Newly-appointed NBC News chairman Andy Lack is likely to make a determination about Brian Williams’ future at the network soon, Paul Farhi writes for The Washington Post.
Lack’s hand may be forced by the NBC’s forthcoming “upfront,” a slew of meetings between network officials and advertisers aimed at securing ad buys. Farhi explains:
People on both sides of the negotiations, including some at NBC, say it is unlikely that Lack and NBC will go into the upfronts without resolving Williams’s status beforehand. Given the critical role anchors play in the success of a news broadcast, uncertainty over who will anchor “Nightly News” would hurt NBC’s negotiating position with advertisers.
And at the moment, the betting seems to be against Williams’s return.
Williams received a six-month, unpaid suspension from the “NBC Nightly News” anchor desk in February after he was discovered to have made false claims about a reporting trip in Iraq.
Shortly after a Stars and Stripes article unearthed the discrepancies between Williams’ claims and testimony from veterans, NBC News began conducting an internal review of the anchor’s previous statements.
