In what must have felt to senior executives like a jarring Succession plot twist, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell has been ousted after an investigation of an inappropriate relationship with an employee.
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“Today is my last day as CEO of NBCUniversal,” said the married, 57-year-old Shell in a Sunday statement. “I had an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company, which I deeply regret. I’m truly sorry I let my Comcast and NBCUniversal colleagues down.” Comcast is NBCUniversal’s parent company.
While the firm didn’t identify the employee, Deadline reports multiple sources have identified her as 41-year-old CNBC anchor and senior international correspondent Hadley Gamble. ZeroHedge couldn’t find any indication that she’s married.
The investigation was reportedly prompted a complaint from Gamble who’d been in a sporadic 9-year relationship with Shell. It ended a couple years ago — but the complaint wasn’t filed until the past month, says Deadline.
An outside law firm was retained to investigate Gamble’s allegations. Executives were shocked by the announcement, as only a few senior leaders had been informed about the probe, The Wall Street Journal reports.
In a Sunday memo to employees, Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts and President Mike Cavanaugh said, “You should count on your leaders to create a safe and respectful workplace. When our principles and policies are violated, we will always move quickly to take the appropriate action, as we have done here.”
A successor for Shell, a 2010 media-category inductee into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, has not been named. Until then, Shell’s former team will report to Cavanaugh. NBCUniversal’s sprawling array of properties includes NBC, MSNBC, Universal Pictures, Universal Television, Bravo, E!, USA and Universal’s amusement parks.
The Journal notes that Shell’s sudden ouster comes during challenging times for the company, as its streaming Peacock service lost almost $1 billion in the fourth quarter alone.
Gamble covers energy, geopolitics and markets, and anchors “Capital Connection” from Abu Dhabi. Gamble’s CNBC bio describes her as a “passionate advocate for women in the workplace and their advancement around the world.”
She was the last Western journalist to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Putin interview sparked an amusing controversy when a Russian TV host accused Gamble of having “openly positioned herself as a sex object.”
Body language expert Darren Stanton validated the Russian anchor’s characterization, telling Daily Mail that Gamble displayed 7 or 8 of 10 classic female flirtation techniques, including “hair twizzling,” playing with her shoe, ‘floating gestures’ with feet circling midair, and dilated pupils — the last of which Stanton said would typically imply genuine attraction on a woman’s part.
Shell’s latest reported compensation — for 2021 — was $21.6 million. It would seem that Jeff Shell “Gambled” for years, only to eventually lose a bundle.
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