By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --NBC News chief Andy Lack is out following a corporate restructuring announced Monday that places Telemundo executive Cesar Conde in charge of NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC.
Lack's departure was revealed when Jeff Shell, new NBC Universal CEO, outlined a new corporate governance plan. Besides Conde's elevation, Shell is giving broad new powers over NBC's entertainment properties to Mark Lazarus, who has overseen NBC Sports.
The 72-year-old Lack has had two runs as head of NBC News, the first as NBC News president from 1993 to 2001, and he rejoined the company as news chairman in 2015.
NBC News' flagships, "NBC Nightly News" and "Today," generally run second to ABC in viewership but are stronger among the lucrative young advertising demographic. MSNBC has gained popularity, often second only to Fox News Channel as the second most-popular cable news network each week.
The news division was embarrassed, however, when Ronan Farrow took his reporting on disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein to the New Yorker and complained his bosses at NBC showed little interest in his work. NBC said Farrow's material wasn't ready to be aired.
Farrow won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the Farrow case, and the restructuring was announced as this year's Pulitzer's were being awarded.
Lack's signing of Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly to a big-money deal turned out to be a high-profile failure.
Conde's appointment as chairman of the NBC Universal News Group puts him in charge of NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC. Under the old structure, Lack did not oversee CNBC. The individual presidents, Noah Oppenheim at NBC News, Phil Griffin at MSNBC, and Mark Hoffman at CNBC, remain.
Lazarus becomes chairman of NBC Universal Television and Streaming, putting him in charge of NBC's broadcast division, entertainment cable networks like Bravo and USA, and the new Peacock streaming service.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More