Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Jeff Zucker and Conscious Capitalism?
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You no doubt know about the flap at NBC regarding the moves made to return Jay Leno, whose show is on at 10 pm, to a later slot at 11:30. That led to Conan O’Brien’s deciding not to stay with NBC to say nothing of the staff he brought along from New York to Los Angeles.
Several days ago, Jeff Zucker, the President of NBC/Universal, during an appearance on the Charley Rose show, referring to the late night turmoil and the low ratings for both shows said:
“We made hard business decisions with no personal feelings because that’s what we’re supposed to do here.”
My first response was to agree. It’s all about the ratings. Low ratings = failure. And failure = hard business decisions.
But it’s exactly those “hard business decisions with no personal feelings” that create the aura that business is, at its heart, uninterested in people; and that business men and women are, at their core, devoid of heart.
Remember the famous line from the Godfather movies –“ It’s not personal. It’s just business.”
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I heard Zucker:
- hard business decisions
- no personal feelings
When I was much younger I remember being told “Don’t take things so personally.” And my response very often was “What other way is there to take it?”
Jeff Zucker and NBC may have not felt any personal feelings, but Leno and O’Brien did. It was certainly personal to them.
And Jeff Zucker may have, after the fact, felt terrible having to make the “unfeeling decision” the numbers dictated – at least what he and upper management thought they dictated.
What to Do?
So what was NBC to do? After all, with the way the game is played the ratings’ numbers mean life or death for a television show.
And what about the two performers – Leno and O’Brien? They’ve both been in the game a long time, so because they knew what they were getting into, should they take it personally?.
These are very tough questions.
A New Perspective Needed
The only perspective I can bring to this is that we need a deep, deep, deep change in the paradigm not only of business but the way we all perceive living in this world.
If it is a jungle, then the strongest survive — It’s not personal. Just Business.
But it’s now well known and demonstrated that life emerged on our planet through the cooperative coming together of various multicellular organisms sharing information, providing greater awareness, and enhancing life for all of the individual organisms.
Our human bodies are a prefect example — heart cells, brain cells, liver cells, toenail cells, all living in concert, each expressing its own individuality for the sake of the overall community – the human body.
Cooperation is far more essential to how we got here and how we stay here than the survival of the fittest. What would NBC have done in a paradigm of cooperation — i.e. conscious capitalism?
What do you think? What image comes to mind for you?
Judith & I look forward to your feedback – making this the beginning of an enlightening dialogue.
Because It’s all in the Connection,
Jim
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Jim,
All eyes have been focused on this Late Night soap opera of Leno, O’Brien and the future of The Tonight Show. As you state — and Americans are well aware — ratings are the critical factor that drive programming decisions. However, this sensitive late night situation makes us all wonder if more careful and “conscious capital consideration” could have been given to the playing out of this drama as it unfolded.
One thought that sticks in my mind is the lengthy planning period (starting about 6 years ago) of slotting O’Brien as Leno’s replacement . It was common knowledge that Leno would leave The Tonight Show in 2009, and hand over the reigns to O’Brien. NBC had all these well-known plans in place so the only major surprise was shifting Leno to an earlier time slot — which in the end was a ratings fiasco for the network.
To me, it would seem that maybe — just maybe — O’Brien should have been given a little more time to grow his way into the role of Tonight Show Host. That would have been a more considerate and open-minded approach.
I wonder if there were any meetings that involved all the players — Zucker, O’Brien, Leno as well as other NBC execs — but I doubt it went that way. Maybe several brainstorming sessions coupled with some up-close and personal negotiation among all involved would have culminated in a different result. Such meetings may have gone a long way toward helping create that paradigm of cooperation and conscious capitalism — a meeting of the minds.
NBC attempted to manipulate O’Brien back toward his old time frame of after-midnight which would not have been the “Tonight” Show but the “Tomorrow” Show, as Conan wryly asserted. Ultimately, after much soul-searching, he chose to walk away — albeit with many, many millions of dollars.
Jim, thanks for the thought-provoking blog post. Yes, of course taking some of the personal factors into consideration could have been a significant step toward enlightened cooperation and what is termed conscious capitalism. NBC’s decision (and in the end, Conan’s decision) also had the ripple effect of thrusting O’Brien’s entire staff into the unemployment ranks. His staff had uprooted themselves from New York to move to LA and they are understandably unhappy, according to news reports, that O’Brien is just walking away without even taking a chance with the 12:05 slot he was offered.
Sheryl Schlameuss Berger