Business Coaching

Had NBC been your business coaching client, what would you advise?

Lots of people have their opinion on the Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien-NBC debacle. Whether you’re on Team Coco or a longtime Leno fan, from a business perspective, did NBC make a good business decision?

Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC, gave O’Brien a contract to host The Late Show, something he’d waited for years to host, and yanked it away once the Leno “experiment” – Leno’s half hour show before the Late Show with Conan O’Brien – failed.

Zucker took a risk with the Leno show, and it failed. But where many people are finding fault are with the callousness in which he took back O’Brien’s contract.

So, was this a good business decision? Business coaching would tell us that ultimately, since Leno is the late-night meal ticket for NBC, it was a good decision…but the issue is in how the entire renegotiation (if you can even call it that) was handled.

Business coaches, would you have coached Zucker to do anything differently had he asked your advice on how to handle things? Could he have done anything differently to avoid the backlash NBC and Leno have ended up getting?