March 28, 2024

Zalaznick, Once a Programming Force at NBCUniversal, Is Leaving

Lauren Zalaznick, whose leadership at Bravo turned that cable network into a lucrative asset for its parent, NBCUniversal, is leaving the company, Steve Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, told the staff in a memo released on Friday.

Because Ms. Zalaznick had already been moved away from control of Bravo and several other divisions she had led, including Oxygen, the Style network and Telemundo, to an amorphous position overseeing new business opportunities, mainly on the digital side, her departure was not seen as surprise inside the company.

NBC’s decision to release the news not in an official announcement but rather through a memo — and on a Friday afternoon — signaled the company’s desire to simply move on without calling undue attention to Ms. Zalaznick’s departure.

In his memo, Mr. Burke merely mentioned Ms. Zalaznick’s leaving and praised her contributions. No reason for her departure was included. But longtime NBC executives — who insisted on not being identified because the memo was intended to be the only company comment on the move — suggested that the departure was a result of an internal power struggle with NBCUniversal’s other top cable entertainment executive, Bonnie Hammer.

In February, Mr. Burke promoted Ms. Hammer to a position overseeing all NBC cable entertainment properties, including those previously led by Ms. Zalaznick.

The new role assigned to Ms. Zalaznick never seemed a perfect fit, several executives who worked with her said, because her strengths were on the operational side of the business, running entertainment networks, with an emphasis on quirky, creative ideas.

Those served her extremely well at Bravo, which she turned into a center for pop-culture programming, identifying and marketing hits like “Project Runway,” “Top Chef” and the many iterations of “Real Housewives.”

Ms. Zalaznick offered no comment. Nor was any mention made of her specific plans for the future. But one senior NBC executive, who has worked with Ms. Zalaznick, described her as upbeat about future moves. “She will pop up somewhere,” the executive said. “And it will be in an operational job that has something to do with pop culture. That’s where she shines.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/business/media/zalaznick-once-a-programming-force-at-nbcuniversal-is-leaving.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

God Save the British Economy

One morning this summer, I went to the bank to visit Adam Posen, a member of its Monetary Policy Committee, the custodian of the pound. With bright red curly hair and a trim beard, Posen, who is 46, stands out in all the M.P.C.’s official photographs. He is “ fatter” and “fuzzier” than the other officials, he joked. Posen also happens to be only the second American economist ever to serve on the committee.

It’s impossible to imagine the uproar if President Obama ever nominated a British academic to work at the highest level of the Federal Reserve. But when Posen arrived, in September 2009, his job was to provide an outsider’s perspective. The bank was trying to steer Britain through the global financial crisis, and Posen seemed like a uniquely perfect fit. In the late 1990s, when he was a 30-year-old economist, his contrarian critique of Japan’s central bank and finance ministry helped that country put an end to its so-called Lost Decade. In the years since, Posen has become a well-respected adviser to (and critic of) many of the world’s key financial institutions. With this appointment, Posen crossed the line from scholar to decision maker. It was the first time that he had real power.

Posen arrived in London after the acute panic of the financial crisis had given way to the long slog we’re still in. At that point, policy makers around the world were given the task of assessing the damage and devising a plan that would best position the economy to function at normal levels. The United States had already responded with a roughly $800 billion stimulus package. In the spring of 2010, British voters went in another direction. They elected Prime Minister David Cameron, who had promised to reset the economy by severely cutting government spending, which would lead to significant public-sector layoffs. The economy’s only chance to return to long-term growth, Cameron argued, would be a painful, but brief, period of austerity. By shrinking the size of an inefficient government, Cameron explained, the budget would be balanced by 2015 and the private sector could lead the economy to full recovery.

Today these two approaches offer a crucial case study and perhaps a breakthrough in an age-old economic argument of austerity versus stimulus. In the past few years, the United States has experienced a steep downturn followed by a steady (though horrendously slow) upturn. The U.S. unemployment rate, which shot up to 10 percent at the end of 2009 from 4.4 percent in mid-2007, has now dropped steadily to 7.7 percent. It might be a frustrating pace, but it’s enough to persuade most economists that a recovery is under way.

The British economy, however, is profoundly stuck. Between fall 2007 and summer 2009, its unemployment rate jumped to 7.9 percent, from 5.2 percent. Yet in the three and a half years since — even despite the stimulus provided by this summer’s Olympic Games — the number has hovered around 7.9. The overall level of economic activity, real G.D.P., is still below where it was five years ago, too. Historically, it’s almost unimaginable for a major economy to be poorer than it was half a decade ago. (By comparison, the United States has a real G.D.P. that is around a half-trillion dollars more than it was in 2007.) Yet austerity’s advocates continue to argue, as Cameron has, that Britain’s economic stagnation shows that the government is still crowding out private-sector investment. This, they say, is proof that austerity is even more essential than was first realized. Once the debts have been paid off and the euro zone solves its political problems, the thinking goes, the British economy will bounce back quickly.

When I visited Posen this summer, he refused to publicly criticize a sitting administration’s policies, but every time the topic of austerity came up, he was unable to hide his frustration. Posen’s term ended in August, and his subsequent nondisclosure agreement expired last month. Now he wants to persuade everyone he can that Britain should abandon its austerity program. He says that he has a solution that would quickly return healthy economic growth. His critics say that his prescription would bring about another financial panic. But whether you think he’s right or wrong depends on what you make of the data.

Economics often appears to be an exercise in number-crunching, but it actually resembles storytelling more than mathematics. Before the members of the Monetary Policy Committee gather for their monthly meeting, they sit through a presentation from the Bank of England’s economic staff. The staff members take the most recent economic data — G.D.P. growth, the unemployment rate and more subtle details gathered from interviews with businesspeople throughout the country — and try to fashion it into a narrative. Does a sudden spike in new factory orders represent a fundamental shift, or is it just a preholiday blip? Do anecdotal reports of rising food prices herald a period of inflation, or is it the result of a cold snap? Which story feels truer?

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/magazine/god-save-the-british-economy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss