Jeff Zucker Cannot Escape Torture By Les Moonves
The LAT reports that the ratings-hobbled NBC has finished its advertising sales for the fall season, and after being forced to cut their rates by skeptical buyers, sold about $900 million less of their primetime inventory than last year. As if this news wasn't bad enough for NBC's Jeff Zucker, the beleaguered, fading golden boy received a swift kick in the "sweeps" from his fiercest rival's spit-shined wing-tips:
Several advertisers said they had withheld money from NBC, with one buyer estimating that her firm bought 60% less NBC ad time this year than last year. Some buyers credited Viacom Inc. co-President Leslie Moonves with affecting the way they viewed NBC. During CBS' presentation of its schedule, Moonves detailed the steep declines of NBC's Thursday-night shows, adding: "And they just renewed the entire night."
We really have to admire the new and exciting ways that Moonves finds to humiliate his competitor. He's like a little kid (perhaps driven to cruelty by countless trips to the dentist for a painful, professional whitening—but we digress, because it's too early for this kind of dimestore psychoanalysis), who suddenly discovers that a simple tube of Crazy Glue will allow him to rip off the fly's wings over and over again, then loses an entire summer when he figures out it works for the legs and eyes as well.
