Ted Harbert Becomes Paul Telegdy’s New NY Late-Night Gofer: How Embarrassing!
NBCU considered this “such a minor move” that it didn’t even think it was worth announcing. Wow, what a diss of NBC Broadcasting Chairman Ted Harbert, who has been in the Witness Protection Program ever since Comcast bought NBCUniversal. And when the pint-sized putz isn’t hiding from angry O&Os and affiliates and advertisers fed up with yet another lousy network primetime season, he’s screaming at reporters who didn’t share his belief that Animal Practice would be a homerun this season. (Media 1, Ted 0.) In actuality the only impetus for handing Harbert an infinitesimal new late night role is the multimillion-dollar remodeling of the 30 Rock studio that will house The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon when it moves to New York. Harbert is NYC-based and in charge of NBC’s buildings, so he was tapped. (Was Kenneth Parcell too busy?) Let me emphasize there is no change in the late-night reporting structure, still overseen by Paul Telegdy, president of alternative programming and late night and who reports to NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt. (Meanwhile, Greenblatt and Harbert hate each other.) With Telegdy focused on NBC’s top-rated series The Voice, which tapes in LA, he has little time for frequent bicoastal trips. So the underemployed Harbert is Telegdy’s new gofer on 3 NYC shows now: The Tonight Show, Late Show and Saturday Night Live. Harbert in the late night realm is best known for when he was E! Entertainment chief and dating Chelsea Handler the same year her first E! series The Chelsea Handler Show premiered. They then moved in together while he was serving as CEO of Comcast Entertainment Group overseeing E! and other cable channels — and inflicting Chelsea Lately on the schedule beginning in 2007. Hollywood waited impatiently for Comcast to put a stop to this inappropriate 4-year relationship. But it only ended when Chelsea dumped her boss in 2010. That said, I like Jimmy Fallon so my advice to him is: Trust me, you can do better than Ted.
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