Jeff Zucker

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Jeffrey Adam Zucker (born April 9, 1965) is an American media executive.

He previously served as president and CEO of NBC Universal.

Zucker began as an executive in residence at Columbia Business School.

Following Jim Walton's tenure as the president of CNN Worldwide in November 2012, Zucker was chosen in November 2012 to take over as the president of CNN Worldwide in January 2013.

Zucker is the head of CNN, CNN International, HLN, and CNN Digital.

Early life and education

On April 9, 1965, Zucker was born in Homestead, Florida, near Miami. Matthew Zucker, his father, was a cardiologist, and his mother, Arline, was a school teacher.

He was a captain of the North Miami Senior High School tennis team, editor of the school newspaper, and a teen freelance reporter for The Miami Herald ("stringer"). Zucker also served as president of his sophomore, junior, and senior classes, running under the slogan "The little guy with the big thoughts." In 1982, he graduated from North Miami Senior High School. He attended Northwestern University's National High School Institute for Journalism prior to college. Zucker moved to Harvard University. During his senior year, he was president of The Harvard Crimson. As a result, Zucker aided the Crimson's decades-old rivalry with the Harvard Lampoon, which culminated in Zucker's dismissal of O'Brien. Zucker earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history in 1986.

Personal life

Zucker married Caryn Nathanson, then a producer for Saturday Night Live, with whom he has four children; the two divorced in 2017. Zucker, who was diagnosed with colon cancer at the age of 31, underwent surgery twice and chemotherapy after the first surgery. Zucker took a six-week absence from CNN to recover from heart surgery in July.

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Career at NBC and NBCUniversal

When he wasn't accepted to Harvard Law School, he began working at NBC by requesting an internship at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

He was a field producer for Today in 1989, and at 26 years old, he became the company's executive producer in 1992. He created the program's signature outdoor rock concert series and was in charge of the program as Today moved to the "window on the world" Studio 1A in Rockefeller Plaza in 1994. He is credited with directing the program during its most popular years and launching it in its 16th year of ratings hegemony.

He was named president of NBC Entertainment in 2000. According to a 2004 BusinessWeek article, "he oversaw NBC's entire entertainment schedule during that period." He kept the network ahead of the game by airing the gross out show Fear Factor, arranging for the cast of the hit show Friends to return to a tenth season, and signing Donald Trump for the reality show The Apprentice. He is credited with the ability to extend Friends episodes by ten minutes and has induced the actors to prolong their contracts by two years. The Friends period was one of the most profitable for NBC ever. The Zucker period saw a rise in operating income for NBC, from $532 million in the year before to $870 million in 2003.

Zucker introduced Las Vegas, Nevada, Law & Order: Criminal Intent: criminal Intent, and Scrubs. As cable networks began to pull viewers away from the network's rerun-filled summer slate, he suggested that "Supersized" (longer than the standard 30-minute slot) episodes of NBC's comedies and aggressively programming in the summer months. Bravo changed its programming direction toward reality television, while the newly acquired Spanish network Telemundo was expected to be more competitive with leading network Univision.

Zucker became president of NBC's Entertainment, News & Cable Group in December 2003.

Following the merger with French media empire Vivendi Universal, he became president of the newly formed NBC Universal Television Group in May 2004. In 2003, Vivendi Universal bought Fox Interactive for the first time. During Zucker's tenure, he demonstrated that he argued for such things as Father of the Pride and the Friends spinoff Joey were deemed outraged.

Zucker was promoted by NBC Universal to Chief Executive Officer of NBC Universal Television Group, along with Robert Charles Wright, vice chairman of NBC Universal and chairman & CEO of NBC Universal on December 15, 2005. Zucker was in charge of all programming within the corporation's television networks, including network, television, sports, and Olympics. His duties also included the company's studio operations and global distribution efforts.

Zucker became president and CEO of NBC Universal on February 6, 2007.

Zucker's tenure in 2010 prompted "a dramatic fall by the country's top television network" and subsequent public relations fiasco, according to Los Angeles Times reporters Meg James and Matea Gold, "one of the biggest debacles in television history" as a result of a media leakout. NBC went from being the most rated network to the lowest rated of the four broadcast networks under Zucker's leadership, and was sometimes being beaten in the ratings by programming on some of the more popular cable channels.

"How does Jeff Zucker keep rising and increasing in Hollywood, while NBC's fortunes keep falling and falling? "Everyone in the Hollywood community has always regarded him as a "net Napoleon" who never bothered to learn about creating shows and managing talent." Zucker "is a genius at coordinating bosses and estimating cost-per-hour savings," she said, but even though he earned more money from cable TV shows, he could not tell the network to save his life."

"Zucker is a case study in the most destructive media executive ever to exist," Dowd said. "You'd have to tell me who else has taken a once-great network and literally destroyed it."

Zucker would be paid between $30 million and $40 million to leave NBC Universal shortly after Comcast's 51% takeover of the firm, according to the New York Post on June 2, 2010.

Career at Disney

Katie McGuire, a former Today host, produced her daytime talk show for Disney-ABC Domestic Television, a NBC News alum. However, Zucker left the show to be CNN's president.

Career at WarnerMedia

Zucker became the president of CNN Worldwide on January 1, 2013. His appointment was greatly welcomed by the network and its anchors. Zucker, according to Anderson Cooper, was "the first CNN president to actually watch CNN." Zucker said in December 2013 that his intention for the channel was to give viewers a "attitude and a take," with a greater emphasis on reality-style documentary films (expanding upon the company's documentary acquisition Blackfish's success, and the new series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown). Zucker said that he wanted CNN to reach more to current viewers of factual television (such as A&E, Discovery, and History) and that the network's digital properties needed to be more appealing to regular viewers of factual networks (such as A&E, Discover, and History), and that he wanted to invest more in the network's digital properties.

CNN experimented with airing factual programming in primetime as a back-up, with Zucker predicting that it would appeal to younger demographics rather than pundit-oriented services in response to Piers Morgan Live's cancellation in 2014. Zucker, on the other hand, said that news remained CNN's highest priority, and that these services could be depredated for continuing coverage of breaking news events as needed. CNN saw an increase in daytime and primetime viewers in 2014; by October 2014, CNN had overtaken MSNBC as the top primetime key demographic viewership leader, second behind Fox News.

A significant focus was placed on on-air debates between partisan pundits on topics relating to the candidates (including, in particular, Republican nominee Donald Trump). Zucker said in an interview with The New York Times that aspects of its election coverage were influenced by sports networks (specifically, debates between pundits reminiscent of ESPN's First Takeover and large outdoor "pre-game" shows for the presidential debates), explaining that "the argument that politics is sport is undeniable, and we treated it that way." CNN's monthly average of 105 million unique visitors to its web and mobile pages in 2016 topped its previous record of 105 million unique visitors.

Zucker announced on February 2, 2021, that he would resign at the end of the year. However, it was announced in August 2021 that he did not intend to leave until the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, Inc. was complete.

In March 2019, CNN parent WarnerMedia reported a reorganization in which Zucker will become chairman of Turner Sports, Bleacher Report, and AT&T SportsNet, in addition to continuing his role as head of CNN.

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) blasted Zucker and CNN for a lack of representation in the CNN ranks in March 2019.

Zucker resigned from CNN on February 2, 2022. Zucker confessed that he did not reveal a consensual friendship with CNN's Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Allison Gollust, when it first began, in his resignation letter. During the network's probe into Chris Cuomo in early January 2022, the relationship was revealed for the first time. Zucker resigned from his position as CEO of WarnerMedia News & Sports following his departure from CNN.

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