Ken Schanzer, president of NBC Sports, is retiring, the network announced on Thursday. He had been with NBC for three decades, and 13 years in his current position.
The announcement comes a mere week after Schanzer's boss, former NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol, announced that he would be retiring after 22 years of heading the sports division and many more years with NBC altogether. Schanzer, 66, began his career at NBC in November 1981 as Vice President, Talent and Program Negotiations.
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Schanzer will stay on until the end of the summer, at the network's request.
The sports executive, who became president of NBC Sports in June 1998, was instrumental in handling the division's partnerships with Notre Dame, the PGA Tour and the NFL. More recently, he was central to arranging NBC Sports' new 10-year contract with the National Hockey League, and reassembling the Triple Crown horse-racing event.
“It has been the greatest privilege of my professional career to have contributed to the growth of NBC Sports and to have worked with so many prodigious people," Schanzer said in the announcement.
New NBC Sports chairman Mark Lazarus, who stepped in to replace Ebersol, called Schanzer "one of the most respected and influential sports-television executives of the past three decades and is a major reason that the NBC Sports Group is so well positioned for the future."