Page 99 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows
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THE LESSONS
Tom Watson, Jr. Pfeiffer pressed on, fueled by the knowledge that she was
doing the right thing. “I had total undermining from the top,” said Pfeiffer.
“But I also had help along the way, and I received many signed and
unsigned notes from people saying they were glad I was there because NBC
was a good place with many good people, and they hoped I could fix it
once and for all. And we did fix it.”
Even though she’d eliminated one of the biggest threats to its reputa-
tion that NBC had ever faced, Pfeiffer’s chairmanship was to be short-lived.
Only two years after assuming her role as the network’s chairman, she
learned one morning while reading the newspaper that she was about to
be ousted. She was fired later that day by the longtime friend she person-
ally had recruited to the network, NBC president Fred Silverman, who
yielded to intense pressure from RCA to fire her. According to a source
cited by the New Your Times, “(Pfeiffer) felt that the people at the top in
RCA didn’t want the scandal aired and didn’t want it to be more than nom-
inally solved, on the ground that it could be embarrassing to key people.”
The unnamed person also told the New York Times reporter that Pfeiffer’s
prior experience at IBM, where affairs were run “tidily and neatly,” did not
adequately prepare her for the situation at NBC, where she made “some
very powerful enemies (including the head of RCA), very early.” Bill
29
Moyers concurred, saying, “Jane wasn’t sufficiently coldblooded or
unscrupulous enough to make it as a network executive. Had she stayed in
television, she would have been one of the industry’s few remaining cham-
pions of civility and accountability.” Time magazine called her dismissal
an “executive decapitation” 30 and suggested that her chairmanship
“produced a predictable mix of envy, admiration, fear and resentment,
laced with a dollop of old-fashioned male chauvinism.” Reporter N.R.
31
Kleinfield of the New York Times wrote that the “stormy affair must have
caused beet-red faces at both NBC and the parent RCA Corporation
because of the messy way it was handled.” 32
The termination was a blow to Pfeiffer initially, but she now believes
the experience was a blessing in disguise. “I walked away from NBC with
29 “Mrs. Pfeiffer Officially Quits NBC Position,” New York Times, 11 July 1980.
30 “Hell No, I Won’t Go!,” Time, July 21, 1980.
31 “NBC’s Mrs. Clean,” Time, May 14, 1979.
32 “Fred Silverman’s NBC: It’s Still Out of Focus,” New York Times, 13 July 1980.
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