Ben Silverman is the most high profile douche-hat executive at NBC, which is saying a lot. He's also one of the youngest, which in some cases might mean he would be allowed some leeway when it came to picking the winning horses for the peacock station. He did, after all, bank on The Office, which as you can see from the grins on his and Melora Hadin's face on your right, did pretty well for itself.

But there are murmurings that Silverman may have finally run out his boss' patience at NBC with the less-than-stellar ratings for his pet project, Knight Rider, and could soon be pounding the pavement with all the i-bankers in search of a new posish.

Bloggers wishful thinking, or a fer-real possibility? If worst comes to worst, Silverman could always make like David Blaine and blame the show's crap ratings (7.3 million viewers) on President Bush's address that night.

It's hard to distinguish between writer/actor/comedian B.J. Novak and his alter-ego Ryan Howard from The Office, notably because Novak hasn't done much else besides the NBC show. Sure, there were a couple episodes of Punk'd he was on, like that time he pretended to be a really bad driving instructor to Hillary Duff, and he was in that one scene in Reign Over Me, but for the most part B.J. is Ryan: a wunderkind who came out of nowhere and rose to the top and seems a little cocky about it. Sort of like NBC executive producer Ben Silverman, who Ryan is supposedly based on.

With The Office season premiere tomorrow, now is as good a time as any to look back at the solo work of the young man who just told The New York Times: "I don’t see the value in quote-unquote brilliant things that people don’t like, and I don’t see the value in things that people like that I don’t respect:"

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NBC co-chairman Marc Graboff, Zucker, Silverman, and NBC Uni Television president Jeff Gaspin … in happier times

We took an informal poll around the office, and quickly concluded this statement from Jeff Zucker:

From our perspective, there are no questions about Ben Silverman's job security. From our perspective, he's done everything we've asked and more. We are incredibly happy with the job he's done and hope that he'll be with us for a long time to come.

… is wholly lacking in actual confidence in Ben "Paris Hilton" Silverman. "From our perspective"? You "hope" that Silverman will be around "for a long time to come"?

You ain't fooling anybody, Z Man.

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Despite the Lehman bankruptcy and the end of modern world, wrinkly-necked Jeff Zucker is "extremely comfortable" with the future of NBC:

"The deals that don't get done probably shouldn't get done, you know?" he said. "Maybe there's some rationality that's now in the marketplace that's driven by external circumstances, but that's not necessarily a bad thing."

Yeah guys, this little "dissolution of the free market" thing is no big deal. Remember NBC's Olympic coverage? How about last week's SNL premiere? Nah man, NBC is doing fine. No chance of a deep plunge for the network, or even if there is, you shouldn't worry about it.

Especially don't worry about Keith Olbermann or Ben Silverman or any of those guys that keep NBC/MSNBC on the brink of an amber alert every week. Just keep buying those GE stocks and hope for some sort of Xtreme media merger in the meantime.

At any rate Jeff Zucker will be just fine, so don't worry about him.

The unrelenting press attention was something I didn’t expect, and I don’t think I managed it as well as I could,” Silverman added. “I am the only person doing this job that’s single, the only person under 40, I just think there are other elements that may play into it. Sure, I invited a lot of that onto myself, and this coming Sunday is the Emmys and I will be sitting with the nominees, not with the other network heads, I’m sure that would piss me off too…I may be the Paris Hilton of NBC, that’s what our head of HR says, but the fact is, I am so committed to the job,” [B&C]

Oh, (single) NBC exec Ben Silverman, there are only so many clever ways to call you a tool and tell you to get over yourself, but blogs are continuously racking their brains for new adjectives to describe your particular brand of (unmarried) douchebag.

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Ben Silverman, representing Team West Coast at NBC's "hyper competitive" annual NBC softball game, somehow managed to lose to Team West Coast, led by bossman Jeff Zucker, despite Silverman's bizarre proficiency in the sport. That this item ended up in Page Six should in no way suggest that Zucker is once again leaking his successes, and others' failures, to the Post.

This fall on NBC: The network's programming co-chair and embarrassing American Ben Silverman — seen here looking, um, completely sober — and Teri Weinberg, the Reveille topper he brought to the peacock, are pinned to the cross while Silverman's title-sharing partner Marc Graboff takes over with Katherine Pope. "Up to now, it's been only Silverman's salesmanship, not his executive or programming skills (and certainly not his childish stunts like reviving the NBC chimes), that has helped the 4th place network. I'm told NBC was impressed that his relationships with advertisers put "several hundred millions of dollars" of additional revenue into the network's 2008/2009 upfront sales. But that doesn't offset the fact that Silverman is widely seen as a major disappointment. [...] NBC is hoping that Silverman jumps before he is pushed. And several sources have information to believe there is every reason that Ben is a short-timer." [DHD] But he did get an Entourage cameo out of all this.

Speaking of all those NBC execs who left NYC for Beijing, the network's co-chairman Ben Silverman is over there, and working! But not for NBC.

He's filing reports for Ryan Seacrest's KIIS FM radio show, and breaks news like "The Great Wall is an understatement. It's the 'Awesome Wall!'"; says borderline-offensive things about his Chinese guide like "Her name is Fun Fun, so you can imagine how much fun-fun Fun Fun is"; and, in revealing that been referring to the main Olympic stadium, the Bird's Nest, as the "Bird Cage," has shown he's living up to his likes to party reputation. [B&C]

Ben Silverman is the executive producer of such hits as NBC's The Office (B.J. Novak's career-climbing Ryan is supposedly based on Silverman) and ABC's Ugly Betty. Now the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and NBC Universal Television Studio (though he doesn't care whether they fire him or not, thankyouverymuch) will have a part in HBO's Entourage, albeit in front of the camera. No word yet on whether Silverman will be playing himself on the show's fifth season, though the friend of Ryan Seacrest has been known for his party-boy antics (most notably documented in the 2007 Esquire piece), which would make him a perfect foil for the uptight E and Ari. But, the best evidence yet that Silverman will fit right in with the boys? That he's importing the Spanish-language soap opera that translates literally as Without Breasts There is No Paradise. It's like he is Vincent Chase.

When Jeff Zucker hired Reveille studio head and obnoxious sport spectator Ben Silverman to march NBC out of fourth place, he thought he was bringing a ratings wunderkind on board. He was not.

Instead of caring about ratings, Silverman has taken to saying he cares about profitability, which sounds less like the co-chair of a network's entertainment division than it does a GE board member. (Or worse: A shareholder. Which he probably is.)

As it stands, NBC remains in fourth place — and Silverman's job is jeopardy. Supposedly.

Funny thing is: Silverman doesn't have a reason to care.

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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?

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Today show and Race to the White House producer Noah Oppenheim is leaving NBC News to head to Reveille, the production unit started by NBC's co-chair Ben Silverman that's behind Ugly Betty and The Office. [TVN] Bowing to pressure of conflicts of interest, Silverman sold Reveille this year to Elisabeth Murdoch's Shine, which means his new job will put him closer to Bill O'Reilly than it will to Keith Olbermann. No matter, though: Today show exec producer Jim Bell is "happy that he'll still be part of NBCU's extended family."

"I think it’s a reach," says NBC co-chair Ben Silverman about the possibility of NBC hanging on to Jay Leno after they kick him out in January 2010, after his contract expires and after they've already handed his show over to Conan O'Brien. That's the bit of news the Times' Bill Carter thinks you missed in all the reports about yesterday's NBC upfronts. [NYT] For us, the real news was seeing new Late Night host Jimmy Fallon field questions from reporters in the form of a stand up comedy routine, which, all in all, fell flat. Looking forward to opening monologues! See for yourself, below.

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NBC co-chair and obnoxious sports event attendee Ben Silverman continues enabling his superlatives to go from "fun party guy" to "that douche-y programming guy." Self-identifying as the man who will save television, Silverman imagines a world where, in 15 years, broadcast TV will only be good for live blockbuster events like the Super Bowl, and, in the coming months, it'll just be a medium where he can force viewers into logging on to NBC.com. Blargh! With the American spin-off of Aussie sitcom Kath & Kim, he plans to do just that, leaving viewers hanging at the end of each episode, keeping them out of the loop unless they log on to his website for the final reveal. And if that doesn't piss off viewers enough, how about his unwavering coziness with letting advertisers shape programming?

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NBC programming chief Ben Silverman, known for making a killing by selling projects to competing networks and, um, his love for The Party, hit up the Los Angeles Lakers game last night — and managed to spoil things.

Not for the Lakers (they beat the Denver Nuggets 122-107), but for seatmates Garry Shandling and Sony Pictures Television president Steve Mosko. We hear a preppy-dressed Silverman sat next to these two near the courtside seats and spent a good portion of the game running Mosko's ear off. "Mosko just listened, nodded, smiled a bit, while Silverman went on and on and on," says a witness. "It was one of those conversations you can tell by observing for a few minutes, one person is waaaay too into it and trying to get so many points across, while the other is just patiently listening and waiting for the air to run out."

When Ben finally left to grab a drink, Mosko turned to Shandling, who "hilariously rolled his eyes at the whole thing, and they sat back down for the start of the 2nd half." Silverman eventually returned, seven minutes into the half. Hey, the bathroom line can be long!