It was supposed to be a disaster.
Instead, in the face of Late Night Crisis 2010, NBC U TV Entertainment chairman Jeff Gaspin successfully tamed a roomful of reporters who hadn't been this out for blood since ... well, since the last time Ben Silverman met with critics.
Of course, he was starting from ground zero.
Sunday was shaping up as the perfect storm of PR failure: Just as NBC's late-night core was melting down, Gaspin was scheduled to face the Television Critics Association wolfpack for the first time since taking the job as programming chief. (Indeed, some had been comparing the last few days to NBC's version of Katrina. "Heck of a job, Zuckie!" one quipped, referring to Gaspin's boss, Jeff Zucker.)
It's also far from certain the decision to screw over Conan O'Brien to keep Jay Leno on NBC will ultimately prove to be the right call. But by the time Gaspin's candor offensive was over, the assembled masses of Zucker-loathing scribes saw a faint ray of hope that maybe NBC wasn't dead and gone after all.
As for Gaspin personally? Think of Sunday as his first big audition for a much bigger job one day -- like maybe replacing Zucker as CEO at NBC U after Comcast takes over.
Yes, Gaspin was that good.
Headed into his session with reporters, the mood at NBC was grim. The last 72 hours has seen an almost unprecedented level of journalistic bile heaped on the network as the world reacted to the late-night meltdown.
Wags compared Jay at 10 to New Coke. Others wondered how the network could ever think replacing Jay Leno with Conan O'Brien could end in anything but failure.
If there's one thing reporters and media pundits love, it's reminding everyone how right they were. And NBC chief Jeff Zucker handed them a fat target by setting in motion of series of events that led to the worst possible outcome.
Lower ratings in primetime. Lower ratings in latenight. Two comedy icons humiliated.
But just as the NBC-is-finished meme was starting to take hold among the media mavens and Twitterati of the world, Gaspin came in and halted the free-fall with a 40 minute command performance.
He was blunt. He started out by admitting what everyone already knew, rather than hide behind the "talks are ongoing" excuse.
He did clam up about some details, but mostly because he didn't want to get into a pissing match with Team Conan. And yet, he wisely promised to tell all once everything is done -- offering at least the hope of future transparency.
Gaspin was funny, joking that ad rates at 10 p.m. would go up -- because NBC had done so much to lower them.
And most impressively, the Gaspin who was on stage Sunday was almost identical to the Gaspin known to those who've talked to him privately over the years. Like another brash NBC leader of the past, Don Ohlmeyer, what you see is what you get with Jeff Gaspin (but thankfully, without the chain-smoking).
