How You and I Lost Kevin Reilly His Job

Can Friday Night Lights survive the loss of its friend in the front office? NBC Photo: Bill Records

NBC's entertainment president Kevin Reilly--the man who programmed Heroes and pushed to keep 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights on the air--is leaving his job. (Technically, but only technically, he quit.) Replacing him, sort of, is Ben Silverman, the head of the studio Reveille, who has had a remarkable hot streak of hit-picking, or at least hit-importing. (Reveille brought The Office and Ugly Betty to the States, and as an agent, Silverman had a hand in importing Survivor and Who Wants to be a Millionaire.)

Reilly's departure was at once surprisingly sudden and surprisingly overdue. It was unexpected to see him pushed out just a couple weeks after announcing his fall 2007 schedule; on the other hand, I hadn't expected NBC to show as much patience with him as it had, with the network stuck in fourth place. (This despite the fact that Reilly, at least, had developed new hits like Heroes and The Office, something that a certain boss of his was unable to do back when he held the job.)

Why should you care? Reilly was punished, as happens in business, for failing in the market, but also, in a way, for successfully pleasing people like you and me: critics and intense fans who go for high-quality, limited-mass-appeal shows like FNL. Friday Night Lights remains on NBC's schedule, but it just lost a powerful friend upstairs.

I don't want to make the Reilly-Silverman swap into the good guy versus the cretin, though. As noted, NBC wouldn't have The Office without Silverman, and ideally, the young Silverman could manage to combine Kevin Reilly's taste (or something like it) with NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker's preternatural business sense. Like Zucker, Silverman (who takes the position of co-chairman with NBC exec Marc Graboff) has a big interest in "new paradigms," and "changing business models," and all those other catchphrases that mean "figuring out how the hell we make make money now that the audiences are shrinking." His reality shows, and even his scripted shows, have unembarrassedly used product placements and sponsorships aggressively, for instance.

That said, unlike Zucker, who seems to have no aesthetic sense other than a fondness for dollar-bill green, Silverman at least seems to see these new business ideas as a means of supporting good shows. Not always good, granted--he also gave us The Biggest Loser. Silverman apprenticed under NBC programming legend Brandon Tartikoff, who deeply understood the tradeoffs between good programming and good business.

I hate to see Reilly go--more important, I don't want to see Reilly's shows go--but maybe NBC could use a little of that. I've only met Silverman once, but he came across as intense and confident, with an evangelical belief that the kinds of shows and sponsorship deals he was creating were the key to keeping TV alive in the future. If he can use that showmanship to keep FNL on the air, that's fine with me.

On the other hand, what was the show that I was interviewing Silverman about? A little piece of TV history that you might remember as The Restaurant. So we'll just have to see.