Ben Silverman and NBC's mean initiative

You have to love a guy mired in fourth place filled with swagger: NBC's Ben Silverman sat still (sort of) for a profile by Esquire magazine whereupon he proceeded to dump on his more successful rivals:

"'The industry hasn't seen an executive like me in a long time,' Silverman says. 'Traditionally, development executives rise through a specific subsection of the TV business - prime time, network, scripted programming. They're basically D-girls,' he says, using the derogatory industry slang for cute young development execs with little power. "That's what [ABC Entertainment president] Steve McPherson is, that's what [Fox Entertainment president] Kevin Reilly is. That's bad vernacular, but they're all D-girls.'"

Wow. The TV wars haven't been this much fun since Les Moonves and Jeff Zucker delighted those who covered the industry with their wry potshots at one another. But Silverman may not exactly understand how the game is played, as he demonstrated with this verbal scud:

"'We were friends,' Silverman says of Reilly. 'But he's been shockingly lacking grace. Everyone knows that somebody doesn't show up and say, "Hey, I want that job." That's not how it works. You get pursued.'"

Hmm. Silverman's slagging Reilly, who aired a lot of Silverman's shows when the guy was a producer and kept "The Office" on despite low ratings and has kept fairly mum since Silverman got his job a couple of months after he signed a new, multimillion-dollar deal, and Reilly's the guy who shockingly lacks grace. Silverman also attacked some of Reilly's programming choices, which were questioned by many at the time (airing two "Apprentices" and two shows about late-night TV simultaneously), but which also had the fingerprints of Zucker, Silverman's new boss, all over them.

Oh, but Silverman's not done: He also sticks the knife further into McPherson, who defended his pal Reilly when he got axed in favor of this tyro:

"'He's a moron,' Silverman says of McPherson, his voice raising. 'I delivered him a huge hit that he didn't want: "Ugly Betty." He hated the show, he didn't want America Ferrera, he didn't understand why I pitched it to him seventeen times and wouldn't stop. Then it delivered despite that. And every time we would do well, he'd try to find some issue with it. I think he wishes he had been a producer. He's a sad man, like a miserable guy stuck operating as an executive. And it probably makes him nuts that this kid who's five years younger than him is producing hit shows and then goes and gets his job in an end run - and a much bigger job than he has."

Silverman makes it sound like he snuck into ABC's programming offices late one night and surreptitiously added "Ugly Betty" to the network's schedule, and then, when McPherson discovered what had been done, decided, oh, well, can't change it back now and then "Ugly Betty" single-handedly made ABC No. 1. In other words: Can't put too much credence in this.

Or this, a little myth-making anecdote that Ben apparently fed his mother to contribute to the article:

"'I came home from work one day, and Ben said "You know what, Mom, this [NBC] is my channel and I'm going to run it when I get big,"' Mary Silverman says."

Silverman's known to party hearty, and some suggest that diminishes his intellectual rigor (when, of course, partying doesn't diminish one's intellectual rigor; not having much intellectual rigor diminishes it). So Silverman does his best Bush imitation:

"'Bring it on,' Silverman says. 'I'll play any game -- intellectual, physical, or otherwise -- with anyone who would ask me [the maturity] question. I'll go on "Jeopardy!" with them. I will play Trivial Pursuit.'"

Well, there you go: Silverman is a guy who measures intellectual rigor in terms of a TV game show and a board game.