• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, November 12, 2007

NBC's new programming head Ben Silverman had industry types buzzing last week about comments he made in an Esquire article where he ratcheted up network competition by using a sometimes negative term to describe counterparts at ABC and Fox.

"The industry hasn't seen an executive like me in a long time," Silverman is quoted as saying in the piece. "Traditionally, development executives rise through a specific subsection of the TV business--prime time, network, scripted programming. They're basically D-girls ...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."

Word of the article was widely reported last Thursday. Esquire wrote that McPherson and Reilly did not comment.

Esquire defined "D-girl" as "the derogatory industry slang for cute young development execs with little power."

Silverman--who has not displayed much humility since taking over a last-place network where ratings continuing to drop, although most of the shows on the air were not selected by him--also was quoted as saying:

"What's clearly unique about me is I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a businessman who's taken a lot of risk, and I've worked all around the world developing every genre of content you can think of. I had my own distribution company, so I know how the value is created off the shows. It's not consistent with the way the process normally works, but it's so much more of a valuable background."

Silverman has had success taking formats for shows that were hits abroad such as "The Office" and "Ugly Betty," and adapting them for the U.S. market as a producer.

Reilly is the executive that Silverman replaced in the NBC job; he is often credited for keeping "The Office" on the air after it struggled out of the gate. In the Esquire piece, Silverman offered up some criticism of Reilly's decision-making during his tenure at NBC.

"The more I'm inside it, the more I recognize how things could have been done better. Like, how can you order a 'Studio 60' and a '30 Rock'? How could you ever order two shows about the same subject matter and put numbers in their titles? That's so transparently flawed to me. And why would you put on Martha Stewart and Donald Trump at the same time under the same brand ['The Apprentice'] twice a week? I would never have done that."

McPherson (who put the Silverman-produced "Ugly Betty" on ABC) and Reilly have been close since they attended college together. And McPherson has made comments that are critical of Silverman for his role in replacing Reilly.

In the article, Silverman seems to offer up contradictory positions on what happened when NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker brought him aboard to replace Reilly.

At one point, he's quoted as suggesting the job unexpectedly came his way: "Everyone knows that somebody doesn't show up and say, 'Hey, I want that job.' That's not how it works. You get pursued."

Later, while calling McPherson "a sad man, like a miserable guy," he says he got the NBC job in "an end run."