And here we thought everything was going along so swimmingly for NBC head Jeff Zucker. After all, he keeps promoting a competent chimpanzee Ben Silverman to increasingly important financial positions in his company, so how bad could it be over there? Er, plenty, and the conferences over there are starting to resemble a Kubrick film…at least according to dishy Nikki Finke.

Under EVP Cory Shields (who is Jeff's mouthpiece) and SVP Kathy Kelly-Brown, I understand that NBCU's corporate communications unit will now include an additional field marshall to monitor New Media, provide rapid response capabilities, and ensure websites, blogs and other media outlets are publishing and capturing appropriate NBCU content. Seriously, that's the real job description for Kevin Goldman, the former VP of CNBC media relations recently promoted to the NBCU war room. Zucker has managed to co-opt many mainstream newspapers and magazines into not writing about most of NBCU's fuck-ups. But he obviously feels the need to seek safety in a bunker surrounded by more human shields taking all the incoming sniper fire from New Media.

See! This is exactly what we were talking about with the blogger versus flack dilemma! You can continue to write bitchy things about NBC's lineup on your blog, or you can try to get recruited by Zucker and G.E. to create a first wave defense against these kinds of attacks. Your choice, hombre.