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...financial conglomerate Primerica in 1992 only to have the deal fall through, must first nurse the firm back to health before he can have any hope of finding a buyer. In the latest management shuffle at the brokerage, Welch brought in a new executive team headed by Dennis Dammerman, GE's chief financial officer, to restore Kidder's profits. "What I've got to do with Kidder is get it solidly grounded," Welch says. "Until Kidder gets stabilized, I don't have very many options to do anything...
Like Kidder, NBC has from the start been a bruising journey into uncharted territory for GE. Close observers trace the declines in ratings and morale at the network to Welch's decision to install Robert Wright, who had been president of GE Financial, to run NBC. Wright promptly slashed budgets, laid off workers and, critics say, treated the business of providing news and entertainment as if it were indistinguishable from making loans or refrigerators...
...good judge of people," says Warren Bennis, a management professor at the University of Southern California business school. "Robert Wright was the wrong guy to put in charge of NBC. He didn't know anything about television, or the creative side. NBC has suffered under GE's management...
...much so that some NBC managers are rooting for GE to sell the network swiftly. "The record speaks for itself," a high-level insider says. "NBC may be well placed: it's profitable and having the second best year in its history. But its performance on the screen doesn't measure up. The problem is with the people Welch put in and left in place. It was Robert Wright who picked Leno over Letterman, and you see how that turned out. The loss of Letterman was the dumbest thing to happen in TV history...
Welch is candid about his interest in striking some sort of deal involving NBC. While he refuses to comment on reports that GE is considering the sale of a 49% stake in the network to Time Warner, he acknowledges that "we've had discussions about every combination with everyone." That includes Walt Disney chairman Michael Eisner, who also has been eyeing NBC. Welch described his conversations with executives like Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin as "two guys groping, to see what fits." But he strongly hinted that he intends to keep at least some control of the network. "The outright...