Word: pfeiffer
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...Pfeiffer firing was among the messiest in recent American business history, and the departures at NBC may not yet be over. Silverman, an industry legend since he was programming chief at CBS, was also rumored to be on the way out. The latest sacking made RCA Chairman Edgar H. Griffiths, 59, look especially bad. Pfeiffer's executive decapitation came just three weeks after Griffiths summarily dismissed RCA President and Heir Apparent Maurice R. Valente, 51, whom he had recruited from I.T.T. only six months earlier...
Griffiths thought the problem was Pfeiffer. Formerly vice president in charge of corporate communications and government relations at IBM and Jimmy Carter's first choice to be Secretary of Commerce, Jane Cahill Pfeiffer had helped lure Silverman to NBC in 1978, while acting as a management consultant to RCA. After signing on with NBC for a reported $1 million a year, Silverman admitted that his managerial experience was limited and hired Pfeiffer, whose salary and bonus last year came to $425,000, to handle mundane corporate affairs...
...Pfeiffer's troubles at NBC began almost as soon as she arrived. She was quickly faced with a nasty $1 million scandal involving expense-account fraud and kickbacks among field-unit managers. Pfeiffer, who once spent six months in a convent, earned herself the sobriquet "Attila the Nun" by rooting out the wrongdoers with the wrath of God and a team of lawyers and accountants that ran up a tab of more than $2 million. "It looks like you sent in the whole damned Marines to rescue a cat," Vice Chairman Richard Salant reportedly quipped at a staff meeting...
...Pfeiffer's iron glove was felt elsewhere around the company. In the past two years more than 55 vice presidents have left or been fired from NBC. She reportedly ended one Friday afternoon meeting of top executives by smiling at them and remarking lightly, "We may have a great surprise next Friday when we have our next staff meeting. It'll be interesting to see who isn't there then." Said one of her victims: "She loved to confront people...
...Still, Pfeiffer's problem was not just her insensitivity in personnel matters but also a lack of experience in the broadcasting business. Says one executive who survived her reign: "She came in with the attitude of a consumer advocate toward television." Added another top NBC official: "The most important thing in television is the morale of the egomaniacs who make it work. She didn't know how to massage those egos...