Today is my last day at Showtime after 6 1/2 years, and beginning Friday — top of the month to you — I’m returning to the Dodgers as Vice President of Communicatjons.
I’m really excited about this new opportunity, which feels like a culmination of my past 20 years of experience, if not the past 55 years of my life. I’m going to be shepherding public relations for the Dodger organization, and it’s as big a leadership role as I have ever had.
It should be clear that this isn’t the same position that I had before. Dodger online content at Dodger Insider, as well as print publications, now run under the great guiding hand of Cary Osborne. Nor will I be the one wrangling things during the games and on road trips. But all of that and more comes under my new roof.
At Showtime, I was in corporate public relations, which meant that I wasn’t assigned to any specific content but rather internal and external communications surrounding the network itself. You can draw a similar analogy with the new job.
It’s not an easy role — nor will it be easy to be pulled away from work nearby Youngest Master Weisman’s school and being home when he gets home — but otherwise, I gotta say, I’m pumped for this. The new challenges, the responsibiity and that great Dodger Stadium setting all feel right.
Wednesday brought my final in-person goodbye to my Showtime (and now Paramount Streaming) friends, and I could not have envisioned a better path through an emotional task. By pure coincidence, the Los Angeles branch of our bicoastal department had an off-site retreat and dinner, so instead of the siloed tunnel-vision of a typical work day, all of us were together, united.
You might think that I would already be mentally checked out, but it was the opposite. From the first year to now, I have said that the best part of the job I’m leaving behind has been the people, who have been the kindest and most generous colleagues-turned-friends you can imagine. All the strength you could find in the Showtime culture emerged here. Not only did I want to engage one last time, I also realized this was one last chance at seeing what I could learn from them that could help me at my new job. And the dinner gave me as much time and freedom to say my farewells that I could have hoped for.
We’ll do our best to stay in touch with each other, but it’s funny to me that for all the grief social media gets, I’ll be relying on Instagram (and to a lesser extent Facebook) to keep abreast of these peoples’ lives. I’m grateful for that.
Now, it’s time to transition. It’s going to be cool, it’s going to be strange, it’s going to be energizing, maybe exhausting. But I’m ready.
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