Inside The Layoffs 2.0 Town Hall Meeting: NBC's Must See Pinkslip TV
In every outpost of the NBC Universal empire, just a little while ago anxious employees were huddled around closed-circuit broadcasts of their fearless leaders' "town hall" meeting explaining the corporation's new, streamlined, and more cost-conscious push into the digital media age enabled by the immediate, selfless sacrifice of 700 or so of their jobs. We asked one LA-based operative stationed inside the rapidly shrinking NBCU 2.0 family to briefly describe what was covered in Jeff Zucker's you're-all-firedside chat:
Bob Wright came out and said the standard "We're making changes for CONTINUED growth" line (emphasis on the continued, so as to not pretend the network is in 4th place), and introduced Jeff Zucker. Then Jeff Zucker briefly spoke. Then a Q&A with Zucker, Randy Falco, Jay Ireland, and Steve Capus. An email address was on the bottom of the screen for questions to be submitted. Most of the questions had to do with layoffs, especially from the news group.
It's not hard to understand why most of the broadcast's captive viewers were more interested in discovering if they still had gainful employment than in finding out about the new and exciting plans their still-employed overlords have for producing Deal or No Deal episodes especially for cell-phones (people shouting at tiny briefcases is testing through the roof). In an attempt to move on from the gloom-of-doom of the layoffs and put his remaining underlings' minds at ease, Zucker finally answered the tenth consecutive, "So do I still have a job or what?" e-mail by sighing and responding, "Turn around and look behind you. If there isn't a security guard holding a cardboard box full of your belongings, you're safe until tomorrow, OK?"
