How Cyma Zarghami Pulled Nickelodeon Out of the Slime

摘要

Cyma Zarghami, president of kids' behemoth Nickelodeon, had a problem even Will Smith couldn't solve. On Sept. 12,2011, Nick's ratings dropped by 20%, literally overnight. "Even in the worst-case scenario, ratings don't drop that fast," Zarghami recalled in an interview with B&C. In the previous quarter, ratings had scored an all-time high. "We saw no signs of it coming," Zarghami added. "So our first reaction was, it will pass." It didn't. Ratings stayed down the entire fourth quarter of '11, a crucial time for clients looking to reach kids before the holidays. That meant that millions of dollars' worth of ad inventory went toward make-goods for those advertisers.