Ben Silverman: A Year After
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
It has been a year since Ben Silverman officially joined NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) as the co-chairmen of NBC Entertainment and NBC Universal Television Studio, teaming up with his counterpart Marc Graboff. Now a year down the line, TVWeek did an interview with him at the TCA summer press tour, and asked him about, among other things, his biggest regret. Without missing a beat, he mentions Quarterlife, the online to TV series that bombed badly and was pulled after just one episode and moved to sister cable network Bravo.
His response: "I think that 'Quarterlife' would be the biggest disappointment in that it just didn't perform to even half the level I would have thought it would have. I don't feel I would ever look back on it differently, because the whole thought process before it, behind it and around it was, 'How do we get a scripted show when there's a strike? How do we build something that's potentially interactive? How do we gain a foothold in the digital content space and then hopefully it's going to work also on-air?' Unfortunately, it didn't perform."
By Rafat Ali