A Party, but Not Exactly a Celebration

Of all the gentle jabs by the boldface media names roasting AOL chairman and chief executive Randy Falco at a luncheon in his honor today, NBC News anchor Brian Williams put it best:

"You've got challenges," Williams intoned in parody of AOL's trademark catchphrase.

Challenges, indeed. Yet again, the Center for Communications has found itself a dark horse recipient for its Frank Stanton Award, honoring excellent leadership in the media field.

Last year's honoree, Tom Freston, was unceremoniously fired from his position as C.E.O. of Viacom a matter of weeks before the award luncheon; this year, the event follows Falco's announcement that he will axe 2,000 positions at AOL, a unit of Time Warner.

Going into this year's event, one has to wonder how participants will treat the elephant in the room; whether they'll eschew layoff talk, concerned about how it would look for a group of highly paid media execs to gather for lunch at the Pierre and snicker about bloodletting.

The answer is, they didn't.

Many of those roasting Falco were colleagues from NBC, including Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Today show executive producer Jim Bell, and sports host Bob Costas.

Costas replaced an absent NBC Universal C.E.O. Jeffrey A. Zucker, who was originally slated as the afternoon's keynote speaker.

They were liberal with their zings about AOL's fall from grace, as well as pointed cracks about the job cuts in.

"[Randy] has three wonderful kids. He used to have five, but he had to lay two of them off," quipped Costas during his time at the mic.

Falco himself steered clear of layoff-related-laughs, gently mocking AOL's past but for the most part, providing the requisite optimism about its future.

Meanwhile, Time Warner's top executives—chief Richard D. Parsons and president Jeffrey L. Bewkes—were nowhere to be seen. Considering all the rumors about a potential early-exit from the company by Parsons, perhaps the two were busy drawing up a succession plan.

by Liz Gunnison