Littlefield wins vote of confidence at NBC
NBC will announce the three-year deal to affiliates today during at a meeting at the National Assn. of Television Program Executives confab in Miami.
Littlefield has been working without a contract since August. Past conjecture about his status was fueled by NBC's declining primetime fortunes, then fed by the hiring in February 1993 of Don Ohlmeyer as president, NBC West Coast, a newly created post placing another management layer between Littlefield and corporate brass.
Within six months of the change, several other senior execs left the division.
Still, after two difficult years, NBC has steadied itself in primetime. The Peacock web is up 3% compared to last year in both households and the key sales demographic of adults 18-49. The web also performed competitively during the November sweeps.
Saying he and Ohlmeyer have forged "a comfortable working relationship," Littlefield noted that he'd been at NBC during its first third-to-first turnaround, that the web is "well on the road" to repeating the feat and added, "I want to be here to be part of it."
Littlefield called the agreement "another signal of stability" as NBC prepares its fall schedule.
Conjecture lingers within the production community, meanwhile, regarding the plans of his CBS Entertainment counterpart, Jeff Sagansky, after his contract expires later this year.
