NBCUniversal Inc CEO Jeff Shell has stepped down after acknowledging an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company, following a complaint that prompted an investigation, parent company Comcast Corp said on Sunday.
“I had an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company, which I deeply regret,” Shell said in a statement. “I’m truly sorry I let my Comcast and NBCUniversal colleagues down.”
Shell, who had been with Comcast for about two decades, left immediately. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Photo: Reuters
The former chairman of NBCUniversal Film and Entertainment took over as CEO in 2020, replacing Steve Burke. He oversaw the media company’s broad portfolio of businesses, including the Universal film studio and television business, the Peacock streaming service and Universal’s theme parks.
Comcast did not immediately name a successor.
At a time when rival studios were investing heavily in streaming in a race to add subscribers, Shell adopted a conservative approach.
Peacock, conceived under his predecessor, attempted to preserve the familiar television advertising instead of relying exclusively on subscription revenue. The subscription approach has been embraced by Netflix Inc, which has avoided commercials.
Peacock has made gains, although it is smaller than rival services. It surpassed 20 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of last year, thanks to the FIFA World Cup and the addition of NBC shows. The division’s losses also deepened from a year earlier.
That is one challenge Shell’s successor must confront, along with the decline of the traditional television business.
Shell’s senior team now reports directly to Comcast president Mike Cavanagh, Comcast said in a company-wide e-mail.
“When our principles and policies are violated, we will always move quickly to take appropriate action, as we have done here,” Cavanagh and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said in the e-mail.
Comcast said the investigation into the complaint against Shell is being led by outside counsel. It did not provide other details.
In 2020, NBCUniversal vice chairman Ron Meyer left the company after disclosing a settlement with a woman with whom he had a consensual affair years ago.
Shell joins other high-profile executives who have lost their jobs in recent years over accusations of improper conduct or sexual harassment.
In 2019, Warner Bros Entertainment Inc chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara resigned as one of Hollywood’s most powerful studios investigated a report that he improperly helped an actress obtain roles at the studio.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”