NBC News' former president Andy Lack returns to struggling division as chair

The most glaring sign of big changes afoot at NBC is the Brian Williams-sized hole on the set of Nightly News – but the changes off-camera are even bigger.

NBC Universal chief executive Steve Burke announced on Friday that he was tapping some old talent to help run the troubled network, appointing a former NBC News president, Andy Lack, as chairman of the news division.

Lack’s predecessor, Pat Fili-Krushel, was shunted up to corporate level, and his immediate lieutenant, the British former ITV executive Deborah Turness, moved notably nowhere.

Lack’s return might hint at a bit of wistfulness among NBC executives for the good old days, when all the network’s major news shows were No 1 and corporate turnover was running at a lower RPM.

But the challenges facing NBC News – from management issues to ratings decline to low morale to the absence of Williams – are significant enough that the job ahead looks more like emergency response than legacy maintenance.

“Andy’s experience and familiarity with our company and specifically the news division will be critical to our growth and future success,” Burke said in a memo on Friday. “Deborah Turness, president of NBC News, and Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, will both report to Andy.”

Turness previously reported to Fili-Krushel, who was moved to a job within the greater entertainment network Friday after just under three uncomfortable years as head of news without any prior news experience. Turness arrived at NBC from the British TV channel in May 2013, less than two years ago. MSNBC, along with the business news station CNBC, are the network’s cable divisions.

According to multiple former NBC employees who spoke on condition of anonymity because they still work in the media industry, the mood inside the newsrooms on both the cable and network sides is bad, if not at an all-time low.

The return of Lack, 67, had been anticipated for weeks, at least, but the announcement sharpened questions about what changes were yet to come.

The largest of these questions is over the fate of Williams, the erstwhile anchor of NBC Nightly News, who was placed on six months’ leave last month after revelations that he had inaccurately described a combat experience in Iraq and potentially other incidents too. Lack is an ally of Williams’, according to former NBC employees, and his return could mean the anchor will eventually return to his chair.

Turness’s fate has been a matter of open speculation in newsprint for months, amid ratings and management troubles and her perceived failure to quell them. Her popularity in the news division was not helped by a comment she made to the New York Times for a profile last August. “People in the organization from top to bottom recognized that NBC News hadn’t kept up with the times in all sorts of ways, for maybe 15 years,” Turness said. “I think the organization had gone to sleep.”

The implications for MSNBC are less clear. The cable channel, which has been suffering historically low ratings, faces long months of waiting before the commencement in earnest of the presidential election season, with its promise of an expanded audience for the station’s progressive political content.

Staff are restive, with some still angry over how the recent departures of hosts Joy Reid and Ronan Farrow were handled, and are wondering how long the channel president, Griffin, can hold his spot.

“It’s no secret that 2014 was a difficult year for the entire cable news industry and especially for MSNBC,” Griffin wrote in a year-end memo to staff.

The larger fear within NBC is that there may be something wrong that cannot be fixed with a smart management move or two. One of the most discouraging signs for the news division is the one that matters most – the ratings race.

NBC’s flagship morning program, Today, was surpassed in 2012 by its main competition, ABC’s Good Morning America, after leading the morning ratings for 16 years. NBC’s Sunday news program, Meet the Press, was devastated by the surprise death of host Tim Russert in 2008 and has struggled to reestablish an identity, with another host, David Gregory, having departed. And even before Williams’ suspension, his long dominance in evening news ratings was showing signs of cracking, with ABC’s World News Tonight topping ratings among younger viewers at the end of 2014 for the first time in seven years.

Lack returns at a uniquely difficult time for a media organization he helped build and run when there were none on television to beat it. The fates of Williams, Griffin, Turness and others may determine – or depend on – whether he can do it again.