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The TV executive who gave couch potatoes Jon, Kate and eight kids, tightrope-walking phenom Nik Wallenda, and a look at former Alaska governor Sarah Palin carrying on in her home state is leaving the company at which she had held forth for more than two decades.
In a memo released to staffers Friday, Eileen O’Neill, a veteran Discovery Communications executive who transformed cable network TLC from a dowdy network ostensibly about education to a tabloid-y broadcaster of eyebrow-raising reality fare, said she would depart. She will leave officially as of May 1 — the date of her 25th anniversary with the Silver Spring, Md., owner of Discovery Channel, TLC and Science Channel, among other holdings.
A person familiar with the company characterized the departure as a move by O’Neill to open a new chapter after working her way up the ranks at Discovery Communications. She has been a force within the company, once known for its focus on straitlaced fare about science, geography, nature and human curiosity, and was instrumental in getting Discovery to broaden its palette.
Under her aegis, TLC plunged into controversial fare like “Jon + Kate + 8,” a reality series about a couple who raise a pair of twins and sextuplets. The marriage fell apart as the series was in production. Other programs she backed included “All-American Muslim,” a look at five Lebanese-American Muslims living in Dearborn, Michigan. The program sparked controversy, with retailer Lowe’s saying it would pull its advertising from the series. TLC also ran a season of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” an eight-episode docu-series featuring the one-time candidate for U.S. Vice President and her family.
The move comes after O’Neill was named global group president of Discovery Studios in August, a position that would give her oversight of development of content for most of the company’s networks.
Her sensibility might be seen to clash with that expressed by Rich Ross, the former Shine and Disney executive installed as president of Discovery Channel in October. Speaking during the recent Television Critics Association tour, Ross expressed a desire to run more “authentic” fare that depends less on reenactments and shocking subjects. Ross said he would like to avoid live stunts, such as those Discovery has aired featuring daredevil Nik Wallenda, and sensationalistic programming like “Eaten Alive,” a show that promised to depicted a man being eaten alive by a snake.
In her memo, O’Neill cheered her staff for not being afraid to tackle throny subjects. “We never shied from controversy whether it was with Muslims in Michigan, Sarah in Alaska or Amish folk in places which surprised,” she said.
Her roots with Discovery run deep. She initially came on board as an unpaid intern while earning a graduate degree in popular culture from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. During her 25 years with the company, she has worked as president of Planet Green; director of scheduling for Travel Channel; and group president of Discovery Channel, Science and Velocity Networks. She may be best remembered, however, for her time running TLC between 2008 and 2011, when the network launched everything from “19 Kids and Counting” to “The Little Couple.”
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