The minute that new NBC entertainment co-chair Ben Silverman walked into Monday morning's press breakfast at the Beverly Hilton, there was a reporter's microphone in his face. He grinned and began to talk.
As one-half of the duo charged with turning around a struggling network -- NBC finished in fourth place in May for the third season in a row -- Silverman brings a set of skills that are unusual even in Hollywood. He has a golden gut for at least two of the emerging genres in television: single-camera comedies and reality shows. Among the programs he brought to TV as a producer are “Ugly Betty,” “The Office,” “The Biggest Loser” and cable's “Nashville Star.”
And he has a golden handshake. Silverman's prowess at schmoozing people, so key to forming relationships in this industry town, accounts (we are told) for his rapid rise and NBC's decision to make him co-chair of its entertainment division, overseeing not only television operations but the Universal TV production studio as well.
I got a first-hand encounter with this aspect of the 36-year-old
Silverman when, not three minutes after I introduced myself, he
referred to me as “my KC brother.” And everybody got a taste of his
impatient, let's-roll style of leadership when, a few minutes later, he
announced some shakeups to the NBC schedule announced in May by his
predecessor.
First, he was turning Monday into sci-fi night, kicking Howie Mandel's “Deal or No Deal” aside and installing “Chuck” at 7 p.m. NBC's best pilot of the fall, “Chuck” is about a computer nerd who accidentally has all the government's secrets downloaded to his brain. It's a nice lead-in to “Heroes” and then another what-if drama, “Journeyman.” More importantly, it gets “Chuck” out of a suicidal time slot on Tuesdays, where it would have been flattened by “House” on Fox.
Second, he was bringing back “The Apprentice,” whose future had been in doubt. Silverman considers “Apprentice” (and “Survivor”) producer Mark Burnett a close friend -- although Silverman has been known to lay that appellation on a lot of people -- and it was essential for him that Donald Trump be wooed back to NBC. This season's tournament will feature all celebrity entrepreneurs and be played for charity. Trump apparently felt so good about coming back, he asked Silverman to extend an invite to his recent nemesis Rosie O'Donnell, with whom he spent much of last season trading insults.
You have to be a little cockeyed to think O'Donnell would even take a phone call from anyone at NBC, let alone consider being in the same room with the Donald. But then, there's a little goofiness to Silverman. He's known as a party boy who flies around the country in a private jet carousing with his famous pals.
Silverman also thinks he can continue to own a share in Reveille Productions, the studio he founded, even as its shows, including “The Biggest Loser” and “The Office,” are on the NBC schedule and others are in the pipeline with NBC as a potential buyer. (Among other things, Reveille wants to remake the 1980s cheeseball classic “American Gladiators.”) No network executive has ever been able to hold onto his studio stake in the past, and even the great Grant Tinker was forced to sell his MTM shares not long after joining NBC. But Silverman's co-chairman of NBC entertainment, Marc Graboff, assured reporters Monday that a procedure was in place to review potential sticky wickets and that General Electric, which owns NBC Universal, “is very stringent about conflict of interest type issues.”
And that extended, we were told, to “The Biggest Loser,” a Reveille show that Silverman just extended to 90 minutes on
Tuesday nights, followed by a half hour of NBC's summer insty-hit, “The
Singing Bee,” to plug the hole left by "Chuck's" move to Mondays.
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Darrell Hammond is returning for his lucky 13th season on “Saturday Night Live.” Lorne Michaels, “SNL's” godfather and executive producer, told reporters he wanted the 46-year-old impressionist on “SNL” for “as long as I can have him.” And Hammond, who would almost certainly come back for a record-extending 14th season to see the 2008 election to the end, said he had no plans to move on.
“He's just the best at it,” Michaels said about the man who's impersonated celebrities from President Clinton to Sean Connery to Chris Matthews. For his part, Hammond said quietly from the dais at the Beverly Hilton, surrounded by his fellow “SNL” cast members, “I'm friends with everyone here.”
Including, no doubt, Ben Silverman.
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