Crack the champagne, people: longtime NBC Sports head honcho Dick Ebersol has been ousted after he and Comcast “couldn’t come to terms on a new contract.” (*cough* FIRED! *cough cough*) Deadline sums up his accomplishments:
Remember when Ebersol leaped to Jeff Zucker’s defense and publicly slammed Conan O’Brien to New York Times TV writer Bill Carter just because the late-night host wouldn’t agree to get Zucked as host of The Tonight Show? And let’s not forget that Ebersol ensured that NBC wouldn’t make a dime on the last Olympics because he overbid by $200 million to televise the games? Or the years when NBC had virtually no major sports to broadcast?
Mark Lazarus, presently the president of NBC Sports Cable Group, will take over as Chairman of NBC Sports Group. However, this doesn’t necessarily mark the end of Ebersol’s TV career. I expect him to return home to the muddy waters of the Ozarks, where we may see him on a future episode of “Hillbilly Handfishin’.”
