Not so suite life
Midlevel execs at risk due to network shifts
With two networks about to go belly up and corporate cost-cutting the rule rather than the exception, being fitted for a job as a mid- or top-level TV suit has suddenly become a lot more difficult.
The deaths of the WB and UPN alone are expected to result in at least 100 casualties, even after the CW is staffed up.
Prior mergers of NBC and Universal and CBS and Paramount had thinned the exec ranks, as did indie giant Carsey-Werner's decision to close shop last year. Cost cutting at several congloms -- most notably Time Warner -- has also thinned the herd.
"If one is hell-bent on being a network TV executive, it's undeniable that there are fewer jobs available," says former NBC Universal TV prexy David Kissinger, who now heads Conan O'Brien's Conaco shingle. "I think it's sad for anybody who's in a state of scrambling to find employment."
One top lawyer says the brutal reality is that the TV exec game has become a lot like musical chairs. Right now, "There just aren't enough chairs for everyone."
Hit hardest by the downsized job market: mid-level execs, mostly at the VP level. They're too high up to accept the always plentiful ground-level posts, yet not powerful enough to command the kind of production deals senior execs score as part of their exit agreements.
The market is so tight, observers say they wouldn't be surprised if more than a few execs decide to quit the TV biz altogether.
What's happening to small-screen execs is not unlike the situation TV scribes have found themselves in over the past five years.
Top-tier writers who once spent entire seasons doing little more than developing ideas for shows now find themselves working on series they had no hand in creating. At the same time, the rise of reality shows and a depression in the sitcom genre have combined to further decrease the number of job openings for mid-level writers.
"Ten years ago, you could have been a fair-to-middling writer and still found work," says one person who works closely with a number of execs and producers. "That's not the case now."
For writers and execs, the silver lining in all this bad news has been the rapid explosion of original programming on cable nets. There are still plenty of potential TV gigs available compared with 20 years ago, when there were just a handful of broadcast and cable outlets in existence.
Even the wired world has been impacted by consolidation.
Merger of NBC and Universal, for example, resulted in the Peacock pulling the plug on fledgling cabler Trio. Channel's topper, Lauren Zalaznick, found work running NBC U's much bigger Bravo -- but what might have been a fertile breeding ground for young exec talent is now just a footnote in TV history.
One likely avenue for transitioning TV types could be the tech sector.
Ex-ABC supremo Lloyd Braun opted against the usual production-pact path by taking a top gig running Yahoo!'s entertainment division -- and he's since recruited several lower-level TV expats for key gigs.
Likewise, AOL's recent deals with small-screen bigshots like Mark Burnett demonstrates the 'Net's need for execs and talent with programming savvy.
Kissinger believes that as the industry moves toward an on-demand programming universe, there "will be all kinds of opportunities at the Googles and AOLs and Yahoos that we may not even know about yet."
Still, he says it's too soon to tell whether emerging technologies will pick up enough of the slack.
"I hope that's the case, because otherwise a lot of people I've worked with will be scrambling for fewer and fewer positions," he says.
Some observers, however, aren't so sad to see some shrinkage in the exec ranks.
According to these Darwinists, the exec talent pool has become too crowded with so-so suits, many of whom feel unjustly entitled to rise through the ranks.
"There are a lot of untalented execs who've been on the tit for a long time," says one well-respected industry power broker. "Maybe this kind of shakeup is appropriate."
And one rep who's often asked to come up with lists of potential execs for open jobs says the task has become more difficult in recent years.
"When people ask me to tell them who's really qualified, the list is pretty short. There just aren't a lot of really good execs out there," the rep says.
So what's an out-of-work TV exec to do?
"The key is patience," one top lawyer says. "Patience -- and getting a great settlement. That'll allow you to have more patience."
(Michael Schneider contributed to this report.)
