That is definitely Ben Silverman. (NBC)

The biggest news tonight on NBC is, naturally, the end of 30 Rock’s seven-year run. "Will Liz Lemon finally realize her mistake and run back into the arms of Dennis Duffy?" That's the biggest question. That and "How many articles about Tina Fey's 'contribution' to comedy will run before it starts sounding like an obituary?" But there are other interesting turns for the Peacock's Thursday-night lineup that we should be paying attention to. For instance, why has former NBC exec wunderkind Ben Silverman started popping up in episodes of The Office?

We noticed it two episodes ago, when Daryl went to Philly for an interview at Jim's sports-related startup. (Yeah, you do have a lot of catching up to do since you stopped watching three seasons ago. Like: there hasn't been any regional manager of Dunder-Mifflin since Andy left on his boat, but apparently no one from corporate has noticed, so why is anyone even bother showing up for work anymore when they could stay home and draw a paycheck?) One of Halpert's co-workers looked strangely familiar, like Scott Disick with a larger forehead. Where had we seen him before?

And with a shock, we realized that it was disgraced party-boy Mr. Silverman, who had shot up the corporate ladder when he came up with the idea of bringing The Office to the United States, only to fall from grace soon after. Ironically, the only time we've heard about Mr. Silverman since was during his own attempt at a comedy/commercial venture with Will Arnett and Jason Bateman called DumbDumb, which was part of his larger startup Electus, which was backed by IAC—and that is all anyone knows about that.

Of course, Mr. Silverman would have retained a fondness for the Scranton employees, since it was the golden feather in his otherwise shabby and kind of gross cap. But out of all of the return cameos the show could have fixed on for its final season--Steve Carell, Rashida Jones, Will Ferrell, hell, even Idris Elba--Mr. Silverman is perhaps the oddest fit. He's not only not an actor, and not only is he appearing on the network that humiliated him (and continued to, well after his departure, in the form of 30 Rock’s oily antagonist Devin Banks, played, oddly enough, by Arnett), but he decided to show up right before the big announcement that ABC has picked up his new show Bet on Your Baby. (Oh God, we hope not literally.)

So what is this return to The Office about? Revenge? A show of "No hard feelings"? A grab for some TV face-time before we all forgot who he was? Not sure: since Mr. Silverman's thought process is protected behind a shield of glossy, magazine-perfect hair. But one thing's for sure ... we're really going to miss 30 Rock.

Yesterday, Electus launched an online-only morning show for AOL. Called "AOL Daybreak," the show will be hosted by Lindsay Campbell, who already has a witty financial series under her belt with "Wallstrip." So, Ben, does this fit into the whole mission of being a "next generation studio?"

"We are thrilled to partner with AOL on the next generation of morning news," Silverman said in a statement, confirming that suspicion. (Emphasis ours.)

It can hardly be a coincidence that "Daybreak" shares a name with the fictional morning show in the recently released Rachel McAdams film Morning Glory. How can you not ride the coattails of a flick that's so smart, sharp, funny, and consistently entertaining?

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

At one point, Mr. Silverman said that, years ago, when he was living in London, working for William Morris, most of the great content ideas were emerging from Holland, Australia, and the UK. These days, however, strong creative ideas were emerging from markets around the world, he said. "But America right now is pioneering the next generation of business model coupled with those ideas," he said. "What we're trying to do within the states is connect Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, and Madison Avenue around ideas. I think that's going to be the next replicable model."

Watch the whole speech here

From today's release:

The show is a bilingual, modern day Romeo & Juliet that will, for the first time, give audience members the ability to vote and decide on the direction the characters and story lines will take. MTV and Electus will partner and utilize digital platforms including Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites (in both English and Spanish), allowing viewers to actively participate in the show’s outcome.

Sounds to us a bit like a modern-day "Choose Your Own Adventure."

From the get-go, Mr. Silverman promised that IAC's Electus would tweak the traditional development model by involving sponsors and advertisers in new projects from the ground floor. To wit: Pedro & Maria will be co-produced by the consumers goods behemoth Procter & Gamble.

From the release:

Procter & Gamble Productions will serve as a co-producer with MTV and Electus for “Pedro & Maria,” creating original commercials and unique, branded entertainment opportunities for several of P&G’s beauty and health brands in and around the show and across multiple media platforms, including television and digital.

"Electus is at the forefront of the evolution of content and by partnering with them for a project like ‘Pedro & Maria’ we can truly explore innovative and creative branded entertainment opportunities for a multicultural audience,” said Rich DelCore, Director of Branded Entertainment at P&G. “Ben has played a critical role in transforming the traditional advertising model and creating unique links and unprecedented collaboration between content production, advertising, and marketing across the board and we are thrilled to be working with him on this project.”

Among the other partnerships announced today, Mr. Silverman revealed that Electus Distribution is working with New York based production company Sharpe Entertainment (producers of the Travel Channel hit show Man vs. Food) on a new series called Munch Madness, (inspired by the Eurovision Song Contest) in which various regional restaurants will square off tournament-style, ala NCAA basketball, in a competition for national foodie bragging rights.

Lets go Katz's! Let's go Katz's!

Additionally, Electus will be working with Mark Burnett Productions and Swedish-based Bringiton to import the hit Chinese game show Big Time Spender.

Expect Electus to announce its scripted slate in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, here's more from today's release:

Electus Distribution, the studio’s international distribution arm established in 2010 in conjunction with Shine International, will handle sales of the international TV and digital programming slate. The new block of television and digital programming for international distribution includes:

HICCUPS: Electus Distribution has secured the international and U.S. rights to the new hit Canadian television series, Hiccups, from the most successful Canadian production company, Thunderbird Films.  Airing on CTV, the show stars Canada’s biggest comedy star, Brent Butt, and his former Corner Gas co-star and real life wife, Nancy Robertson.  The comedy focuses on Millie Upton, a disgruntled children’s author with anger management issues, also referred to as “hiccups,” who seeks the counsel of a bumbling life coach (Brent Butt). Its first time in the international market, the series is created and executive produced by Brent Butt. 

READY, SET, DANCE: Created by Notional execs Cleve Keller and Dave Noll in partnership with Electus, Ready, Set, Dance! is a first-of-its-kind dance competition series that seamlessly combines the web and television.  

ABBOTT REIF HAMEIRI PRODUCTION COMPANY: Israel-based Abbot Reif Hameiri Production Company, the leading production company in Israel, is one of the first distribution partnerships of Electus Distribution. Under the terms of the agreement, Electus Distribution will develop Abbot Reif Hameiri's Israeli programming in the United States across all platforms, including mobile, internet and TV.  Likewise, Abbot Reif Hameiri has the opportunity to repurpose Electus' multi-platform content to sell to the Israeli marketplace.

CUCKOO’S NEST: Electus Distribution has secured the international and US rights to the Israeli format Cuckoo’s Nest, a mega-interactive game show produced by Abbott Reif Hameiri Production Company. Originally distributed live from Facebook and via Cellcom, the biggest mobile carrier in Israel, the next-generation format fuses a virtual home-based game with a real studio-based game.

TLV: Electus Distribution has secured the international and US rights to TLV, an Israeli format docu-drama from Abbott Reif Hameiri Production Company. The series follows four young people in their twenties as they each get the job opportunity of a lifetime in the fast-paced, glamorous world of entertainment, media and public relations. Living as roommates in the big city, each individual faces personal and professional challenges that show business and the big city confronts them with

STYLIZED WITH PATRICIA FIELD: Electus has partnered with award-winning actress Vanessa Williams and her producing partner Michael Gruber to co-produce Stylized with Patricia Field, a new web series whereby renowned stylist Patricia Field, the stylistic brain behind Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada and Ugly Betty, becomes an ordinary woman's fashion fairy godmother, helping them discover their perfect look.

Brand-tastic! Ben Silverman Might Look Back to Find Ad Models for the Future

BY GILLIAN REAGAN

Last week, when Ben Silverman announced his plan to flee from his turbulent 18-month post as co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios (see story at right) to start a new multimedia company at IAC with Barry Diller, he gave few specifics about exactly what his new project will look like. His “dream team” of show producers, marketers and advertisers, which may or may not include longtime producer buddy Ryan Seacrest, “will aim to go further than the industry has gone before” in bringing advertisers and content creators together to create Web, TV and even mobile shows, according to IAC. But when Staci Kramer at PaidContent asked Mr. Silverman about his last gasp at NBC—shifting Jay Leno to a nightly prime-time show—and what it might look like under his new company’s gaze, he mentioned McDonald’s.

>>READ MORE

Ben Silverman, the Consummate TV Executive

BY CHRISTOPHER ROSEN

"I plan to stay at NBC as part of the NBC family. I’m happy there. I’m committed.” So said Ben Silverman, the much-maligned former NBC Universal Entertainment co-chairman, in an interview with The New York Times published this past May. Now, just three months later, he has parted ways with what was his dream job (the story goes that, as a child, Mr. Silverman only wanted to become president of NBC, eschewing such conventional boyhood pursuits as astronaut or cowboy) to join up with Barry Diller at IAC, where he’ll run a multiplatform production company. Folks who feel that shows like The Biggest Loser have ruined our culture may cheer, but it’s worth taking a moment to evaluate Mr. Silverman’s entire reign at the Peacock. Was it really that bad?

>>READ MORE

“The McDonald’s deal that we made with Jay confirms what I saw as Jay’s ability to be DVR-proof, topical, day and date and to deliver,” Mr. Silverman said. “McDonald’s, this great bleeding-edge marketer, saw this an opportunity to play out their Monopoly game.”

As NBC announced in July, Mr. Leno will be a kind of top-hat-and-cane-wielding Mr. Monopoly mascot who will promote the time-eternal McDonald’s game during his show. In a prerecorded, second-act segment, NBC actors like, say, Tina Fey, will roll a pair of dice on a giant set that might look like the Price is Right inside a McDonald’s restaurant. If they roll a pair of sixes, players at home who signed up online could win $1 million. “What’s the greatest place to pay it off where you can also drive people into McDonald’s? The Jay Leno show,” Mr. Silverman cooed. “Better than anything else they can do.”

In a TV world rocked by new media, dwindling ad dollars and TiVO/DVR’s fast-forward function, advertisers want to do more than have characters drink their brand of beer or drive a certain car: They want to be part of the show’s very DNA, down to script writing and set building. It sounds radical and possibly icky to a public that’s become used to tuning out (or skipping altogether) those periodic interruptions of our favorite programs. But, for all his touting about “breaking new ground,” Mr. Silverman’s new company might, in fact, just be taking TV back to the old school.

Remember those single-sponsored shows of the ’30s and ’40s? The Ed Sullivan Show was sponsored by Lincoln-Mercury. There was the Colgate Comedy Hour, Ford Star Jubilee and the General Electric Theater. The program could not be produced without the advertiser, and the advertiser needed the show’s endorsement. Audiences accepted the relationship between the two, and they will likely need to again.

Mr. Silverman, of course, has never been bothered by shoving brands in front of viewers’ eyeballs. Advertisers were investors in his Reveille-produced reality series The Restaurant before he even officially joined NBC. General Motors cars were worked into scripts for the short-lived Christian Slater vehicle My Own Worst Enemy, and Ford offered a Mustang as Knight Rider’s babbling vehicle (perhaps a Prius would have brought the show more success!).

In April 2008, Mr. Silverman announced a deal with Liberty Mutual to present NBC’s Kings under the insurance company’s banner, which was part of their “branded entertainment initiative,” and involved independently filmed movies online. Liberty Mutual eventually stepped back their branding efforts for the show, but Mr. Silverman told The New York Times at the time: “We’re going backward, 100 percent.” 

At IAC, Mr. Silverman seems to want not just to weave brands into story lines—but to create shows organically enmeshed with single sponsors. This is a model that is already in full swing on the Web—a kind of testing ground to see how far brands can push integration with content creation.

Consider Illeana Douglas’ Easy to Assemble, a Web show written and produced by Ms. Douglas, who stars as an Ikea worker trying to escape showbiz. The show, which premiered online last year on TV.com and then a bunch of other platforms, features funny dialogue, quality production and a hilarious cast of A-list B actors, including Justine Bateman and Ed Begley. Ikea signed on as a sponsor, and marketing head Magnus Gustafsson joined to oversee story lines and plot outlines. Yet, for the most part, they let Ms. Douglas do as she pleased, even poking a little fun at the store’s quirkiness.

Ms. Douglas said she has had the idea to partner with brands for more than a decade, watching how studio movies, network TV shows and even independent film, where she made a name for herself in films like To Die for and Ghost World, blocked out actors for vapid reality programming and plot lines geared for a male-only audience.

When she first told her friends she was going to make a Web show sponsored by Ikea, “it was very, very controversial with people,” she told The Observer. “People had no idea why I was doing this and asking why would I do this instead of doing a movie. I said, ‘Well, you know, Ikea is the 400th most viewed Web site in the world.’ Who cares about NBC and CBS, I said, if you can get them to show your show in an IKEA.”

Ms. Douglas is writing a movie and is considering several spin-off Web shows, along with the third season of Easy to Assemble, all under the Ikea umbrella—as if it were its own production studio.

“We’re on the precipice of something incredibly good or incredibly bad,” Ms. Douglas said, now that TV executives are interested in copying her kind of online entertainment model. “You don’t want studio people to lure advertising dollars to say, ‘Listen, if you give me a million, I’ll do whatever the hell you want.’ You don’t want it to just be about the money. It’s Pandora’s box.”

“It’s a very entrepreneurial space, which unlike television or film, which is a bit more kind of obvious in how you get a show made—there’s not really any set rules yet,” said Thomas Bannister, head of new media production and distribution company SXM, who helped lure IKEA into working with Easy to Assemble and licensed the first season with CBS Interactive’s TV.com. This year, he is the executive producer of NBC’s original Web show CTRL, starring Tony Hale (who you may remember playing the bumbling Buster Bluth in Arrested Development) as a nerdy office guy with a magical keyboard. In short, 5-minute segments, Mr. Hale’s character controls, and can even “undo,” real-life events just by typing a couple of keys. Originally a short film that screened at 2008’s Sundance Film Festival, the project was picked up by Mr. Bannister and brought to NBC, where Coca-Cola's Nestea signed on to sponsor the Web series. “It’s not that new; I think that whenever a new media arises and people interact with it, like with radio and television and now the Internet, you’re gonna get this model,” Mr. Bannister said.

Cameron Death, vice president for NBC’s digital studio, produced CTRL and will release three more completely original Web shows under NBC by the end of the year. “What we’re not doing is creating six-minute ads,” he said.

He said the right model is one where trust is brokered on both sides—the brands let the creatives be creative, and the creatives, in return, are careful not to tarnish the brand.

“It’s not for everyone. It’s not for every brand, it’s not for every agency. We want to make sure that that relationship is right so we’re not getting into debates on set with talent there. Nothing good would come from that,” Mr. Death said.

As far as this kind of Web model moving on to TV screens? “I think that could happen, but where I try to frame the discussion on success is not necessarily about graduating to the television. We have enough scale on those digital platforms based on their viewership. That would be an interesting experiment, but it’s not our mandate.”

Sounds like work for the Ben Silverman Experiment, part two.

greagan@observer.com

It’s easy enough to see why the soon-to-be 39-year-old Mr. Silverman became the bête noire of the blogosphere during his choppy 18 months on the job. Embodying the worst parts of Ari Gold, George W. Bush and seemingly every Hollywood cliché (really, must you be photographed so often wearing sunglasses?), Mr. Silverman, from the moment NBC Universal’s president, Jeff Zucker, hired him in May 2007, could hardly go a week without doing or saying something ridiculous. There was the Marie Antoinette–like soirée he threw to celebrate the 24 Emmy nominations his production company, Reville, took home in 2007, which featured a bunch of scantily clad models and at least one caged tiger (no surprise this came to be known as his “White Tiger Party”). He famously feuded with his fellow network executives, Fox’s Kevin Reilly and ABC’s Stephen McPherson, labeling them “D-girls” (a derogatory term for young, powerless female development executives) in an interview with Esquire in 2007, and also calling Mr. McPherson “a moron.” Best of all, there was the batshit YouTube video that made the rounds in May. (Just Google “Ben Silverman half-naked singing harmonica” to see what we mean.)

Frat-boy persona aside—pre-NBC, Mr. Silverman even once drunkenly trashed a William Morris colleague’s office, as if he was starring in his own personal remake of PCU (Google that too, if you don’t know what we’re talking about)—Mr. Silverman’s job performance got him the most flak. Show after show came and went in a flash of embarrassment: quarterlife, My Own Worst Enemy, My Dad is Better Than Your Dad, Crusoe, Kings, Lipstick Jungle, Bionic Woman, Knight Rider, Kath & Kim, American Gladiators. For an executive who was once considered a hit maker—Reville, under his power, found successes with shows like The Office, Ugly Betty and, yes, The Biggest Loser—Mr. Silverman has left behind a cult hit in Chuck, and, well, not much else.

A closer look at his résumé, though, finds some method to his perceived madness. Kath and Kim, for instance, was a hit Australian comedy, repackaged for American audiences and featuring a beloved former Saturday Night Live funnywoman (Molly Shannon). In a world where Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are comedy superstars, and The Office is considered a success, was it such a leap of faith to bank on Kath & Kim working? In hindsight, rebooting Knight Rider and Bionic Woman look like terrible decisions, but when viewed through the same prism that finds ABC getting ready to bring back the much less popular V—a cult science-fiction miniseries from the ’80s—were they that far off base? Even American Gladiators, a brand-name competition show that ran its course, doesn’t seem like any more of a fool’s errand than ABC resuscitating a prime-time, Regis Philbin–fronted version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire later this summer. The NBC shows didn’t work, ultimately. But it’s fairly easy to envision a parallel universe in which they might have.

THERE WAS ALSO the matter of Mr. Silverman’s patience, a virtue not usually associated with television executives. Regardless of his capability (or lack thereof) to develop successful programs, Mr. Silverman proved very good at keeping the few assets available to him on the air. Granted, 30 Rock, one of the Peacock’s more “popular” offerings—popular being a relative term here, with network ratings down across the board from the halcyon ’90s—was on the planned fall schedule before Mr. Silverman even took over, but at least he had the vision to stick with the series when the ratings yelled, ‘Cancel!’ (Lest we forget: Ms. Fey’s sitcom was destined to go the way of Arrested Development during its first and second seasons; now the multiple Emmy winner seems poised to anchor NBC’s Thursday night comedy lineup for years to come.) Similarly, with both Friday Night Lights and Chuck, Mr. Silverman found ways to keep critical darlings alive—via partnerships with DirecTV and Subway, respectively—despite an extreme lack of viewership. (These creative maneuvers are surely what caught Mr. Diller’s eye.)

And how about Mr. Silverman’s promotion of female talent? No one will ever accuse him of being a feminist—hello, “White Tiger Party”!—but by surrounding Ms. Fey with people like Ms. Poehler, Ms. Shannon and, soon, Mindy Kaling (the actress-writer-star of The Office signed a development deal with the network back in the spring), NBC has been the only network to really highlight female comedians. At a time when most networks are kicking their female-centric shows to the curb—not to harp on ABC, but Samantha Who? was unceremoniously canceled and Ugly Betty could be on the way out as well; meanwhile, Fox and CBS are almost exclusively boys’ clubs—NBC embraces it’s feminine side. Calling rival executives “D-girls” might not be forward-thinking, but at least Mr. Silverman seemed to realize that there is a whole other gender out there waiting to have programs sold to them.

Regardless, the negative perception of the “Ben Silverman Experiment”—as Deadline Hollywood Daily’s Nikki Finke has titled it—will reign supreme. The man made too many enemies and had too many losses associated with his name to have it read any other way. And, frankly, that’s probably deserved: Considering he actually thought putting a show like Celebrity Circus on the air was a good idea—if you ever wanted to see celebrities perform circus acts, here is your chance!—there is probably a space reserved for him in the deep recesses of Hollywood Hell. But, think of it this way: Mr. Silverman took over a fourth-place network and kept it in fourth place, by doing what every other television executive does; he went with established brands and/or familiar situations and hoped they would stick (for reference to this programming ideal working, take a peek at the entire CBS prime-time lineup). In the end, the most disappointing part of his tenure was just how incredibly normal it turned out to be. Ben Silverman always wanted to be a television executive, and that’s exactly what he ended up becoming.

editorial@observer.com

That groan you heard coming out of your computer yesterday morning probably arose from the army of snarky bloggers who don’t have Ben Silverman to kick around anymore. When Mr. Silverman steps down as NBC Entertainment co-chairman in September to join Barry Diller at IAC, one of the blogosphere’s favorite whipping boys will no longer be all that important to the news cycle. Of course, after a few weeks, that won’t really matter all that much to the chattering class: They’ll find a new horse to flog! And that’s probably bad news for executives at ABC, CBS, and Fox.

We won't say that Mr. Silverman’s tenure at NBC was anything other than a spotty misfire, but we do feel like he’s gotten somewhat of a raw deal. Since taking over in May of 2007, he’s had his fair share of disasters—must we remind you of Knight Rider, The Bionic Woman, Kath and Kim and Kings to name just four. But! He’s also responsible for keeping ratings-challenged shows like The Office, 30 Rock, Chuck and Friday Night Lights on the air much longer than people expected because they were of a certain quality; he expanded NBC’s web presence to the point where we think the Peacock has the best and most comprehensive website of all major networks; and he championed female talent like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Meanwhile, the pièce de résistance of his tenure hasn’t even been unveiled yet: The switch of Jay Leno into primetime. And, call us crazy, but isn’t it possible that the controversial Leno move will actually work for NBC, insofar as it could be profitable for years to come because of its cost effectiveness?

Still, quibbles about Mr. Silverman’s resume aside, the undisputable truth is that he isn’t the only network executive who has fallen on his face over the last few years. Take Stephen McPherson over at ABC. The graveyard of failed shows on the Alphabet Network is vast: Dirty Sexy Money, Pushing Daises, Eli Stone, Samantha Who?, Life on Mars, Cavemen. Even the warhorses have stumbled: Lost saw some of its lowest numbers ever during season five. And Mr. McPherson’s fall slate isn’t all that much more encouraging. Sure, early word on the V reboot has been strong, but would it surprise anyone if that ended up sucking like Knight Rider? Flash Forward seems cool and has an original-ish premise, but, then again, so did Kings. If we were Mr. McPherson, or his executives-in-arms Kevin Reilly (Fox) and Nina Tassler (CBS), we’d be buying ourselves some shields before the fall. Now that Mr. Silverman isn’t around to absorb all the slings and arrows, things could get ugly. After all, Nikki Finke has to write about somebody.

So what will Mr. Silverman's new project look like? He told The Times' Bill Carter it will be "Warner Brothers meets BBDO"—and according to an IAC statement, the "broad-based, 360-degree, multi-creative company" will work extra close with advertisers, "early on in the development process, enabling advertisers to be a partner in campaigns and content creation."

In other words, instead of production working on the creative and casting issues before courting advertisers, brands will be there from the beginning, overseeing the projects from their seed stages. So should we expect a return to the days of Colgate sponsoring entire shows and lots more blatant product placement—with characters endorsing products right from the script? This kind of content creation is already a popular model in online shows (see Illeana Douglas' Easy to Assemble show with IKEA). Imagine Dwight getting super excited about Staples, and maybe having his own Web show to promote it. "The new company will aim to go further than the industry has gone before," according to the IAC statement.

In the release, Mr. Silverman said: "Media is being consumed across an increasing number of platforms, including TV, the internet, mobile, and DVR. The next generation of media will be defined by the players who can capitalize on those trends and deliver integrated, compelling content across all platforms," he said. "Uniting advertisers and content creators will fundamentally improve quality and enable a fluid production and distribution model."