ShopNBC's Circular Firing Squad

You better duck! The mud and lawsuits are flying at ShopNBC and it ain’t pretty, y’all.

Just to catch you up on all the dirt that’s been going on: ShopNBC can’t ever manage to make a profit, so there has been lots of executive musical chairs, hirings, firings, and circular finger pointing.

Last year, the Chairman of the Board, John Buck—remember that name, he comes into play quite a bit in this little soap opera--canned the current CEO, William Lansing, after he couldn’t manage to pull ShopNBC out of the red after 3 ½ years on the job. Buck replaced him with Rene Aiu amongst great fanfare. But, unfortunately, the honeymoon didn’t last. After only six months, Back canned Aiu too.

But Aui is fighting back in a lawsuit that alleges all kinds of juicy and interesting tidbits.




Aiu claims that when she was hired, Buck and his Board of Merry Men approved her long-term turnaround plan and allowed her to hire several veterans of the home shopping industry.

However, Buck did not approve of Aiu’s plan to cut pay for the top executives as a sign of unity with the company’s poor shareholders. He may run the company into the ground, fire all the workers, cut pay and benefits for everyone else, but he draws the line at cutting his own compensation. He’s a man of principles, people. It’s all about the principles.

The suit also alleges Buck is basically a bully who “intimidated employees who disagreed with him and pressured vendors for discounts, creating a culture of distrust and ill will.”

Also, Aiu and her new management team discovered—as I have wrote about many, many times—business among repeat customers was disappearing. But Buck and the Board of Merry Men had absolutely no idea this was happening, which begs the question—are they clueless or stupid? Honestly, how could they not know this?

Bucks answer to the problem? Fire the new management team.

This thinking is equivalent to changing doctors because you didn’t like your cancer diagnosis. Everything will be fine if you can just find a doctor that will tell you that you don’t have cancer.

A few days later, Buck sacked Aiu and other senior managers. And just to put the cherry on top of the sundae, he crowned himself CEO.

I’m liking this Rene lady more and more every day. She’s scrappy and she seems to know what the hell is going on.