NBC's Robert C. Wright will deliver this year's Hatfield address at Cornell Thursday, Nov. 9, at 4:30 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall.
Wright is the 2000 Robert S. Hatfield Fellow in Economic Education, the highest honor Cornell bestows on outstanding individuals from the corporate sector. His talk is titled "Battling for Mindshare in Three Dimensions" and is free and open to the public.
Wright, whose talk will be introduced by President Hunter Rawlings, is president and chief executive officer of NBC, a post he has held for 14 years, the longest tenure of any network television executive. NBC is a subsidiary of General Electric, and Wright also is vice chairman and executive officer of GE.
Under Wright's leadership, NBC has pioneered such up-scale-audience television hits as "Friends," "ER," "Frasier" and "The West Wing." He is credited with engineering the network's current dominance, with 15 of the 25 top-rated shows today, first-rate news coverage and such early morning and late night successes as "Today" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien."
Described as a visionary and risk taker with a lawyer's penchant for argument, Wright brought to the network tough controls and measurements as well as an emphasis on growth in earnings, and in the process he helped change the company's culture. Other achievements: he moved the company into cable, satellite, international and new media markets, expanded ownership to 13 stations and invested in coverage of the Olympics for a full decade.
Wright grew up in Hempstead, N.Y., and attended the College of the Holy Cross and the University of Virginia Law School, before joining GE as an attorney. He held a series of managerial posts at GE, left to become president of Cox Cable Communications, then returned as president of GE Financial Services before being promoted to his current positions.
Wright will be accompanied by NBC executives Lynn Calpeter, B.S. '86, and Elena Nachmanoff, B.Arch. '82.
The Hatfield Fund for Economic Education was established in 1981 by the Continental Group Foundation to honor former Continental chairman Robert S. Hatfield, who was the first speaker and who will be present at Wright's talk. The fund supports campus visits by distinguished business leaders, who deliver major addresses on economic issues of national importance.
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