NBC wunderkind (and Vulture hero) Ben Silverman hasn’t had it easy lately — amid reports of his alleged after-hours partying, monthlong absences from work, and a possible imminent departure from the network if the fall lineup ends up a stinker, a guy can start to feel like “the Paris Hilton of NBC,” he told an audience during a panel discussion at the New York Television Festival yesterday. But then, an ebullient Silverman put our mind at ease, gushing about how great his gig as co-chairman is: “I am so committed to this job.” Whew! With that out of the way, we could better focus on the other crazy things he was saying, including a renewed pledge to find new uses for the underutilized NBC chimes and awesome statements like, “[NBC show] The Philanthropist is going to redefine the procedural, but it’s called that because I want people to be philanthropic.” And, most brilliantly, a long fishing metaphor about NBC’s innovation that we lost track of halfway through — which means we can’t be 100 percent sure if he was serious when he said, “I am the swordfish that took the boat across the Pacific.”
