No! Not Carol Janson, too!

Another round of layoffs has swept through NBC Universal, and this time, it's personal.

Carol Janson, one of the sweetest, most accommodating, funniest, least self-conscious and dearest publicists any television network will ever have the good fortune to employ, was cut loose and will be leaving the company at year's end.

Below, I quote part of her farewell address to the press (email, actually), just to give you a taste of what kind of soul NBC has decided it can do without. Carol was more than just a long-lasting employee in a corporate division notorious for churning through young publicists half her age. She was like a goodwill ambassador all those years when the network had nothing better to offer than "Knight Rider," "American Gladiators" and "Kath and Kim" -- oh wait, that was this year.

When Carol appeared at press tour -- and she usually arrived well before NBC's portion of tour started -- I'd get a hug and all would seem strangely normal again. In recent years she became the queen of the conference calls, and the subject lines of her emails invariably made me smile, both for their etiquette-breaking length and undeniable charm:

Miss Piggy will be devasted if she doesn't have a big turnout for her call...oink...oink...oink

While you're deciding who to vote for...plan to do the conference call with Anthony Edwards

Before you buy your Halloween candy, please do the conference call for "Law & Order" with Dick Wolf and Sam Waterston

Wouldn't it be interesting to get a gold medal for losing?

If only I had the powers of observation that James Roday has on "Psych"...

How can you say no to Shirley Jones???

And so on. Here's part of what she wrote to us today:

In 1987, after more than twenty years of doing unit publicity on more than 25 feature films including "Funny Girl," The Way Were" and "Everything you Always Wanted to Know About Sex: But Were Afraid to Ask," Michael O'Hara asked if I'd like to come to NBC for three months for a temporary job pitching movies for television to the press. With a husband and young children I didn't want to work on films on location any more. I'd start at NBC in September and work until Thanksgiving. I said perfect…then I could go skiing with my family for the Christmas holidays. The snow was lousy that year and Mike asked if I'd like to stay on…

It's been more than 20 years (I know because I qualified for a 20th year employee gift from NBC that I must pick out next week).

Where did all the years go? I met so many new people…writers, publicists, performers, all the servers in the NBC Commissary…and now it's time to go.

I'm so sad about all of the layoffs…the lousy economy and everyone who is hurting.

At the moment I feel lucky…I have my health…a wonderful husband and two terrific grownup children. ... Will I freelance if anything interesting comes my way…why not? Will I do some volunteer work…I think so, it's time to give back a little. I'd like to relearn bridge and learn mahjong (did I spell that correctly)…take a jewelry making course (instead of just buying other people's work)…and who knows what else. I also plan to take a few courses to see what grabs my interest...

I hope that some of our paths will still cross and that I do hear from some of you. My last conference call will be on December 18…and then I plan to spend the following two weeks with my family. Thanks for your help, your friendship, your ear. And best of everything to everyone in the coming year.

God speed, Carol.

I don't mean to slight the rest of NBC and Viacom -- hundreds of positions, including dozens of publicists I've worked with over the years, will vanish with the arrival of the new year. (Some muckety mucks got axed, too.) I hope each and every one of them lands on their feet.

Comments

[B.J. Reed]

What I love about this blog is not only the wealth of information in provides about the television industry (kind of a guilty pleasure for an academic like me) but how it personalizes the industry in a way that very few news sources do. Sometimes that is not necessarily a good thing but in this case I can feel the sense of loss for someone I did not even know existed.

Its a insight that makes the industry more human and I thank Mr. Barnhart for that.

[Sofia Fernandez]

I had the pleasure of working with Carol Janson too. Radio reporters like myself are treated like second-class citizens by most studios but not by Carol. She understood radio's enormous audience reach and made sure we had access to talent just like TV and print reporters. She also proved that you can be nice AND get the job done. May her good cheer and competancy serve as a lesson to others.