He took over NBC’s entertainment group in 2000, as the “Friends” era was ending and reality TV was beginning. When Mr. Trump ran for president, Mr. Zucker briefly dismissed him as a “sideshow” in an early 2015 email to his political team, according to one of its recipients. The other is that Mr. Zucker, TV’s Dr. Frankenstein, has been willing to dent his network’s nonpartisan brand in order to kill his runaway monster, Mr. Trump. “He’s a ratings whore — and I’m telling you that as a ratings whore,” Mr. Beckman told me. “But it’s one thing to be a ratings whore in prime time and it’s another thing to be a ratings whore when it comes to news.”

Source: New York Times September 21, 2020 00:56 UTC