SHOW BUSINESS: Wide, Wide Shake-Up

Wide, Wide, Shake-Up

When euphoric Ideaman Sylvester L.(“Pat”) Weaver was boosted from president to chairman of the board of the National Broadcasting Co. last year, he knew that it was just a matter of time before he would boost himself right out of a job. As president. Pat Weaver’s career was as spectacular as the TV “spectaculars” he invented—which were sometimes spectacular flops. He experimented relentlessly and volubly with new ideas (Wide, Wide World; Monitor; Today; etc.) that got good critical notices, but NBC’s total billings were dragging their heels. As chairman of the board, Weaver was supposed to “work as a team” with new President Robert Sarnoff (TIME, Dec. 19). But he soon discovered that his part of the teamwork gave him a lot of spare time for balancing exercises on the bongo board he kept in his office (see cut). Last week Weaver knew that the time to boost himself had come. With a fat NBC severance check for his unexpired contract in his pocket. Weaver resigned, touching off one of the biggest NBC shake-ups in years. As a prologue to further resignations or shifts to come, Sarnoff named from NBC ranks four new executive vice presidents who will report directly to him.

For the immediate future. Weaver planned to sit back and “look at TV with an open mind, evaluate what I have done for NBC.” Actually. Weaver has every reason to sit back for a while: he got a $200,000-plus settlement, but if he goes to work for a rival network before July 1, 1957, he must forfeit about one-fourth of it.

Just before Sarnoff took over as president. NBC had no TV shows in the top ten Trendex ratings, while CBS had nine. Sarnoff was determined to cut away at the TV fabric Weaver had woven, go after more so-called “bread-and-butter” programs. This month NBC has only two (sixth place and a tie for tenth) shows in the top ten. But TV ratings aside, rival network officials concede that Bob Sarnoff is a better administrator than Weaver, who had a penchant for endless interoffice memos. During Sarnoff’s first six months in office, NBC’s TV billings spurted $10,718,989 (to $89,529,732) over the same period last year, although NBC is still behind CBS by more than 16 million.