Shapiro may be leaving NBC News

Amid growing dissatisfaction with his leadership of the news division, NBC News President Neal Shapiro is in talks with the network to step down from his post, according to three sources at the company.

Shapiro, who is on a previously planned weeklong vacation, did not return messages seeking comment. The network declined to comment on the possibility of his departure. “Neal is the president of NBC News,” said NBC News spokeswoman Allison Gollust.

But sources familiar with internal discussions said the news president has begun negotiating his departure and is not expected to remain in his position much longer. Shapiro himself initiated the discussions to leave, according to one network executive. None of the sources would be named speaking about internal personnel matters.

The separation talks come as NBC News’ most profitable program, “Today,” has been fighting off a strong challenge from ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“Today,” which outstripped its rival by more than 3 million viewers six years ago, has seen the margin between the shows drop into the thousands in recent months. Much of the heightened competition is because of large gains in viewership by “Good Morning America,” while the NBC show has dropped slightly in its ratings.

Last month, Shapiro and NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker fired “Today” executive producer Tom Touchet, voicing concerns about the numbers and a sense that the show had lost its edge. Shapiro had hired Touchet in 2002 to run the broadcast.

In the weeks since Touchet’s departure, ABC has continued to close the gap in the morning. The week of May 9, NBC’s morning show drew just 45,000 more viewers than its rival, according to Nielsen Media Research, the closest gap between the shows in about a decade. Last week the gap between the shows was 94,000 -- still substantially narrower than NBC executives are accustomed to.

Zucker -- who first made his mark as the whiz-kid producer of “Today” in the 1990s -- has kept a close eye on the broadcast in the last month, even spending a week back in the control booth.

Concerns that Shapiro waited too long to react to the challenge from “Good Morning America” have contributed to his shaky standing at the network, sources said.

“This has been in the works for some time,” said one NBC Universal executive. “But the ‘Today’ show slide certainly helped accelerate the final push.”

Shapiro cut his teeth as a broadcast producer at ABC’s “PrimeTime Live” and then as executive producer of NBC’s “Dateline,” earning a reputation as a talented editor.

After “Dateline” admitted in 1993 to staging the explosion of a GM pickup, Shapiro was hired to remake the program and helped it regain its standing.

At one point, the newsmagazine was so successful that NBC ran three editions of “Dateline” a week.

But when he assumed the helm of the news division in June 2001, Shapiro had difficulties applying the deliberative style of newsmagazine producing to the high-profile, fast-paced demands of his new job, according to editorial employees.

With his unassuming manner, Shapiro also had trouble measuring up to the larger-than-life personality of his predecessor, Andrew Lack, an effusive figure who went on to become network president before he left NBC to run Sony BMG.

Some said that because of his retiring personality, the news president was unable to cultivate strong relationships with the on-air talent.

“He came from and prospered in a world that didn’t foster talent,” one executive said of Shapiro’s newsmagazine background. “There, it’s about the storytelling.”

Shapiro did not get a lot of time to settle into his new job. He took over the news division just three months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Soon after, an employee contracted anthrax that had been sent in a letter to then-anchor Tom Brokaw.

“The senior people of this division kept the division running,” Shapiro said in a 2002 interview with Electronic Media. “For a week, I spent very little time worrying about stories and a lot more about managing the issues in the building, people’s concerns about their own safety.”

The anthrax scare was quickly followed by a string of major news events: the war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq and the 2004 presidential election.

Shapiro also presided over a much-lauded transition from Brokaw to Brian Williams in the anchor seat of “NBC Nightly News” last December. Since the handoff, the program has beat out ABC and CBS in overall viewership every week.

But some at NBC credited the smoothness of the handoff to Brokaw and Williams, who had worked together for years.