[BST]

Well folks, a little over a year ago, this thread started. The 2 articles below would seem to indicate that this tale has come to its conclusion.

http://money.excite.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_...&date=20040503

TV network NBC names new entertainment president

Monday May 3, 8:37 PM EDT

(Adds quotes from Reilly, paragraphs 4-7)

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES, May 3 (Reuters) - Months after he was placed in charge of prime-time development at NBC, Kevin Reilly was promoted on Monday to succeed Jeff Zucker as the U.S. television network's entertainment president.

Reilly's appointment comes as NBC and its rival networks are getting ready to present advertisers with their programming schedules for the forthcoming fall TV season and as NBC prepares to merge with the entertainment assets of Vivendi Universal (EAUG) (V)

In his new post as NBC Entertainment president, Reilly, 41, will expand his responsibilities from prime time to include daytime and late-night programming and development, as well as network scheduling and strategic planning overall.


With NBC poised once again to finish the season No. 1 in the ratings for the benchmark demographic of viewers aged 18 to 49, Reilly said he foresees no major departures in the network's direction as he steps into his new role on May 27.

"I'm going to be looking to find some fresh faces and fresh voices for the network," he told Reuters. "We are ready to see that next generation of hits, as dominant as we are, and that's really my focus right now."

Reilly said comedy development in particular was a priority, though he dismissed as "baloney" the notion that the impending departure of NBC veterans "Friends" and "Frasier" signaled the beginning of the end of the American sitcom.

Acknowledging that TV comedy as a genre "can sometimes feel very stale and predictable," Reilly said he wants "to give the talent the courage to get outside of that comfort zone and that predictable place" by offering a chance to "something new."

DECADE OF DOMINANCE

Reilly will report to Zucker, who was promoted in December to assume management of both news and entertainment for NBC and its various cable outlets, including Bravo, MSNBC, CNBC, and Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo.

"Kevin is perfectly positioned to help NBC continue its tremendous run," Zucker said in a statement. "He's worked hard on a promising new development slate for the next year that will extend NBC's brand and capitalize on our decade of dominance."

NBC, a unit of General Electric Co. (GE), has ranked for most of the past decade as as the No. 1 network in ratings among viewers aged 18 to 49, the demographic most broadcasters use as a gauge of prime-time success.

Zucker, who served as NBC Entertainment president for the past three years, is relocating to New York, where he is expected to exercise oversight over the Vivendi Universal Entertainment cable channels that will be part of the new NBC Universal, including the Trio, USA and Sci Fi networks.

Reilly, who began his NBC career more than 15 years ago, returned to the network in the fall of 2003 as president of prime-time development in a move widely seen as setting him up to succeed Zucker eventually.

He previously served as entertainment president for the FX cable channel, owned by News Corp. Ltd.'s (NCP) (NWS) Fox Entertainment Group Inc. (FOX), where he played a key role developing that network's first original drama series "The Shield" and helped expand its slate of original dramas.

Before that, Reilly was president of the powerhouse TV studio Brad Grey Television, overseeing pilot development of such shows as HBO mob drama "The Sopranos" and NBC comedies "Just Shoot Me" and "NewsRadio."

During his previous six-year tenure at NBC, Reilly supervised pilot development of the hospital drama "ER" and "Homicide: Life on the Street," and worked on the first season of long-running hit crime drama "Law & Order."

http://www.thestreet.com/_excite/tec...0&alias=/ht/nw

NBC Universal Is Ready

By George Mannes
TheStreet.com Senior Writer
4/21/2004 2:04 PM EDT
Click here for more stories by George Mannes



Get set for the debut of NBC Universal.

The last hurdle to the merger of General Electric's (GE:NYSE - news - research) NBC and Vivendi Universal's (V:NYSE - news - research) U.S. entertainment subsidiary appeared to be cleared Wednesday.

Vivendi Universal and GE, which first announced the deal last October, say they hope to complete it in the next few weeks.

Following the deal's completion, NBC would go from being essentially a broadcast TV network to part of a multimedia conglomerate, one allied with the Universal movie studio, the Universal theme parks and other properties.

In that way, the new NBC Universal -- of which GE would be a majority shareholder -- would more closely resemble NBC's broadcast rivals such as ABC, part of Disney (DIS:NYSE - news - research) , and CBS, just one element of Viacom (VIA.B:NYSE - news - research) .

The deal also represents, for the French utility company Vivendi, part of a reasonably attractive exit strategy for its now-disavowed strategy of becoming a worldwide media conglomerate.

The relevant news Wednesday was that Vivendi Universal and Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp (IACI:NYSE - news - research) -- the minority shareholder of Vivendi Universal Entertainment, Vivendi's U.S. entertainment subsidiary -- said they'd settled certain legal differences blocking the deal.

More precisely, Vivendi and IACI said they have agreed "on the form of the letters of credit that would be issued to InterActiveCorp in order to defease certain covenants pursuant to the Vivendi Universal Entertainment Partnership Agreement in connection with the closing of the VUE-NBC transaction."

"Defeasing these covenants," the companies explained, "is a condition to closing the VUE-NBC transaction."

Previously, Diller had said NBC and Vivendi needed his approval before completing their deal, though it was unclear Tuesday at what price such approval came. An IACI spokeswoman declined to comment.

Wednesday's news comes one day after Vivendi announced that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission wouldn't block the proposed deal.

On Wednesday afternoon, GE's shares were up 3 cents to $30.50, Vivendi's were up 44 cents to $25.61 and IACI's were down 15 cents to $31.97.