NBC - SILVERMAN TO AIR ADVERTISER-FRIENDLY SHOWS

SILVERMAN TO AIR ADVERTISER-FRIENDLY SHOWS

NBC's new chief Ben Silverman has indicated that his regime intends to be advertiser friendly and will be searching for ways to integrate ads into the content of programs. Advertisers, he told Saturday's Los Angeles Times, are demanding greater input, and "we're going to work with the creative roster to deliver it." He acknowledged that some program producers are likely to balk at such an effort. "That's OK," he said, "but it may ultimately be a problem for them. The commercial value of their shows may be diminished if they don't have those integrations in them." In a profile of Silverman, Advertising Age says in its current edition, "What makes him different from his predecessors is his experience catering to advertisers -- and the fact that he's always seemed to be the rare entertainment exec who actually enjoys spending time on Madison Avenue." Meanwhile, Silverman is moving swiftly to reorganize the top corporate echelons at NBC, naming Katherine Pope as the new president of NBC Universal Television Studio and Teri Weinberg, an executive at Silverman's Reveille production company, as the new executive vice president of NBC Entertainment.

04/06/2007