Word: silverman
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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 days at the network had been numbered for several months. Griffiths wanted to fire her, but Silverman made it clear that if Pfeiffer went, he would leave too. Silverman's own clout within the network had slipped in recent months, however, and he was no longer able or willing to protect...
After promising to put NBC at the top of the ratings pile by the end of 1980, Silverman is presiding over disaster. This past season NBC lagged far behind its competitors in ratings, finishing the season with 17.4 Nielsen points, compared with 19.6 for CBS and 19.5 for ABC. The morning Today show, once an NBC stalwart, now trails ABC'S Good Morning America. Silverman's new daytime offering, the David Letterman Show, has fared so poorly that Silverman has already fired three producers. The latest executive calamity comes at the same time as the start...
...nervous Silverman has been renegotiating his NBC contract, even though it still has almost a year to run. Reportedly, one of Griffiths' major conditions was that Silverman get rid of Pfeiffer. Griffiths was demanding immediate action, in part, because he wanted to stop two splashy company parties that she was planning to hold at the Republican and Democratic conventions...
...rumpled, impulsive Silverman is notoriously clumsy at firing subordinates. Two weeks ago, he sent cigar-chomping Hollywood Lawyer Milton Rudin to Pfeiffer's porticoed house in an exclusive, guarded section of Greenwich, Conn. Rudin reportedly made it clear that Pfeiffer was finished. The following Monday, Silverman called Pfeiffer into his Rockefeller Plaza office and told her that she would have to resign. Yet she apparently left thinking there was still some room for negotiation. Then, when she learned that her resignation had been requested, she turned livid and picked up the phone...