Sticking around

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Jul 13, 2000

NEW YORK (AP) -- The number of CEOs jumping ship declined by 14 percent in the quarter ending June 30, compared with the previous quarter, according to a monthly tally by the employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In the second quarter, 211 CEOs either left their jobs or were forced out, compared with 245 departures in the first quarter. "This could reflect better than anticipated earnings and therefore fewer departures," said Challenger CEO John Challenger. Since August 1999, when Challenger began tracking the data, 120 out of 725 CEO changes, or 17 percent, have been in the computer sector, which includes hardware, software and dot-com companies. During the same period, media, food and electronics companies, combined, have had just 89 CEO departures.

Perhaps it's not dead after all

NEW YORK (NYT) -- In its biggest test, the new CBS reality series Big Brother rebounded with some promise on Monday night, once again leading in the 8 p.m. time period. After its total audience sunk to about 6 million, the show, which has placed 10 strangers in a house filled with cameras, came back strongly on Monday, pulling in about 10.5 million viewers and once again leading among young adult viewers.

The performance was closely watched because weak ratings last weekend and an overall downward trend in the number of people tuning in had created some concern at CBS -- and hope at the other networks - - that Big Brother might not grab the nation's attention as had two previous series based on imported models, ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionair and CBS's Survivor. Big Brother has been the riskiest reality show because it is on five times a week. It started with an enormous initial rating after CBS placed its first episode after its giant summer hit, Survivor. Big Brother had a natural decline in succeeding nights, but by Saturday it was no longer even beating its competition.

CBS is now confident that Big Brother will settle in for a successful run and will even build ratings as it begins bouncing people from the house. That process begins tonight, when the participants nominate two members for banishment; viewers will then vote for a week on which one goes.

Amid questions of a fixed result

NEW YORK (NYT) -- Who Wants to Be a Millionaire got its first chance to go head to head with Big Brother Monday night, and once again its timing was impeccable: the hit game show produced yet another million-dollar winner, its sixth. This is less than a week after the show produced millionaire No. 5, who appeared on the first new Millionaire show after two weeks of repeats.

This confluence of competitively advantageous timing has begun to raise at least a few eyebrows from the aggressively suspicious. During a telephone news conference Tuesday the newest millionaire, David Goodman from Olney, Md., was asked whether he had any suspicions about the types of questions he was asked. Goodman, a consultant with an environmental company in Virginia who recently received a master's degree in public policy from the University of Michigan, said that he had watched the show avidly and almost always did extremely well. In the case of at least one earlier million- dollar winner, he said, he was certain he, too, would have won that night. But he added, `'It certainly helped a lot that the questions were by and large things I could work with."

In one case, he said, he was asked about the derivation of the name Lilith, and he was gratified that it related to something he was familiar with, the first books of the Old Testament and what he called "Hebrew myth," as opposed to something in the New Testament. "Then I'd have been in trouble," Goodman said. That question was worth $250,000. The four choices: Lot's wife, Adam's first wife, Helen of Troy, Muse of Lyric Poetry. He answer was Adam's first wife.

Goodman was so strong during the game that he did not need any of the three lifelines the show affords contestants until he reached the final question. He then won $1 million by knowing that the British children's-book character Paddington Bear arrived in England from Peru. He had already narrowed the four possible choices to two, the other being Iceland. Then he got the audience members to vote, and they only slightly favored Peru. So he phoned a friend who steered him in the right direction.

Climbing aboard

CLEVELAND (AP) -- Human resources professionals are not just helping to build corporate management teams, they're increasingly joining them. So say recruiters at Cleveland-based Management Recruiters International, who report that a growing number of human resources executives are being placed into board seats and executive committee chairs at companies such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and United Parcel Service.

Because one of the greatest challenges to the long-term success of a company is attracting and retaining the best employees, human resource executives "are no longer simply picking health plans and managing the company's 401(k) paper work," said MRI President and CEO Allen Salikof. "They are in senior positions making strategic business decisions that affect their company's future."