programming, scheduling and promotion.

Viewers should not expect huge changes. Silverman says he'd "put 10 Heroes on the air" if he could: "I like quality with noise," or water-cooler potential. Yet NBC's huge cost-cutting drive has limited its program development and left it without any backup series for inevitable failures.

Silverman, 36, is a self-made mogul, turning from an agent pitching reality-TV shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire into an independent producer who snapped up rights to foreign series and repackaged them for U.S. television. He also is behind The Biggest Loser, Nashville Star and Shear Genius, all on NBC or its cable networks. His major push is integrating products in TV shows, a growing trend that NBC has embraced.

The change comes just two weeks after Reilly presented NBC's fall schedule and six days after the network ended its third season in fourth place. Ratings have plummeted 36% since NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, a former Today producer, took the reins of the entertainment division in 2000. (Rivals climbed or were down at most 2%.)

Zucker says he made the change because Silverman "was at a point in his career where he wanted to do something different; it was strictly a function of now or never if we wanted to bring Ben" into NBC. Silverman's company, Reveille, will continue.

Reilly, FX's former programming chief, replaced Zucker the same month that Friends ended its 10-year run. He never found a comparable hit but stuck with Silverman's Office despite low ratings, delivered Heroes as TV's biggest newcomer and won critics' hearts with low-rated Friday Night Lights.