Now that Maureen Dowd no longer has George W. Bush to kick around, it appears she’s been looking for new targets. In Wednesday’s New York Times, the take-no-prisoners columnist turned her guns on NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker.
“How does Jeff Zucker keep rising and rising while the fortunes of NBC keep falling and falling?” Dowd said was the question being heard in Hollywood. And she threw in a quote from an unidentified competitor who called Zucker “the most destructive media executive ever to exist.”
Of course, the Dowd column was prompted by the current uproar at NBC, specifically Conan O’Brien’s refusal [LINK] to go along with being bumped back a half hour to make room for Jay Leno after Zucker’s failed experiment in running a daily talk show in primetime. http://www.rbr.com/tv-cable/19933.html
Dowd made the case that it was Zucker who destroyed the Thursday “Must See TV” comedy franchise and greenlighted awful shows, although she noted, “the aptly titled ‘The Biggest Loser’” was one of his few winners. In fact, she titled the column about Zucker “The Biggest Loser.”
