NBC News Chairman Andy Lack is stepping down as NBCUniversal prepares to undergo a major restructuring.
The company announced Monday that Cesar Conde, the current head of Telemundo and NBC’s businesses outside North America, will replace Lack. He will also oversee the news division, MSNBC, and CNBC.
“Cesar is a well-respected, strategic leader who has succeeded in multiple roles at NBCUniversal since joining the company in 2013,” NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said in a statement. “Most recently, Cesar has overseen unprecedented growth at Telemundo, which under his leadership has become the number one Spanish-language network, and through its news division has played a critical role in the expansion of the news operations, breaking news coverage, and trailblazing political reporting.”
With Lack’s decision to step down at the end of the month, Noah Oppenheim, the president of NBC News, Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, and Mark Hoffman, the chairman of CNBC, will all report to Conde.
Mark Lazarus, the chairman of NBCUniversal television, also received a promotion under the restructuring, which will closely align the company’s entertainment networks, NBC Entertainment, international networks, and the new streaming service, Peacock.
Lack started his media career as a journalist and then a producer for CBS before joining NBC News as its president in 1993. He left the network in 2003 and rejoined in 2015, after which he made some notable hires, including former Fox News host Megyn Kelly and rehiring Brian Williams.
Over the course of Lack’s media career, his broadcasts won 16 Emmy Awards, among several other honors, but his tenure was not without scandal. In 2019, former NBC investigative journalist Ronan Farrow accused Lack of downplaying a human resources complaint about a rape allegation against former Today show host Matt Lauer, which led to Lauer’s firing.
Another former NBC journalist, Rick McHugh, also accused him, along with Oppenheim, of attempting to cover up the bombshell story on Harvey Weinstein’s pattern of sexual assault and of delaying or killing other stories related to the ex-Hollywood producer at his request.
Lack denied both accusations in a memo to network staff, but he soon faced another damaging allegation when he was accused of being “unrelenting” in his pursuit of his female underlings. He called the allegations “dead wrong.”
