Who

A longtime NBC veteran, Falco served as the CEO of AOL from 2006 to 2009.

Backstory

Falco was long assumed to be an NBC lifer: He spent nearly three decades at the company following his graduation from Iona College in 1975. He rose up through the finance and strategic planning departments before serving as VP of finance and administration for NBC Sports beginning in 1986, distinguishing himself with his work coordinating NBC's Olympic coverage. (He remained in charge of planning the network's coverage of the games through 2002). He was later appointed president of NBC's broadcast and network operations division (where he was partly responsible for creating Today's "Windows on the World" studio) and by the end of the 1990s, he'd taken over as group president of the NBC Television Network. In 2004, just as NBC was tumbling from first to last place in the ratings game, Falco was named president of the NBC Universal Television Group, a position that put him just under Jeff Zucker. When it became increasingly obvious that Zucker would succeed Bob Wright as CEO of NBC Universal, Falco accepted an offer from Time Warner's Jeff Bewkes to replace Jonathan Miller in the top job at AOL. Falco's tenure at the company was rocky at best. Almost immediately after taking over, he pillaged the AOL executive suite, firing John McKinley, Kevin Conroy, and Jim Bankoff (among others) and bringing in Ron Grant as his COO and right-hand man. Four years later, however, it was Falco and Grant who were on the outs. They were eventually fired by Bewkes and replaced with former Google ad chief Tim Armstrong in 2009.

Of note

Falco had his work cut out for him at AOL. Although he was viewed as the sort of exec who could bring desperately needed operational and advertising experience to the company—Falco was the force behind AOL's move away from a subscriber-based business model in favor of an advertising-centric approach—the transition wasn't easy, and still today AOL's image remains firmly stuck in the late 1990s. Efforts to implement new features and functions like social networking and user generated content never gained much traction, and Falco's $850 million acquisition of the British social networking site Bebo was largely seen as a failure. Indeed, Time Warner's brightest launch during Falco's time in charge, TMZ.com, evolved entirely outside the offices of AOL.

Personal

Falco and wife Susan have three children and live in Pound Ridge. One of their daughters has Marfan Syndrome—a disorder of the connective tissue—and Susan sits on the board of the National Marfan Foundation.

No joke

For a man who ran an internet company, Falco is surprisingly tech averse. Falco reportedly dislikes communicating via email. It's also said that he didn't even know how to use IM when he started as AOL's CEO.