NBC Entertainment co-chair Ben Silverman has had a year to return the peacock network from fourth place struggler to first place leader. He has not accomplished this. Or anything close to it. But thanks to his tenacity to import foreign sitcoms, sell them to networks not named NBC, and reap huge profits, he still has a job!

So how does Silverman — brought on board for his creative acumen — measure himself on his own report card?

By highlighting not the stellar ratings he's delivered for Jeff Zucker, not the buzzworthy programming that's caught the attention of critics, and not even his slate of reality fare that's so far defined his tenure, but the color of the ink on the books. How very un-Silverman.

I think restructuring our organization and re-engineering how we approach the business. It’s been transformative. Clearly the success of our “in-front” and how we go about engaging our advertising partners is an obvious place that’s delivered bottom-line success. And then the reorganization of how we apply our costs against our programming has been an unbelievable win for us to the financial bottom line.

But, in all fairness:

To be judged by a strike year, when you haven’t been able to bring a single piece of content to the air, is pretty unfair. So I think what we should be judged on, and what I will happily stand up and be judged on, will be “Kings” and “Kath and Kim” and “My Own Worst Enemy” and “Robinson Crusoe” and “The Philanthropist.” And as you see those shows come to market, and the new shows that we’ll be bringing to market, you will see that same quality level that I had as a producer. I personally got nominated again (for an Emmy), and my shows got 16 Emmy nominations (this year). My shows have garnered over 100 Emmy nominations personally in less than three years. So I definitely live and die personally on a qualitative level and love quality programs. But it’s really hard to do when no writers are available to write for you during the year. I’m also trying to live in a perfect storm of where we operate as a business, we manage for margin, but we still know and enjoy the creative success, whether it’s validated by an Emmy or validated via the buzz that we really care about at NBC.

How convenient, then, that Silverman's second year could also be considered a strike year. So, uh, blame that, if The Philanthropist turns into a big steaming piling of ratings crud.

[TV Week]