the take

Ben Silverman Is About to Cash Out

So if you’re a high-powered TV producer who lands the job of running a network, and you’re eager to defuse any concerns about whether your new position choosing the shows that will run on your network will conflict in any way with your old position pitching shows to networks, what’s the best way to handle it? Well, if you’re NBC wunderkind Ben Silverman, you handle it by buying a whole crapload of shows from your old production company, that’s how.

Now, Silverman is attempting to “put everyone’s sniping to rest,” a source that is totally not Ben Silverman but is “familiar with his thinking” tells the L.A. Times. How? By selling Reveille, his old production company, for upwards of $100 million. Why so much?

Well, it just so happens that Reveille has just had an amazing streak of luck selling shows to NBC. Since Silverman started at the network — at which time he stepped away from day-to-day management of Reveille and put his profits into a blind trust — the production company has placed a impressive number of shows at NBC, including Norman Lear’s new show and Vulture’s beloved Sin Tetas No Hay Paraiso. Plus, three Reveille projects that had languished at NBC — Zip, Kath and Kim, and American Gladiators — were miraculously resurrected by Silverman’s regime.

Each one of these projects has increased the value of Reveille, which presumably increases the money in Silverman’s pocket when the company’s sale goes through. Raise a glass to Ben Silverman, master of the conflict of interest!

NBC drama features executive’s firm [LAT]

Ben Silverman Is About to Cash Out